Bradley Martin and Carolyn King: Murders, Capture, and Resentencing

Bradley Martin and Carolyn King are convicted murderers serving life in prison without the possibility of parole for a 1993 cross-country killing spree that left a 74-year-old retired florist dead in Pennsylvania and a 59-year-old woman dead in Nevada. Both were originally sentenced to death in Pennsylvania, but after years of appeals, their sentences were reduced to life without parole in January 2016.

How They Met

In September 1993, Martin was 22 and serving time for a parole violation at the Lebanon County Correctional Facility in Pennsylvania. Classified as a model inmate, he had been placed in a work-release program at a local candy-packaging company. That’s where he met Carolyn King, a 27-year-old married mother of four. The two began a romantic relationship.¹²

The Murder of Guy Goodman

On September 15, 1993, Martin left the prison on a two-hour pass and never returned. King had checked into a nearby motel under the alias “Anna King.” The pair traveled to the Palmyra home of Guy Goodman, a 74-year-old retired florist who lived alone.²

Goodman was not a stranger. He had taken part in a program to mentor troubled youth at the Lebanon County facility and had visited, written to, and phoned Martin during his incarceration. He considered himself Martin’s friend.²³

Martin and King decided to rob him. Martin struck Goodman in the head with a vase. They bound his wrists, ankles, and neck, wrapped a bathrobe around his head, placed a plastic bag over it, sealed the bag with duct tape, and covered it with a bedspread. They carried him to the basement, secured him further, and left him to die of asphyxiation. Then they took his car, his checkbook, and his credit card and fled. Neighbors reported him missing, and his body was not discovered for ten days.²⁴

Robert Silverman, a friend of Goodman’s, later told Oxygen’s Killer Couples: “Everybody liked him. Why would anyone hurt this little old guy? Especially… how brutal it was.”³

The Spree and the Murder of Donna Martz

Using Goodman’s stolen credit card and checkbook, Martin and King ran through at least twelve states. Between September 17 and 27, they used the card in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, and South Dakota. Store clerks later identified both, and handwriting on the forged checks matched King’s.²¹

On September 26, 1993, in Bismarck, North Dakota, they abducted 59-year-old Donna Martz from a hotel parking lot. Martin stabbed her and forced her into the trunk of her own car. They drove to Elko, Nevada, and went shopping on October 3. Afterward, Martin drove Martz into the desert, forced her to disrobe and lie in a ditch, and shot her once in the head with a .357 magnum revolver.¹⁵

Capture and Confessions

A nationwide manhunt was already underway. On October 5, 1993, a California Highway Patrol officer spotted the pair in Martz’s vehicle near San Diego. A chase followed across the border into Yuma, Arizona, and ended in a crash. Both were arrested. Martin was found with Goodman’s credit card, and blank checks in the abandoned car carried the fingerprints of both defendants.¹²

King confessed to federal agents and then again to Lebanon County detectives who traveled to Arizona. Martin gave a statement to the detectives admitting the robbery and murder, and after being returned to Pennsylvania, confessed a second time to a corrections officer at the Lebanon County Prison.²

Convictions and Death Sentences

Martin and King were tried jointly in Lebanon County for Goodman’s murder, with Senior Judge Robert J. Eby presiding. On October 14, 1994, a jury found both guilty of first-degree murder, aggravated assault, robbery, theft by unlawful taking, flight to avoid apprehension, escape, and conspiracy.⁶

At the penalty phase, the jury found two aggravating circumstances for each defendant: that the homicide occurred during a robbery, and that the killing was carried out by means of torture. The jury found no mitigating circumstances and sentenced both to death.²

Separately, both pleaded guilty to first-degree murder in Nevada for Donna Martz’s killing. On January 11, 1996, Elko District Judge Jack Ames sentenced Martin to two consecutive life terms without parole. King was sentenced on March 12, 1996, to a life term to be served consecutive to any other sentence.⁵

How the Death Sentences Were Overturned

The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania affirmed both convictions and death sentences on December 2, 1998.² Both defendants then pursued relief under Pennsylvania’s Post Conviction Relief Act, and both eventually won new penalty proceedings.

On March 4, 2004, a PCRA court granted Martin a new penalty hearing after finding that his trial counsel had been ineffective for failing to investigate and present mitigating evidence of a mental illness affecting him at the time of the murder. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court affirmed that ruling on August 17, 2010.⁷

Then, in December 2015, Judge Eby went further and ruled that prosecutors could not seek the death penalty against Martin at all. The reason went back to a pretrial offer. On February 7, 1994, District Attorney Bradford Charles had offered both defendants a “package plea”: each would plead guilty in exchange for a life sentence, but the deal required both to accept. King came close to signing but changed her mind, sending both cases to trial. Judge Eby found that Martin had been “prevented from accepting its terms solely on the basis of a whim of his co-defendant,” in violation of his due process rights.⁶⁴

King’s path was similar in outcome but different in reasoning. In August 2010, Judge Harold A. Thomson Jr. ruled that she was entitled to a new penalty hearing because the original 1994 sentencing had failed to consider mitigating evidence about her past abuse and mental disorders. Her trial attorney, M. Jennifer Weiss, testified that the penalty phase had begun immediately after the guilt verdict, leaving no time to investigate those issues, and that she had not believed such testimony would help the defense.⁸ District Attorney David Arnold later said he expected the package-plea ruling to apply equally to her case.⁴

Life Without Parole: The 2016 Resentencing

With the death penalty off the table, District Attorney Arnold declined to contest the matter further, citing the “inevitable conclusion” of the legal process, along with Governor Tom Wolf’s moratorium on executions.⁶

Martin was resentenced first, on January 18, 2016, before Judge Eby. He received life in prison without parole and waived his right to file any further appeals in state or federal court. His attorney, Gary Procter, said Martin wanted to apologize to his family and to Goodman’s. The Goodman children could not attend due to poor road conditions, but Arnold told the court they had agreed with the outcome. “The family had had enough,” Arnold said. “We would be looking at countless more years to get to this point.”⁴

King was resentenced the next day, January 19, 2016, before Senior Judge David Grine of Centre County, via videoconference from the State Correctional Institution at Muncy. She also received life without parole and waived all future appeals. She offered no comments. Her defense attorney, Michael Wiseman, said that had the case gone to a sentencing jury, the defense would have presented evidence that King was a victim of childhood sexual abuse, domestic violence, depression, and drug abuse. Goodman’s daughter, Judy Goodman, attended and said she wished King had spoken. “I wish she would have made a comment,” she said.⁶

Where They Are Now

Both Bradley Martin and Carolyn King are serving life without parole in Pennsylvania for Guy Goodman’s murder, on top of their consecutive life sentences in Nevada for Donna Martz’s. Having waived all further appeal rights as part of the 2016 resentencing, neither has a legal pathway to release. The case was later featured in Season 15, Episode 5 of Oxygen’s Snapped: Killer Couples, which included interviews with former District Attorney Bradford Charles and Goodman’s friend Robert Silverman.⁹

1
Oxygen. Bradley Martin Carolyn King Go on Cross Country Killing Spree
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FindLaw. Commonwealth v. King
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The U.S. Sun. Runaway Convict Lover Met Sweet Factory Killed Murdered
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Lebanon Daily News. Martin Resentenced Life Prison 1993 Palmyra Murder
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Las Vegas Sun. Accomplice in Cross Country Spree Gets Life in Nevada
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Lebanon Daily News. Carolyn King Resentenced Life Term 1993 Palmyra Murder
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FindLaw. Commonwealth v. Martin
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PennLive. New Penalty Hearing Ordered for Carolyn King
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LebTown. Infamous Palmyra Case Featured on Crime Show Killer Couples