He is accused of murdering Chloe over money, the BBC reports, having argued with her over an overdue payment of \u00a3150 ($347) – a tenth of the \u00a31,500 ($3473) she had owed him.<\/p>\n
He was more than \u00a38,000 ($18,500) in debt himself – generated predominantly from his gambling habit.<\/p>\n
The Times reports Martin told police he could not explain why he had allegedly attacked his stepdaughter.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know, I\u2019d just had enough, it\u2019s just constant, money, money, money, go out, go out, go out…\u201d<\/p>\n
Prosecutor Julian Evans described how Martin attacked Chloe with a hammer before stabbing her eight times.<\/p>\n
While he was no longer married to her mother, Elaine Sturges, the 30-year-old reportedly still saw him as a father figure, and her four children considered him a grandfather.<\/p>\n
He went on to murder Chloe\u2019s husband when he returned home, stabbing him four times before strangling him to death.<\/p>\n
Martin then moved the bodies into two rooms of the house, removing the handles from each door.<\/p>\n
After picking the murdered couple\u2019s children up from school, according to People, Martin texted Sturges, then turned himself in for the crime.<\/p>\n
\u201cElaine I\u2019m so sorry, I can\u2019t believe what I\u2019ve done, I know everyone hates me anyway especially the boys, I hate myself anyway and please, please look after the children really well\u201d, he wrote. <\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m just about to walk into the police station then that\u2019s my days over and good job too, I know it\u2019s going to mean nothing but I\u2019m so sorry, don\u2019t take the children home x.\u201d<\/p>\n
Martin has a history of mental health issues and has reportedly attempted suicide several times, Metro reports.<\/p>\n
He was not taking his medication at the time of the murders and had stopped sleeping anything more than one or two hours a night.<\/p>\n
His state of mind is the key question at issue, with his psychiatrist, Dr. Seena Fazel, telling the court the killings had not been intentional, according to People.<\/p>\n
The trial is set to continue for another two weeks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"He is accused of murdering Chloe over money, the BBC reports, having argued with her over an overdue…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":70166,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[74,11730,11924,23265,10712,8414,51502,10046,305,42,8241,296,11156,43768,43,19525,384,675,13655,1361,40,38,41,39,1613,55857],"class_list":["post-70165","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-after","tag-afternoon","tag-arrested","tag-brighton","tag-claiming","tag-couple","tag-demanded","tag-hands","tag-have","tag-headlines","tag-himself","tag-into","tag-killing","tag-murdered","tag-news","tag-pensioner","tag-people","tag-police","tag-station","tag-that","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-uk","tag-walked"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70165","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=70165"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70165\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/70166"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70165"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70165"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70165"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}