Murder of Raymond Martin – NEED TO VISIT

On March 29, 1974, Raymond Martin was killed inside the apartment house he managed at 1219 N.W. 8th Street in Oklahoma City. Martin was 66 years old. He was not famous. He was not wealthy. He was a man managing a boarding house, saving money for retirement, and doing the kind of work most people barely notice until something terrible happens.

Police found Martin dead on the kitchen floor of the manager’s apartment. His pockets had been turned inside out, and a bloody shoe print was found at the scene. Officers later found a similar bloody print near Apartment No. 9, which was rented to Joney Joe Lusty and William Dale Davis. Court records say Martin had been stabbed 81 times, with 27 wounds entering vital organs.

The case quickly pointed back to Lusty and Davis. According to the court record, Martin was known to keep money pinned inside his pants pocket. He also had marked coins used for the laundry machines. After Lusty was arrested, officers found coins on him, including one with light green paint. That mattered because the laundry coins from the apartment house had been marked with blue-green paint.

Lusty later said Davis first brought up robbing the apartment manager. Lusty claimed he said no at first, but then went along with it. The two men went to Martin’s apartment pretending they were there to pay rent. Once inside, Martin was attacked. Lusty admitted he helped search the apartment afterward, helped clean up, and shared in the money.

Both men were charged with first-degree murder. Davis was convicted first and sentenced to death. Lusty’s first jury could not agree on a verdict, so he was tried again. In the second trial, Lusty was convicted of first-degree murder and also sentenced to death. The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed both convictions in 1975.

That death sentence is not the end of the story. Lusty and Davis were sentenced during a time when Oklahoma’s death penalty laws were changing after court challenges across the country. Lusty was later identified in newspaper archive material as serving a life sentence rather than being executed. So the final result appears to be this: both men were convicted of Raymond Martin’s murder, both were originally sentenced to death, and Lusty’s death sentence was later reduced to life in prison. I found strong court records for the conviction and death sentence, but not a clean official record showing the exact date his sentence changed.

It is an ugly case. A robbery over money. A boarding house manager killed in his own apartment. And a crime scene so violent that even decades later, the court record still tells you more than enough.

Murder of Raymond Martin – NEED TO VISIT

Raymond J Martin Grave

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