At 2:58 a.m. on November 4, 1988, Sergeant John Martin, a respected seventeen-year veteran of the Lee County, Virginia, Sheriff’s Department, radioed dispatch he was investigating a car lingering behind the Western Lee County Health Clinic in Ewing, Virginia, an unincorporated community in the far western part of the state, only a few miles from the Kentucky and Tennessee borders.

As he neared the car, Sergeant Martin reported the vehicle was pulling out. He then reported he was stopping the car. After doing so, he radioed the car’s license plate was a metal dealer tag in the back seat window and that he could not make out the plate letters and numbers. He then said he was going to question the motorist.

No further contact with the command post was made by Sergeant John Martin.

 

Sergeant John Martin

Lee County, Virginia, Sheriff’s Department

After repeated calls to Sergeant Martin went unanswered during the following few minutes, Deputy Doug Parsons was urgently dispatched to check on his colleague. When the deputy arrived at the scene, he found Sergeant Martin barely conscious, lying at roughly the midpoint of the clinic’s driveway, having been shot multiple times.

The wounded cop told his fellow lawman that he had pulled over a large brown or tan car, possibly a 1970s Buick or Cadillac. When he asked for the driver’s license and registration, he was instead greeted with an array of bullets.  The shot Sergeant returned fire as his shooter sped away; a check of the lawman’s gun showed that all six rounds had been fired. He believed he had hit the vehicle.

Sergeant Martin said the driver was a man with dark hair and a mustache who appeared to be in his early to mid-twenties. He also conveyed a final and most vital piece of information to Patrolman Parsons.

Deputy Doug Parsons

Lee County, Virginia, Sheriff’s Department

Although he was unable to make out the vehicle’s license plate letters and numbers, Sergeant Martin was able see the words “Land of Lincoln,” the state motto of Illinois, on the plate.

John Martin was rushed to the hospital with three .44 caliber bullets lodged in his upper chest and right hip.  Shortly after arrival, he lapsed into a coma. He died three days later while being treated at the University of Tennessee Medical Center in Knoxville.

The Dying Cop Conveys a Vital Clue

Sergeant John Martin left behind a wife, Tammy; two sons, sixteen-year-old John, Jr., fifteen-year-old Robert; a thirteen-year-old daughter, Rebecca; and a stepson, four-year-old Timmy Barnett.

Tammy and John

The day after the shooting, police in Effingham, Illinois, four-hundred-thirty miles from Ewing, Virginia, impounded a 1985 Mercury Cougar stripped and burnt nearly beyond recognition. The charred car, burned with kerosene, had three bullet holes in the driver’s side door and the rear. Ballistic tests confirmed the holes in the ruined vehicle had come from the slain sergeant’s gun.

The vehicle had recently been reported stolen from an Effingham car dealership.

The Charred Car

Seven weeks later, information provided to Effingham police from Floyd Barlow, owner of a home security business, linked twenty-four-year-old David Mills to the wrecked vehicle.

Mills had recently moved with his parents to Effingham from Blacksburg, Virginia, two-hundred miles northeast of Ewing.

David Mills

While he was installing a smoke detector and repairing the burglary alarm system at the Mills family home on December 27, 1988, Barlow noticed several suspicious items in the home’s basement: a ski mask, a box of .44 caliber ammunition, an Illinois automobile tag, and money bearing the name of a bank in Middlesboro, Kentucky. In Mills’ bedroom, Barlow also found a .38 caliber handgun.

After police learned that Mills had been back in Virginia visiting relatives at the time of Sergeant Martin’s shooting, they were granted a warrant to search his home. They found the items described by Floyd Barlow.

A check of the ammunition box found three .44 caliber magnum shells missing. Mills had recently given a .44 caliber handgun Smith & Wesson handgun to his grandfather. Ballistic tests showed it was the weapon used in the murder of John Martin.

Mills is believed to have stolen the gun while he was in Blacksburg.

 Linked to Sergeant Martin’s Shooting

On January 5, 1989, David Mills was arrested and charged with the murder of Sergeant John Martin; he admitted to being present when the lawman was shot, saying he and an accomplice, Jerry Houston, had intended to rob the Western Lee County Health Clinic. Houston had recently been arrested on unrelated burglary charges in his hometown of Middlesboro, Kentucky.

When questioned by the police, Mills insisted Houston had shot the lawman, but he had earlier told two people that he had shot a cop in Virginia. In addition, Sergeant Martin had told Patrolman Parsons the vehicle he had pulled over had only one occupant.

A jury found Mills acted alone in the murder of John Martin. Police believe he did so because he knew the Sergeant would find the car to be stolen.

David Mills was sentenced to life in prison, plus ten years for attempted burglary and two years for use of a stolen firearm. The sentences are to be served consecutively. He is incarcerated at the Buckingham Correctional Center near Dillwyn in Buckingham County, Virginia.

I could not find a photo of Jerry Houston, whom authorities questioned and found no evidence of his involvement in the murder of Sergeant John Martin.

Convicted

One of the people to whom Mills had confessed his crime was twenty-two-year-old Judy Williams of Bristol, Virginia, eighty miles east of Ewing. Friends say she had fallen in love with Mills are seeing video of his arrest on Unsolved Mysteries. 

After Mills was transported to Virginia, he was held in the Scott County Jail while awaiting trial. Williams began an almost daily correspondence with him during which time her affections for the accused killer apparently intensified as Scott County officials say she tried to help him escape from jail.

In exchange for her testimony against Mills at his trial, charges against Judy Williams for using a phony operator’s license to purchase a firearm, conspiracy to commit a felony, and conspiracy to aide an inmate’s escape from jail by force or violence, were dropped.

I could not find a picture of Judy Williams.

The Killer Attracts  

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/111754231/john-lee-martin

http://www.odmp.org/officer/8616-sergeant-john-lee-martin

SOURCES:

• Chicago Tribune
• Roanoke Times
• Unsolved Mysteries