It is laborious for most individuals to imagine {that a} boxer identified for knocking out 32 of 49 opponents might be the sufferer of home violence, however that’s what Christy Salters-Martin lived to inform a jury and CBS Information contributor David Begnaud. Her husband tried to kill her, she says, however she refused to die. “I instructed him, ‘You can not kill me,’ and I meant it. Similar to the solar got here up this morning, I meant it.”
“Christy Martin – The Combat of Her Life,” reported by Begnaud for “48 Hours,” is streaming on Paramount +.
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Christy Salters-Martin says she is an advocate for ladies in abusive relationships due to what she survived. On Nov. 23, 2010, after 19 years of marriage, Christy says she was sitting on her mattress placing on her trainers when her husband, Jim Martin, entered the bed room armed with a knife and gun.
About an hour later, Christy managed to flag down a stranger on her road in Apopka, Florida, who rushed her to a close-by emergency room. Christy had been stabbed 4 instances within the chest, her left lung was punctured, her left leg was minimize to the bone, and there was a bullet lodged three inches from her coronary heart.
She says she was capable of stand up off the ground and escape when Jim determined to take a bathe. “I’d like to see the look on his face when he bought out of the bathe, got here again to the room and I used to be gone.”
Whereas medical doctors labored to avoid wasting Christy’s life, Jim Martin disappeared. Police discovered him seven days later not removed from the crime scene. Martin, who nonetheless had the knife used to stab Christy, declared himself harmless. He mentioned he was the sufferer of a vicious assault by his spouse and ran in worry to a neighbor’s shed, the place he says he slipped out and in of consciousness till simply earlier than police canines discovered him.
Martin’s protection lawyer Invoice Hancock tells Begnaud that his shopper was a loving and devoted husband who would by no means have attacked his spouse. “There’s not convincing proof on this case, past an affordable doubt that Mr. Martin supposed to kill Christy,” he says.
Orange County prosecutors Ryan Vescio and Deborah Barra disagree. They imagine Jim was the heavyweight within the marriage and that he turned a champion boxer into an abused spouse. Vescio describes Martin as manipulative, merciless and controlling: “Jim’s management and abuse led to psychological abuse, bodily abuse. … He began to offer her with managed substances and … put Christy in a really compromised place to the place she needed to depend on Jim or else her profession could be over.”
Christy Salters met Jim Martin when she was simply 22 and he was 47. She was a rarity — a promising feminine boxer. He was a well-regarded coach and, whereas Martin did not imagine that girls belonged within the boxing ring, he agreed to coach the younger phenom. Christy says Jim noticed greenback indicators. “He thought … ‘It’s going to be a sideshow, however I feel I can get her able the place we are able to make some cash,'” she tells Begnaud.
As the 2 grew nearer, the connection turned romantic. A 12 months later, they had been married, however based on Christy, it was extra enterprise partnership than love story. She additionally says it was a method to lastly please her mother and father, who had spent years attempting to show her into somebody she just isn’t.
Christy was within the fifth or sixth grade when she says she realized she was a lesbian. “Did you open up to anybody?” asks Begnaud. “No,” says Christy, not till she met highschool sweetheart Sherry Lusk. Christy tried to maintain her relationship life a secret, however her mother and father ultimately discovered and their disapproval pushed her from the household residence. Jim Martin knew all of that and extra, and Christy says he used it to regulate her. “He would all the time say, ‘I am gonna inform the world you are a lesbian.’ And for no matter motive, you already know, I simply wasn’t sturdy sufficient in me to say, ‘Go forward.’ I do know that individuals suppose that I needs to be sturdy and difficult and all these issues. However … I did not have that very same sort of psychological energy to overhaul him.” Christy says she lived in worry of her husband’s threats to reveal or kill her if she ever left him, so she stayed. Simply days earlier than the assault, realizing it will trigger a life-or-death battle, Christy says she lastly instructed Jim Martin she was leaving him for her highschool sweetheart, Sherry.
“I feel it is a exceptional story as a result of you may have a world-famous champion boxer and he or she may nonetheless be in a home violence relationship,” says prosecutor Deborah Barra. “As a result of that is not about bodily energy. It is about psychological abuse.”
Barra and Vescio say they totally anticipated Jim Martin to plead not responsible by motive of self-defense. On the time of the assault, Jim Martin was 66 years outdated and had lately had coronary heart surgical procedure. Christy was 42 and coaching for a giant comeback struggle. Pleading self-defense towards knowledgeable boxer was Martin’s finest shot at successful, says Vescio. A jury may imagine that Christy was the larger menace — one which had required extreme pressure.
In his interview with Ryan Vescio, Begnaud set the stage for the trial that the prosecutor calls essentially the most memorable of his profession: “Christy was the boxer. Jim was the opponent. The jury was the viewers. And the choose was the referee.” Vescio responded: “And what was essentially the most attention-grabbing factor was, Christy had all the time talked about she wished to win 50 fights in her life. Nicely, Christy gained 49 skilled boxing matches in her profession. That courtroom was the fiftieth struggle.”
Christy sees it otherwise, “Lastly, I’ve been capable of come to phrases with, I bought the fiftieth win, once I bought up off the ground November 23, 2010, and bought out of my home. That was my fiftieth win.”
In 2012, Jim Martin was discovered responsible of tried homicide, however not pre-meditated, and sentenced to 25 years.
On Nov. 26, 2024, Jim Martin died in custody. He was 80 years outdated.
In case you or somebody you already know wants assist, name the Nationwide Home Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233 [SAFE].
