Melissa Topey
sanduskyregister.com
In the winter of 2007-08, murder suspect Michael Martin provided information to state officials about the Outlaws motorcycle club.
Larry Ward Jr., a special agent with the state Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, testified Tuesday afternoon in Erie County Common Pleas Court that he met with Martin about five times. He said he also talked with Martin on the phone several times during a three-month period that winter.
Their conversations ended when Martin told Ward he had been asked, and was considering, becoming a probationary member of the Outlaws. Martin now blames the Outlaws bike club for the death of Amanda Gibson.
While Martin, 54, is on trial for Gibson's 2010 strangling death, Martin's attorney points the finger at the Outlaws, saying they were after Martin because he refused to join their club and because he was considered a snitch for the government.
"I told him we could not work with him," Ward testified.
Martin's attorney, Joseph Patituce, has said Gibson was preparing to move back home to New Jersey. His client has said he picked Gibson up at her Lawrence Street apartment in Sandusky and took her to his 903 Second St. home to collect items she'd stored in his garage.
Leaving her in the garage, Martin went into his house to bathe, getting ready for an appointment with Dr. Robert Daniels, a psychiatrist on West Bogart Road.
Not an hour later, Martin peeked into the garage and saw Gibson dead on the ground, Patituce said. Martin saw a truck with three occupants driving away. Inside the truck, he said, were people Martin recognized as members of the Outlaws bike club.
Prosecutor Kevin Baxter has maintained Martin strangled Gibson on June 7 in his garage and dumped her body along a path leading back to a pond in Groton Township. Martin denied to detectives he had any role in Gibson's death, but later admitted in a letter to his girlfriend Tami Bollinger that he moved Gibson's body. That letter, along with hundreds of other documents, were seized from Martin's jail cell and from Bollinger's home.