Tony Martin has left his entire £2.5million fortune to a pub landlady he met after his release from prison when his conviction for murdering a burglar at his home was overturned.
Martin, who died in February 2025 aged 80, was initially jailed for the murder of 16-year-old Fred Barras and for seriously injuring accomplice Brendon Fearon after they broke into his isolated farmhouse, near Wisbech, in 1999.
But the murder conviction was later quashed on appeal and Martin instead spent three years in prison for manslaughter on grounds of diminished responsibility, after he was diagnosed with paranoid personality disorder. He was released in July 2003.
In recent years Martin had been campaigning for his manslaughter conviction to also be overturned, and proclaimed: ‘I don’t regret anything’.
It has today been revealed that Martin left all of his considerable fortune to his pub landlady friend Jacqueline Wadsley, 52, following his death from a stroke.
The pair met at the Hare and Hounds pub, a short drive from Bleak House, where Martin killed the teenager with a pump-action shotgun.
They are said to have become ‘like father and daughter’, with Ms Wadsley and her husband David, 45, with whom she shares three children, now in line to receive all of Martin’s assets.
These include Bleak House, 350 acres of surrounding land, and property in Australia.
David Wadsley told the Mirror Martin first met Ms Wadsley over 20 years ago.
‘It was a slow burner but Jacqui, by her nature, she’s a very, very caring person so the friendship just grew.
‘It became something much stronger and ended up being more like a father and a daughter relationship to be honest at the end,’ he said.
Mr Wadsley added his wife had been ‘very surprised’ at Martin’s decision to leave them his estate.
‘It was just her caring nature that was just to look after him and then it just grew from there. It was a shock to find out we had been named in his will. We’re still trying to take it all in really.’
Earlier this month the crumbling remains of Bleak House were seen being cleared out.
Martin never returned to the property after his release from prison, and it was left relatively untouched.
The house was already in a dilapidated state before the killing and today it is crumbling into the ground.
The house has no front door or windows and there are holes in the roof.
The glass, which the burglars broke to gain entry into the house ahead of the shooting, still lies on the floor and there are shotgun pellets embedded in the wall at the foot of the stairs.
Speaking in 2024, Martin insisted he ‘doesn’t regret anything’ relating to the events of August 20, 1999, adding: ‘You may think I’ve got a chip on my shoulder but I’m bound to.
‘I haven’t met anybody who says I was wrong. I don’t think people appreciate what happened. I’ve been naive, I’m too honest for my own good and I don’t like dishonesty.
‘I would like to appeal but you can’t because you need fresh evidence. My idea of fresh evidence and their idea are different.
‘I’d love to clear my name before I die but it may never happen. The law won’t allow it.’
After his death, Mr Fearon, who was also injured on the night of the killing, said he had ‘no anger’ towards Martin.
In 2013, UK law was changed with the Crime and Courts Act providing a ‘householder’s defence’ if someone used ‘reasonable’ force against an intruder that was not ‘grossly disproportionate’.
