Martin Lewis Brunolt

American homicide perpetrator; arraigned for triple murder 39 days after his wife and two sons were found dead. On the early morning hours of 8/10/1994, Moreno Valley, CA, Martin was found wandering in his front yard, shot in the head, with a concussion over his left ear and a shattered jaw, bleeding and disoriented. The trauma had left him blinded and deafened on the right side. Inside the ransacked house were his wife, Gracie, and two young sons, shot to death execution style. Gracie's feet were bound and her hands showed signs of having been bound. Martin was taken to the Riverside hospital where he remained in critical condition for weeks with his jaw wired shut and sedated with morphine. During this time, the police claimed that he confessed. Martin and Gracie lived in an idyllic home setting with their five kids, three teen-age daughters and two little boys. Two of the grown children had already left home. News stories, the police reports and the family statements have some mysterious contradictions. For one thing, Martin had been shot in the top of the head, a rather difficult feat for an alleged suicide attempt. Gracie was from El Salvador; the maid's boyfriend was suspected of bringing in illegal aliens and the neighbors complained about the transient traffic around the house. Martin and Gracie apparently had been having some family difficulties. Martin had filed for divorce in May and then dropped it; they were going to a marriage counselor. He had been fired from his job as a Foreman Electrician about six weeks prior and was starting a home-based electrician business. Several homes had been burgled in the area recently and gang activity had increased. The Riverside police docket was overloaded and the family claimed that Martin was neither given adequate hospital care nor a public defender to represent his case. They tried to raise $200,000 to hire a private attorney, declaring that Martin was a good man, hard-working and caring of his family, and that the crime was the result of a home invasion robbery. The whole case left a lot of questions unanswered at the time of the newspaper reports. Authorities learned that Martin had hired a private investigator who found out that his wife was having an affair. He filed for divorce in May 1994 but had withdrawn the petition two months later. At his trial in 2000 Martin pleaded guilty to murdering his wife and two sons. He then changed his mind and tried, unsuccessfuly, to withdraw his guilty plea. He was sentenced in mid-October 2000 to three consecutive life prison terms for the murders of his wife and sons.