Matthew Brunolt

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Family

American homicide victim, found shot to death execution style along with his brother Martin Jr. and his mother, Gracie. His dad was arraigned for the triple murder 39 days later. On the early morning hours of 8/10/1994, Moreno Valley, CA, Martin Sr. 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, dead. The police later claimed that Martin Sr. had 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. 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.