Formal sentencing delayed for man convicted of girl’s death
A hearing will be held to determine if a man sentenced to death in May for murdering a 12-year-old Greene County girl is a sexually violent predator. A formal sentencing hearing scheduled for Thursday for Jeffrey Robert Martin, 50, of New Geneva, Fayette County, has been delayed pending a hearing to determine if he is a sexually violent predator under Megan’s Law. A jury convicted Martin of first-degree murder and rape of a child in the June 2006 death of Gabrielle Bechen.
The hearing, which would be held before Greene County Common Pleas Court President Judge H. Terry Grimes, who presided over Martin’s seven-day jury trial, has not been scheduled.
Bechen was reported missing June 13 after she drove an all-terrain vehicle from her family’s home to a nearby farm on Mount Joy Road where Martin had been employed as a hand for about four years.
She wasn’t supposed to ride the ATV without telling her parents, but she did that day, her parents testified.
Martin, a Greene County native, was found guilty of strangling Bechen to death and raping her, then burying her body, the ATV and other evidence on the wooded 300-acre farm.
State police arrested Martin at the farm on June 17 after two of the hundreds of volunteer searchers found part of the ATV protruding from the ground off a horse trail, which he covered with manure.
He eventually led police to the gravesite, where he covered the body with lime before filling it in.
Martin took the witness stand during the trial, but his testimony greatly differed from the recorded confession he gave police the day he was arrested. In the confession, which was played for the jury, Martin said he strangled the girl after she drove the ATV to the farm and threatened to tell her parents he molested her.
Prosecutors argued he raped her and then killed her to prevent her from telling anyone.
When he testified, he said a man whose truck ran out of gas in front of the farm offered him $100 to help dispose of an ATV.
Martin said he noticed a body in the man’s truck after they finished burying the ATV.
He said he went back to work, but the man drove a backhoe and took lime from the farm, buried the body and then showed him the gravesite.
Martin also claimed police abused and tortured him to make him confess.
During the sentencing phase of the trial, two of his relatives, a brother and sister, described a dysfunctional upbringing with alcoholic and abusive parents. They said Martin was a special education student in school until he dropped out in 10th grade.
In addition to first-degree murder and rape of a child, Martin was found guilty of aggravated assault, aggravated indecent assault, statutory sexual assault, sexual assault, abuse of a corpse and four counts of tampering with evidence.