Robert Martin
Age 293 Apr 2001
Ashburn, Georgia (USA)
Beaten
TDoR list ref: tdor.info/3 Apr 2001/Robert Martin
Robert was found severely beaten in an abandoned schoolyard, still wearing a feminine wig. He was in a coma three months before dying.
His murder remains unsolved.
Albany For six weeks, Geraldine Martin has been spending much of her time by her son's hospital bed, hoping he will begin to recover from a brutal beating that police still know little about.
Robert Martin, known around the small town of Ashburn because he often dressed as a woman, was found lying outside an abandoned school Jan. 7. He had been struck in the back of the head with a blunt object.
Martin remains in critical condition at Phoebe Putney Memorial Hospital in this Turner County town about 150 miles south of downtown Atlanta.
The Georgia Bureau of Investigation has offered a $1,000 reward for information on Martin's attacker, but no one has come for- ward to collect the money, said Tom Davis, special agent in charge of the GBI's Perry office.
"We haven't received any leads in a couple of weeks," Davis said. "We're in the process of trying to stir things up."
Davis said the GBI has no evidence it was a hate crime.
Geraldine Martin, 49, visits her son nearly every day in the critical care unit and often sleeps in a waiting room. She has put her life on hold until she knows her son's fate and hears of an arrest.
"I'm angry. I have a headache every day," she said. "I want to know who and why. [The attacker] must be an animal or something."
She said her son lies in his hospital bed with a tube in his throat to help him breathe. "When I call his name, he opens his eyes and tries to see me, but he can't," said Geraldine Martin, a school custodian.
Georgia Equality Project, an Atlanta gay-lesbian advocacy group, sent a representative to Ashburn to provide support for the victim's family. The group also hired an attorney to act as an intermediary between the Martins and authorities.
"We're trying to make sure the hate crime possibility is fully investigated and we have every reason to believe that it... has been," said Harry Knox, the group's executive director.
Robert Martin, 32, lived with his mother and disabled brother, Reginald, in a mobile home on the south side of Ashburn. Ashburn residents say Robert Martin was generally accepted in the commu- nity, but some teens had taunted him.
https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-atlanta-constitution-murder-of-trans/72553337/
http://www.impartofdc.org/assets/__50-under-302.pdf
