The Murder of Sandra Martin in Texas

On Sept. 22 1986 Sandra Martin of Fort Worth Texas and her little son and daughter were home with her. Her son was about 5 and the daughter maybe 2. The family was trying to sell their home and a man who said he was a prospective buyer entered the home. The children were watching TV in the living room.

According to what the little boy told police, he measured every room and went from room to room. Then they entered the bed room and the door closed and a little while later he came out and said to the children "your mother will be right out, she is washing up." 

That same day Sandra Martin was found bound with duct tape in her bedroom by her husband and there was a pillow with a bullet hole at the end of the bed. Her body was twisted on the bed bound around the legs with duct tape. Her underwear was pulled down and duct tape was on both legs. He shot Sandra Martin during a sexual assault. There was DNA evidence discovered but back then DNA was not available to use in 1985 so it was saved.

The little boy identified the man that came to the house as having a white suit on and not being that tall and having a mustache. 

The police were not able to find the killer of Sandra Martin but about 25 years later the miracle happened. A police detective who was about to retire checked the duct tape again and on top of the duct tape there were no fingerprints. Then he had an idea to take the long pieces of duct tape and to separate them from each other to see if there was duct tape underneath the tape. He did not know how to do that and then he had the idea of freezing the tape and then he was able to separate all layers of duct tape.

Then he checked the duct tape and found several usable fingerprints and they were put into the computer for a fingerprint check all over the United States. They got a hit on a Jay Thayer Williams, a Real Estate agent that lived not far from Sandra Martin. They arrested Mr. Thayer, 66,  and then checked the DNA and that evidence did not match conclusively yet but they still have to do more tests. The police had Mr. Thayer's fingerprints on file because of a traffic violation by Thayer in Las Vegas in 1981. The fingerprints is what identified Mr. Thayer as the killer and which put him into prison for life for murdering Sandra Martin.

The police now, almost 25 years later, had the murderer of Sandra Martin in custody and it was Jay Thayer Williams. Mr. Thayer has pleaded not guilty but he was convicted of Sandra Martin's murder and his sentence was life in prison.

Later, as the two children had grown up they were happy that their mother's murderer had been found. The boy who was now a man could not understand how someone could do what Thayer did to anyone. He was the one who saw Thayer and remembered how he looked like, etc. The girl was only vaguely remembering something that someone came to the home, which is amazing since she was only 2 years of age in 1986.

Jay Thayer Williams
Thayer's arrest