Laurel Noir is a series focused on historic crimes and the darker underside of our hometown.
Although Fort Meade is only a stone’s throw from Laurel, it’s always seemed like such a completely different world to me. Even when I ended up becoming a Meade Senior High student my sophomore year, (after my parents bought a house just over the Anne Arundel County line that summer, meaning I could no longer attend Laurel High) being in Fort Meade felt like being on another planet.
It never felt more surreal than on the morning of May 2, 1989. The school bus had just made the final turn onto Clark Road from Rockenbach Road, (a route that’s no longer accessible to civilians—one of many post-9/11 security changes on the base) and was only about 200 yards from the school when we spotted the yellow crime scene tape. I rode the bus with about half a dozen kids from Bacontown, and one of them noticed it first. We all moved to the right side windows to get a better look as our elderly bus driver, Ms. George, slowed down to gaze at the scene herself. In addition to the yellow tape close to the tree line, there were police cars everywhere. We didn’t know what had happened, but we knew it was something bad.
News began trickling out over the P.A. system that morning in an attempt to ease the frayed nerves of students and teachers alike. But Principal James Gross, a rather stern man with a glass eye, wasn’t the most reassuring administrator that morning, as I recall. We learned that a fellow Meade student—a freshman named Michael Thomas—had been murdered. It was soon determined that he’d been strangled, evidently for his shoes—a prized pair of $115 Air Jordan sneakers.
With police from multiple jurisdictions involved, including the FBI, it only took two days to find the killer. He was identified as 17-year-old James David Martin—another Meade student and friend of Michael’s who was last seen leaving the school with him the previous day. Martin was actually wearing the victim’s Air Jordans when he was arrested. Ironically, the shoes he’d killed for didn’t even fit.
An Unsettling Rise in Youth Violence
The crime was heinous in every sense of the word, and it quickly became national news. It was also one of the earliest known examples of an unsettling rise in youth violence over the booming Nike brand, as well as other coveted articles of clothing. A colorful leather jacket designed in 1990 by Michael Hoban, deemed the “eight ball jacket” for its distinctive billiard graphics, became a status symbol, particularly within the east coast hip-hop scene. The $800 coat (as well as its substantially cheaper knockoffs) was targeted in numerous attacks that left owners injured and in some cases, dead. This wasn’t exactly a new phenomenon—kids had been mugged and killed for their sneakers and team jackets before. But by the dawn of the 1990s, it seemed to be happening at a record pace.
Almost a year to the day after Michael Thomas’ murder, Sports Illustrated ran a cover story in its May 14, 1990 issue titled “Your Sneakers or Your Life.” It opens with the story of Thomas being strangled to death by his own friend outside Meade Senior High, and in a poignant scene, describes when a locker room reporter first showed Michael Jordan an account of the murder. Jordan “needed a quiet moment,” and “for an instant, it (looked) as though (he) might cry.” Jordan was quoted, his voice cracking: “I can’t believe it. Choked to death. By his friend.”
I was working as a clerical aide at the Laurel Branch Library when that issue came out, and I shuddered as soon as I saw the cover story while putting that week’s magazines on the shelves. It’s surreal to read about something like that happening at your own high school—something so big and horrific that it reaches Sports Illustrated, and even Michael Jordan himself.
I was a junior at Meade the year this happened, and I’d never met Michael Thomas or James Martin. Even if I’d passed them in the halls, I couldn’t say for sure. Admittedly, I was just looking forward to graduating and getting out of there. I’m somewhat ashamed that I hadn’t thought much about this tragedy in the past 30-plus years, but I certainly never forgot about it. After what he did that day in 1989, I assumed that James Martin has either been languishing in prison or dead himself. On a whim, I recently looked him up. Yes, he’s in prison; but in Pennsylvania, rather than Maryland—and he hasn’t been there this entire time. I learned that the violent history of James David Martin was much broader than I could have ever imagined.
The Making of a Serial Killer
Martin, who was originally from New York, was sent to live with his grandmother in Fort Meade when he was approximately six years old—this after his mother had beaten his little sister to death. He grew up in the Pioneer City neighborhood, where he would later meet, befriend, and ultimtely murder Michael Thomas.
Despite being convicted of first degree murder in a case that could have drawn the death penalty, Martin was inexplicably released after serving only seven years for the crime that had garnered national attention. In 1996, he was released and allowed to return to New York City to live with his mother—who’d also inexplicably been released from prison at some point earlier.
It didn’t take long for the violence to resurface. On February 23, 1998, Martin was walking through the Bronx when he encountered 14-year-old Marleny Cruz, a runaway from a group foster home. Her body was found later that day in a gutter along Valentine Avenue, but she couldn’t be positively identified until that April, and then only through dental records. That case would go cold for 13 years, at a point when DNA technology could finally catch up.
In the meantime, James Martin was just getting started. Five months after murdering Cruz, he was arrested for the possession of crack cocaine after a junkie sleeping on a park bench awoke to find him groping her. He served a year for that offense.
Not long after his release, he lured a 17-year-old relative to a Bronx rooftop, where he proceeded to strangle the boy with laces from his sweatpants. After also stabbing him in the neck, Martin stole $30 from the victim before fleeing. Against the odds, the boy survived the attack and made it to a nearby hospital. There, he pleaded with his visiting family members to prevent Martin from having access to him, believing that he would soon arrive “to finish him off.” Chillingly, Martin did indeed arrive at that moment—where, fortunately, he was arrested on the spot. However, he was allowed to plea down to attempted robbery and sentenced to only five years in prison.
While incarcerated this time, he began a relationship with a 30-year-old woman named Cicela Santiago who became his wife. Martin and Santiago moved to Allentown, PA after he was released in 2005. Their honeymoon period lasted just three months, however. When Cicela threatened to leave him, Martin strangled her to death, leaving her body in a dumpster at a local shopping mall parking lot. Police arrested him soon after making the grisly discovery, and his guilty plea resulted in a sentence of 22 to 44 years.
DNA Catches Up
In 2012, news came that DNA from the rape kit of Marleny Cruz—the young murder victim who’d been in an unmarked grave for 14 years—belonged to James David Martin. The previously unidentified male DNA that had been under the victim’s fingernails was a match.
When confronted with the evidence, he admitted to strangling her. According to New York City Detective Malcolm Reiman, who questioned Martin, “He’s very friendly, very articulate, very easygoing, an easy smile. Soft-spoken. Intelligent.” When asked if he thought there might be additional victims, the detective replied, “I would say it’s a very strong possibility.”
Martin was extradited to New York City in 2016 to stand trial on charges of murder, rape, and sodomy. He pleaded guilty and received an additional 20 years imprisonment, to be served on top of his previous sentence.
The What Ifs
I often think of what might have become of the victims’ lives in cases like this, had they not been cut so cruelly short. Michael Thomas’ life was really only just beginning at 15 years old. He’d be 49 if he were alive today, and probably very much still a sneaker afficionado. What happened to him was—and will forever be—horrific. But even more horrific is the revelation that his killer was allowed to go free after only seven years; and that the release of James Martin into society proved to be a fatal mistake many times over.
With each new offense, Martin’s criminal past was seemingly overlooked and comparatively light sentences handed down. Even today, despite being convicted in two additional murder cases, he resides in a medium-security prison on a variable sentence that, given Martin’s luck, could potentially net as little as 24 more years—with parole likely granted long before the full term is served. One can only hope that won’t be the case, and that he remains locked up for the duration of his life.
I’m a firm believer in second chances, but James Martin didn’t just waste his—he used it to become a bonafide serial killer.
Richard Friend is a founding member of The Laurel History Boys, and creator of LostLaurel.com.
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