News footage of the scene in Sawyer, Okla., where Curtis Lee Martin and Sherrie Pyron were found beaten to death in December 2020 (KXII).
An Oklahoma woman who conspired to murder her parents with two others when the three were still teenagers will spend decades in prison.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Oklahoma revealed that Ashlie Nicole Rose Martin, aged 22, received a 38-year prison sentence after admitting to conspiracy to commit murder in Indian Country. Her accomplices, Chad Jon’Dale Voyles, 23, and Bryson Noel Miller, 19, also confessed to their roles in the murders and received sentences of 35 years and 25 years, respectively, for their crimes in Indian Country.
The individuals targeted were Martin’s parents, 60-year-old Curtis Lee Martin, a Choctaw Nation member, and 47-year-old Sherrie Pyron. As stated in the federal indictment, Ashlie Martin sought assistance from friends through text messages to eliminate her parents, with Voyles and Miller agreeing to help her carry out the plan.
At the time of the incident, Ashlie Martin, Voyles, and Miller were still in their teens. According to an affidavit reported by local CBS station KXII during the event, Ashlie Martin and Miller, who were 17 and 15, were romantically involved, and Ashlie believed she was expecting a child. Authorities noted that Curtis Martin and Pyron opposed the relationship, sparking the events leading up to December 22, 2020.
According to courtroom reporting by The Oklahoman, it was just the relationship between Ashlie Martin and Miller that sparked her desire to kill her parents. The local paper reported that Curtis Lee Martin was a convicted child sex abuser and had served an 18-month sentence in 2017 after pleading guilty to sexually abusing a child under the age of 12. At the time of his death, he was on probation for the same crime and living in a camper near the family home because he was not allowed to live near children.
Ashlie Martin’s defense attorney, Douglas Smith II, told the court that his client had allegedly been sexually abused by her father for years. He said, “Being in jail is the safest place she has been since the Choctaw Nation took her away from her foster family.”
U.S. District Judge David C. Joseph not only acknowledged that it was very likely that Ashlie Martin suffered abuse at the hands of the father she had killed, but implied that the system had failed to protect her before she took matters into her own hands.
According to Assistant U.S. Attorney Benjamin Traster, Ashlie Martin recruited Miller and Voyles on Dec. 22, 2020 to kill her parents. In another text to an unnamed friend, Ashlie Martin reportedly said, “I’m just getting rid of them, and then everything will be okay. Cause after they gone, I’m free for good.”
According to the federal indictment, she instructed Voyles to “kill my mother then take out my father then get what u need take one at a time put into the whole [sic] then the next one.” That night at around 11:30 p.m., Ashlie Martin let Miller and Voyles into her home through a window. The two boys then located Pyron asleep on a couch and beat her to death. According to a prosecution memo obtained by The Oklahoman, Voyles also slit Pyron’s throat when he heard her “gurgling.”
The next morning, Ashlie Martin made the boys eggs and bacon while they buried her mother’s body.
On Dec. 23, 2020, the three waited for Curtis Martin to return to the home. When he arrived at the home, Voyles attempted to attack him with a bow and arrow, but he missed his shot. He then attempted to finish him off with a 25-lb dumbbell. Voles and Miller then doused Curtis Martin in gasoline and set him on fire.
According to The Oklahoman, Miller’s attorney said that while Ashlie Martin had told him that she was pregnant with their child, a pregnancy test proved she was not. In a memo, the attorney wrote that Ashlie Martin “also convinced Mr. Miller that her twin sister, ‘Charlie,’ was dating … Voyles and that’s why he was always around. She did not have a twin sister. She convinced Mr. Voyles that her parents needed to be killed because she was being molested by her father and her mother was allowing it.”
Miller and Voyles both apologized in court for their crimes.
An aunt of Ashlie Martin told her in court, “We still love you.”
