June 29, 2015 at 4:46 p.m.
Martinson enters NGI plea in homicide case
Psychologist to evaluate teen
Martinson enters NGI plea in homicide case
Ashlee A. Martinson, 17, entered what is known as an NGI plea Monday in Oneida County Circuit Court to two counts of first-degree intentional homicide and three counts of false imprisonment.
Martinson is accused of shooting her stepfather, Thomas Ayers, and stabbing her mother, Jennifer Ayers, to death in their town of Piehl home March 7. The false imprisonment charges stem from allegations she imprisoned her three young siblings in a bedroom.
The charges in the information filed by Oneida County District Attorney Michael Schiek Monday mirrored those in the amended criminal complaint filed April 24 when Martinson made her first appearance in Judge Michael Bloom's court on the charges.
After the pleas were entered, Bloom announced a psychologist will be appointed to evaluate Martinson. The parties have 10 days to submit names, he said. The examiner will be asked to give an opinion as to whether Martinson suffers from a mental condition that prevented her from understanding that her alleged crimes were wrong. A status conference was scheduled for Sept. 28 to discuss the examiner's findings. Persons found not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect are committed to a state institution rather than prison.
According to the criminal complaint, a 911 call was received from the Ayers' residence at 10:40 a.m. March 8 reporting "an unknown problem." When officers arrived, they found the three Ayers children, ages 9, 8 and 2, and observed Jennifer Ayers' body. The Oneida County Special Response Team was dispatched and cleared the scene, locating Thomas Ayers body in the process. Detectives later interviewed the 9-year-old.
The child told detectives Martinson and her parents had an argument about Martinson continuing to see her 22-year-old boyfriend Ryan Sisco.
According to one of her younger sisters, Martinson was upstairs in her bedroom when Thomas Ayers came into the house from outside.
When he was told that Martinson was upstairs, he went upstairs and began to pound on her bedroom door, the child said. The child told detectives that she heard two gunshots and her mother went upstairs. She said Jennifer Ayers then called for the younger girl by name and when she got to the stairs, she saw Martinson fighting with her mother. She said Martinson told her to go back downstairs and she did. Eventually, her mother stopped screaming, she said.
The child told the detective that when Martinson came downstairs, allegedly holding Ayers' knife and gun, she was "bloody and bleeding" from a stab wound in her leg and cuts on her fingers. She put cartoons on for the three younger children while she took two showers. When she was done with the second shower, the child said Martinson told the three to go in the younger girls' bedroom with food, and then tied the door shut so they could not get out.
She then fled toward Tennessee with Sisco. The pair was apprehended on an interstate highway in Boone County, Indiana, north of Indianapolis, the next day after a nationwide manhunt.
On March 9, two members of the sheriff's office traveled to Boone County to interview Sisco. Sisco said he had been communicating with Martinson's parents on the social media website Facebook, and they told him to quit seeing the girl. According to the report, Sisco was able to show the officers the Facebook conversation on a computer. The report quoted one message as saying "as her parents we can press charges."
Sisco waived extradition and was returned to Lincoln County in March. He pled guilty to having sexual intercourse with a child age 16 or older, a class A misdemeanor, on May 5 as part of a plea agreement that includes the condition that he must testify against Martinson at trial.
Martinson initially declined to waive extradition from Indiana, triggering a formal legal process in which Gov. Scott Walker had to request her return from Indiana Gov. Mike Pence. But April 9, at a hearing lasting approximately 15 minutes, she chose to voluntarily return to Wisconsin. She was brought back to Oneida County the evening of April 23.
Martinson remains in the Oneida County Jail on a $750,000 cash bond. If she is able to post the bond, she is not to leave Oneida County. She also may not contact her sisters or Sisco.
Jamie Taylor may be reached at [email protected].
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