June 10, 2016 at 7:24 p.m.
Martinson gets 23 years for 2015 double murder
Martinson gets 23 years for 2015 double murder
By By Jamie Taylor-
Following a marathon sentencing hearing that lasted over nine hours, Oneida County Circuit Judge Michael Bloom sentenced Ashlee Martinson, 18, to 23 years in prison to be followed by 17 years extended supervision.
Martinson pled guilty March 11 to two counts of second-degree intentional homicide in connection with the deaths of her mother and stepfather a year and four days earlier.
According to the criminal complaint and testimony at previous hearings, Martinson shot her stepfather, Thomas Ayers, twice in the head with a shotgun, and stabbed her mother, Jennifer Ayers, to death in their town of Piehl home. She was originally charged with two counts of first-degree intentional homicide and three counts of false imprisonment for imprisoning her three young siblings in a bedroom the day of the killings.
As part of a plea agreement, the three lesser charges were dismissed. Also as part of the agreement, Oneida County district attorney Michael Schiek agreed to argue for two 20-year prison sentences followed by 20 years of extended supervision for a maximum of 40 years behind bars.
Martinson was examined by two different psychologists when she was pursuing a not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect (NGI) defense. When she accepted the plea deal, her attorneys, Thomas Wilmouth and Amy Lynn Ferguson, filed a 26-page document that outlined the mental abuse Martinson claims to have suffered at Ayers' hands and the sexual abuse she said she endured at the hands of other men involved with her mother.
The information in this document was the focal point of the defense's arguments in favor of leniency for their client.
According to the criminal complaint, a 911 call was received from the Ayers' residence at 10:40 a.m. March 8, 2015 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. (See related story on Page 3A)
According to one of her younger sisters, Martinson was upstairs in her bedroom when Thomas Ayers came into the house from outside. He was described as angry as he came in. 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, the complaint states. 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 were 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, 2015 as part of a plea agreement that included a 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, 2015, 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, 2015.
A complete summary of the sentencing hearing will appear in Tuesday's print edition.
Jamie Taylor may be reached at [email protected].
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