Martha Farmer

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She was a dedicated EMT.

who found her soulmate after years of searching.

She thought he was the man that she was going to be with the rest of her life.

It was just a love-you-doving relationship.

She was always worried about everyone else.

As long as everyone else was happy, she felt like she was happy too.

But that life of love and sacrifice would be swept away with one breathtakingly vicious crime.

In the darkness on the edge of town.

It was dispatched as a possible Hispanic male had been shot.

The question mark, everybody was asking who is this person.

She stood there and watched the detectives.

Maybe you're there to see what they're gonna find.

As this shocking case unfolds, investigators must answer one question.

Why was this life taken in a remote area of peaceful North Carolina?

And who was responsible?

We were told this man may strike again.

There is a predator out there.

Everywhere you turn around, there's just another angle.

Your intensity goes up, your adrenaline starts flowing.

What is it that he's worried that she knows about, specifically?

It's an enforcer for the angels.

So the Elsa Angels.

Yes.

I remember when I found out it was very chilling to me.

He cuts her head down.

September 5th, 2006.

It's a little after 1 a.m.

in a remote corner of Brunswick County, North Carolina.

Situated along Highway 211, the area is known to locals as the Green Swamp.

In the heart of the Green Swamp, in the middle of the Highway 211, is this restaurant called Becky's Seafood Restaurant.

The proprietors of Becky's, McKinley Little and his wife, live next door and are home that night with their daughter, Debbie.

My dad was going to bed, and his bedroom is at the end of the house next to the restaurant.

As Mr.

Little settles into bed, a noise outside jolts him wide awake.

He heard two gunshots, the first one being, he described it as muffled compared to the second one.

And he come back out.

And he said, something awful has happened out in the restaurant.

And mama said, go see.

When Mr.

Little returns, it's obvious he's witnessed something truly terrifying.

He come back in, and he was white as a ghost and shaking all over.

He said, somebody's dead.

In the parking lot, somebody's been killed.

So I call 911.

Sergeant County 911, where's your emergency?

There's a dead man laying in the corner yard.

Okay, ma'am, do you want to talk to the officer?

I want somebody to get out of here.

He was dispatched as a possible Hispanic male had been shot.

Sergeant Thomas Tolley with the Brunswick County Sheriff's Department is one of the first officers to arrive at the scene.

I instruct Deputy Nile to go to the right side of the building and I'll go to the left side of the building.

And we start approaching.

We fan apart and we go around and as soon as we get to the front left corner of the building, we see the body lying lying there.

Walking up, it did appear that it was possibly a Hispanic male, but you get there and then we realize it's a female.

There was a wound to the middle of her forehead and also to the side of the forehead.

Looked like two gunshots.

We checked for pulse, we checked for anything that we could do, but obviously she was gone at that point.

Who was this woman and what evil had befallen her in this remote section of Coastal Carolina?

To answer those questions, investigators will seek help from a familiar source, a woman named Martha Farmer.

Born in 1966, Martha Farmer moved to Brunswick County, North Carolina from Michigan, desperate to start a new life away from a brutish ex-husband.

Martha said it was a rocky relationship.

He liked to drink, wouldn't let her do nothing, and stuff like that.

So she had to get out of that relationship.

Martha, a trained EMT, was trying to outrun other demons besides just her ex.

Martha was an EMT years and years ago, but she had a tragic death.

An infant died on Martha, and she couldn't deal with that.

So Martha just let her certification go.

When you see some things that we see,

it can hurt you spiritually, emotionally, even physically.

And I think that brought her into a depression.

A depression that was so severe, it ultimately cost Martha more than just her career.

She also lost her children to their father in a custody battle.

Martha's ex-husband took her to court to get custody of her two kids in the Michigan area.

He got custody.

After moving to the Carolinas for a fresh start, Martha bounced from one low-paying job to the next.

Although she was just barely scraping by, the fog of her depression slowly began to lift in her new surroundings.

She would have her down days.

Even though she was down, she would always laugh and make you laugh.

She just had that loving personality that everybody fell in love with.

Martha worked at a gas station and I went to go get gas and we just hung out and we just became good friends after that.

Martha felt a renewed desire to return to the career she she had once cherished.

I started my EMT course and I was telling Martha about it.

So she decided to take the EMT course and then we both graduated.

After reobtaining her EMT certification, Martha landed a job with a local ambulance service and volunteered with a local rescue squad.

She felt she was doing something good for people.

But the job also brought Martha something else.

A second chance at love.

His name's Clarence.

He was one of the guys I worked with.

I was driving with.

He drove one truck.

I drove another truck.

Clarence, Martha, and I, we all worked together at Coastline Care.

They decided to get a relationship together.

Maybe six months into the relationship, Clarence moved in with Martha and became boyfriend and girlfriend.

For the next three years, Martha enjoyed the security of domestic life that she had long craved.

Just a love-y-dovey relationship.

It was getting up at work at eight o'clock in the morning and getting off at five, cooking dinner.

She thought he was the man that she was going to be with the rest of her life.

However, a few years into the relationship, Martha realized their union was built on a lie.

Clarence had deep-down feelings still for someone he had known before he had met Martha.

He ended up cheating on Martha with that woman, and that kind of ended their relationship, and it hurt her a lot.

With the man of her dreams no longer by her side, Martha turned to a close-knit group of coworkers for support.

We were more family than friends.

We'd all go together and hang out.

We'd usually cook something to eat together.

I mean, I loved her like she was my family.

Of all her coworkers, Martha was perhaps closest with 51-year-old Gene Bessard.

Gene was an excellent EMT intermediate, but he worked as an EMT firefighter.

Gene got hired on where Martha and I worked.

He was just an outgoing person.

Gene would talk to people, you know, just make you welcome.

Like Martha, Gene Bessard had recently found himself on the wrong end of an unexpected breakup.

What I was told by Martha was that Gene was getting separated or filing a divorce.

In Gene, Martha had found a kindred spirit with which to share her relationship woes.

Gene also had endured a tough marriage, mostly plagued by his wife's drug problem.

The way Martha's personality and Gene's personality, you know, they connected.

Leaning on each other, Gene and Martha began to recover from their respective breakups.

And by the summer of 2006, both of them seemed to be back on their feet.

Gene and Martha was close to each other.

Martha really liked Gene.

But their closest friends could never imagine the horrific situation in which Martha and Gene would soon find themselves.

It starts with the shocking discovery McKinley Little makes behind his restaurant on the night of September 5th, 2006.

There was a woman found dead at the area of the old Becky's restaurant in the green swamp.

And she was shot to death and left for dead an abandoned parking lot.

I mean, who does that?

Coming up, as investigators scramble to identify the victim and piece together what happened to her,

they eventually expose a side to Gene and Martha's friendship that was darker and more dangerous than anyone could have imagined.

Most of the time, people get murdered because they're doing something they're not supposed to do.

By the summer's end of 2006, 40-year-old EMT Martha Farmer had weathered two failed relationships and managed to get back on her feet, thanks in large part to the support of her friends and fellow EMTs.

When we worked together, we were always laughing about something, having a good time.

Of all her friends, nobody helped Martha through the tough times like 51-year-old Jean Bessard.

Jean made Martha feel happy and special.

But just when it seemed like Martha and Gene had made it through the tough times,

a disturbing crime brings a dark cloud back into their lives.

It started on September 5th when Martha's fellow first responders, along with scores of police and homicide detectives, found themselves at the scene of a murder in a secluded section of Brunswick County, North Carolina, known as the Green Swamp.

It's the only business on that road.

You have crime scene, you have your area detectives, you're gonna have EMS transport,

you're gonna have equipment for lighting because it was at night.

It was a gloomy day.

It was a very remote area.

It was airy.

The first task for investigators is to determine how this unidentified woman was killed.

She was laying on her stomach and we could see clearly when we got there that she had been shot in the head.

There was one wound to the center of the forehead, which the skin was split open, and another wound above the temple, which looked like another entrance wound, and a wound to the side of the head where it would have been exit wound.

We know that when she was shot, she was shot right there, looked like, not transported somewhere else.

And looking at the angle and the entry, she died fairly quick.

With the cause of death apparent, investigators looked for some way to identify the victim.

There was no personal items, no wallet, no purse, no cell phone.

Anything would have been on her person was not with her.

The odds are stacked against us when we determine that we have, you know, a homicide and no identity.

So we start looking for anything, any simple clue.

We slowly went through every bit of the parking lot and looking for any shell casings or even a weapon itself.

Nothing we've located.

Investigators also interview McKinley Little, the owner of the restaurant, and his daughter Debbie, but neither of them can provide anything more than scant details.

He heard the gunshots, and he looked out the window and saw our vehicle leaving the area.

We couldn't identify the car because it was dark, and it backed up.

There wasn't anything we could really tell him except there was a dead person in our parking lot.

With no way to identify either the victim or the perpetrator, investigators fan out across the green swamp area in search of other potential witnesses.

Nobody in the area seems to have seen or heard anything.

But a pair of officers managed to uncover some important physical evidence.

We had our investigator going different directions.

One of the uniform had located a shirt with blood on it,

which was some distance down the road on Highway 211.

It didn't look like it would fit the young lady that was laying in the parking lot, anywhere near her.

We had that, and the same time an investigator had found an apron.

It was obviously a work apron.

Yeah, the apron gave some details.

We figured out that the victim was probably a waitress.

As investigators take a closer look at the body, they discover another important clue, one that's been obscured until now.

She had a name tag on her shirt, Carla.

The name tag is from Eddie Romanelli's, a well-known Italian restaurant just outside the city of Wilmington.

Now we're looking at three o'clock in the morning, so we make phone calls, find the manager of Eddie Romanelli's restaurant.

It's probably 30 miles away at least.

So we go up there and meet with him.

He explained that he knew a Carla and described her as Carla Bazard.

and that she was an employee there, a waitress.

So it's important for us to establish the identity, make contact with as many people as possible within that person's life to put together a picture of who they are,

what they were about, so we can establish how they got to this point.

Detectives relay this information to officers at the station.

When they run Carla's name through the system, her picture matches the woman in the parking lot.

They also learned that 36-year-old Carla has a criminal record.

We researched the background of our deceased victim, Carla Bazard, and they were to determine that she had some run-ins for the law.

Carla had a troubled past.

It was a DUI and maybe a drug paraphernalia charge.

Meanwhile, back at the restaurant, detectives speaking with the owner learned Carla had worked the previous night shift and had left the restaurant a little after 11.30 p.m.

He said that to his knowledge, she had arranged

to meet with an individual known to him as Bit.

Carla's boss describes Bit as a middle-aged Caucasian woman, but he doesn't know her real name or where she lives.

Then he goes on to tell investigators that the rumor going around the restaurant is that there's a man in Carla's life who's been causing her problems for months.

As we're at Eddie Romani's, the discussion turned to an estranged husband.

That man is 51-year-old Jean Bessard.

Jean and Carla Bassard had been married for quite some time and they had recently separated.

From what I understood, it was Carla who had left.

According to Carla's boss, the separation wasn't amicable in the least.

And apparently, the biggest point of contention between Carla and Gene was who would get the couple's prized red Mustang.

Carla's pride was getting that Mustang.

It was a very beautiful red Mustang that she wanted out of the divorce.

According to Carla's boss, Gene wasn't willing to give up the the car.

He wasn't giving it back.

There were several times that he said he would, but he wouldn't.

He kept luring her on.

She was telling her

other employees going to get that Mustang.

It could be a domestic violence situation that just completely got out of hand.

There's so many variables going on at one time.

After speaking with Carla's boss, investigators dispatch patrol officers to make contact with Jean Bessard.

But as they wait for that to happen, investigators look into the possibility that Carla's criminal record might have played a part in her demise.

From that, it expanded our scope as potentially who may want to hurt her, who she runs with.

We had to keep that in the back of our mind.

Carla knows a lot of people.

Coming up.

As detectives chase down these leads, another possibly dangerous suspect surfaces in the murder of Carla Bessard.

Ponytail, red truck, guy, kind of a rough-looking guy.

He told us that we have to find this man.

He may strike again.

There was a very dangerous man out there.

Let's go!

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detectives in brunswick county north carolina are less than 24 hours into the murder investigation of 36-year-old waitress Carla Bassard.

Though police are investigating Carla's own criminal past, they're also looking at her pending divorce from 51-year-old EMT Gene Bessard as possible motive.

It seems tension between Gene and Carla had flared up over the couple's beloved Red Ford Mustang.

We made a phone call to him that we needed to talk to him.

about his ex-wife.

We met him at a location in Wilmerton, North Carolina.

When Gene arrives, he's driving the Red Mustang.

But Gene appears distraught over the news of his estranged wife's death.

I identified myself and once we met with him, we confirmed that his wife had passed away.

I mean was very, very emotional and very upset because his estranged wife had died very, very devastated.

Gene describes Carla as someone who had worked hard to put her past transgressions behind her.

She went through cancer at one time, beat it, and she got into a rough crowd at one time, and she was getting away from that crowd.

She had a very exceptional job at a restaurant, was trying to make something of herself.

Gene admits that their separation had been bitter, and that he and Carla had been arguing about who should get their Mustang, but he's adamant that he would never harm her.

We asked him about the last time he saw his estranged wife, where he was last night.

According to Gene, the previous day he'd worked his regular EMT shift.

And after that, he went to work at his second job.

He worked at a military facility in our county at the time and was on duty when that happened.

Detectives were able to look into Gene Brazard's alibi and confirm that he was at work.

Although Gene's alibi checks out, there's something he says just before the interview wraps up that strikes investigators as odd.

Her friends and others would call Carla crazy Carla because she was not stable.

And he was not very descriptive after that, but that was his term, crazy Carla.

Anytime you start talking bad about somebody that just deceased, there's another clue.

Though his alibi seems airtight, investigators decide to keep Jean on their radar.

They then turn to their only concrete lead, an attempt to track down the woman known as Bitt, whom Carla was allegedly planning to meet up with after work.

So our effort then was to locate this individual Bitt, a white female that works EMS-type work in Brunswick County.

Investigators asked Detective David Crocker to reach out to the Brunswick County EMT's office.

On his first call, his efforts quickly pay off.

Identified myself, told him I was looking for a subject named Bit, and she said, that's me.

And I said, what's your name, Martha Farmer?

The nickname Bit is Martha's nickname her mother gave her years and years and years ago.

So we drove down there and asked her about meeting with Carla that night.

We started the conversation as to, do you know Carla Bassard?

And she said yes.

And we asked her as to last time she saw her, and she indicated that she had picked her up at Eddie Romillo

the night before.

She tells them that she had been friends with Carla and Carla's husband, Gene Bessard.

At the time, Gene and Carla weren't separated, but Martha could see the writing on the wall.

What I was told by Martha was that Carla and Gene was getting separated.

Martha also states that as Gene and Carla's marriage fell apart, she had no choice but to side with her friend and co-worker.

But according to Martha, she'd grown close to Carla as well.

After Gene took the Mustang, Martha would often give Carla rides.

In fact, Martha tells police that's what happened on the night of September 5th.

Farmer indicated that she picked up Carla there at the restaurant in the parking lot, never got out of the car, and that

she was taking her to meet with an individual known as Wayne, approximately 15, 18 miles from Edward Millis.

But who exactly is Wayne?

And why was Carla going to meet him in the middle of the night?

According to Martha, Wayne was Carla's new lover.

She was indicating that Carla was excited about meeting with her new lover boyfriend, Wayne.

Martha indicated that Carla was infatuated with Wayne and that would go to such a degree about their sexual nature that she was very graphic about it.

Martha goes on to say that when she dropped Carla off, she and Wayne seemed very much in love.

She was indicating that Carla was being very secretive about him, but was excited about seeing him.

Investigators believe Martha is telling the truth.

They ask Martha if she can provide them with a description of Wayne.

We had a composite artist come in and do a composite sketch of the person that Martha identified.

He was 5'9,

that he wore a black t-shirt and blue jeans and a scraggly goatee

and ponytail and that he drove a red truck.

After the composite was done, we broadcast it in the local news.

We set up a 800 number at the sheriff's office for

intake of any information.

The phones have started ringing.

We're getting calls from people that know Ewan, people that know Ewan with red truck, and people that look like the composite.

We take every call serious.

You have to, because it's just that one little piece of information that could be the key to the case.

Every police officer, deputy, and investigator was out in those 24, 48 hours really beating the bush for Ewan and his red truck.

Hewitt says investigators are looking for evidence along Highway 211 and hoping for a call from someone who knows Wayne.

The search for Wayne was a pretty big deal around here.

In the press conference, they were begging the public for help.

We were told this man may strike again.

There is a predator out there.

But despite dozens of leads pouring in, none of them ultimately pan out.

Me and my partner, we start scouring the different areas looking for this truck and we do not find it.

So we were just running in dead end.

Back at square one, detectives again turn their attention to Martha Farmer and call her for more information.

We had more questions for her.

Was she supposed to pick her back up?

Was there any discussion about that?

Any phone calls made with Wayne?

Did she have any numbers?

Martha says she had made no plans with Carla to pick her up later that evening, and she has no additional information about Wayne.

She does, however, give police the name of another potential suspect, Tom Pollard.

Carla had dated Tom after separating from Gene Bessard, but before she started seeing the mysterious Wayne.

Farmer at this point is indicating that there was a romantic,

hot and heavy relationship with this Tom individual.

He lived in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.

Tom was wanting more of a relationship than Carla was able to give and that he would be somebody of interest for us.

She didn't indicate at this point that Tom knew Wayne and that Tom was a violent type person.

She felt like if there is foul play here in any way involved, Tom would be in the the middle of it.

Investigators consider the possibility that a jealous Tom might have caught wind of Carla's alleged late-night rendezvous with Wayne and waited until the couple were together to exact revenge.

We're thinking about different motives and theories, and here we have is there a love triangle?

Coming up.

Before investigators can run down this new lead, the case will take another, even stranger turn.

Courtesy once again of their now go-to source of information, Martha Farmer.

For more than 24 hours, lifelong EMT Martha Farmer has been aiding Brunswick County detectives with their investigation into the death of her friend, Carla Bessard.

Martha told investigators that just after midnight on September 5th, she dropped Carla off for a date with her new boyfriend, Wayne.

But when police couldn't locate Wayne, Martha supplied them with another name, Tom Pollard.

Farmer gave us the name Tom and complete information about him.

We felt comfortable that we had to go find him.

Myself and my partner were able to locate this Tom at his residence in Myrtle Beach.

Detectives make the 90-minute drive to South Carolina to meet with Tom.

For a guy with an allegedly vicious temper, Tom appears quite shaken up by the news of Carla's death.

He was surprised to hear the news,

visibly upset.

Tom said he had known the victim,

Carla.

And he had seen her the prior weekend, but had not seen her that week.

He gave us where he was, the night he questioned.

And as I recall, he didn't even come into the state of North Carolina and then he had stayed there the whole time.

We had nothing to indicate he was in our area at all.

He seemed honest, willing to help.

Didn't seem like he'd had anything to do with it.

Investigators are quickly able to verify Tom Pollard's alibi.

And with Carla's elusive boyfriend, Wayne, still nowhere to be found, Investigators ask Tom for his take on their primary source of information, Martha Farmer.

We started talking about Farmer, and Pollard indicated that Farmer had made Carla upset recently.

He was told from Carla that Farmer had indicated that her estranged husband, Gene,

was either missing or had been killed.

Detectives are confused.

Gene Bassard is clearly alive and well.

So why would Martha Farmer tell Carla her estranged husband was dead?

and do so just days before Carla herself was murdered.

Tom Pollard shares detectives' concerns.

He was trying to find the answers like we were.

In fact, he was very suspicious of Martha Farmer.

Investigators now have a sneaking suspicion Martha Farmer has been playing them all along.

We knew Farmer was somewhere in the background dictating things going on that we need to look at her more.

And every time we turn around, people were saying just something's not right here.

Before detectives bring Martha back in for questioning, they decide to take a look at the evidence from the crime scene for more clues.

Namely, the bloody shirt found near the crime scene.

The roadway in front of the restaurant, we had found a bowling shirt, which was size

5X.

The shirt had an emblem of a local bowling alley and had the name Clarence on it.

A 5X shirt is not exactly a common shirt.

So we call the bowling alley.

And from that, it led us to the gentleman who owned the shirt who had a relationship with Martha Farmer.

It turns out the gentleman is the ex-boyfriend who had broken Martha Farmer's heart, Clarence Biggs.

Subsequently we went to this, does he know where this t-shirt is?

And did he own one?

Yeah.

I said, where is it?

He said, last place I left it was in Martha Farmer's house.

If what Clarence tells police is true, was Martha Farmer wearing this oversized shirt the night Carlo was killed?

And if so, was Martha somehow involved in the crime?

After confirming Clarence's alibi for the night of the murder, investigators come across another bizarre piece of information.

One they only realize when they review the log of officers and EMTs who were at the scene the night Carla was murdered.

Everybody's put on a crime scene log.

That way, we can look back she was signed in and where she was on scene.

Martha was

a volunteer EMS worker.

She was actually the one who responded to this call.

Thinking back on the night of the murder, police were desperate to identify Carla's body.

Now the question is, why didn't Martha speak up?

The question mark, everybody was asking, who is she?

It was obvious that we were all making every effort to find out.

Farmers was sitting next to officers, and she was sitting right there and just remained mute.

She never got upset, never showed emotion, never showed any connection at all to the victim.

She stood there and watched the detectives.

Maybe you're there to see what they're going to find.

I remember when I found out days later, or however long it was,

it was very chilling to me.

The fact that Martha was at the crime scene the night of the shooting casts even more suspicion her way.

And on September 6th, detectives obtain a search warrant for her home.

In the home itself, we were looking for maybe a murder weapon,

any blood, anything that could tie her to the crime.

Investigators find no physical evidence tying Martha to the murder, but they do find a disturbing piece of circumstantial evidence.

We had found a picture of Gene.

It looked like it had been ripped from a second person that was in in the picture, and later we discovered that it was a picture of Gene and Carla together.

Why would Martha Farmer have a lone picture of Jean laying on her coffee table in her house?

We need to press her more.

Now we're absolutely going from a potential witness to she got involved.

On September 7th, detectives bring Martha in for more questioning.

They ask her if there's something going on between her, Gene, and Carla that she's been keeping from them.

How did that picture of Gene end up there that was holding?

How did that end up there?

Did Jane give you that or did she?

Gene gave you the picture.

Okay,

detectives press Martha about why she didn't identify Carla on the night of her death.

You were just feet away from a friend that you knew died.

Why wouldn't you tell us?

She couldn't explain that.

I don't understand exactly what it is you're asking me.

Why?

Three little weapons.

Why, Martha?

I don't know.

I know, I don't know.

Nor can Martha explain how Clarence's shirt ended up at the crime scene.

And he said he left it in her house.

But she never would admit she wore that t-shirt that night.

She couldn't explain how it was there.

Don't know.

For hours, detectives grill Martha to no avail.

But just as they are about to wrap up the interview, Martha unloads a bombshell.

Farmer changed her story again.

She did admit to being there on scene, but she said that Wayne was the assassin and that he's the one that committed the act.

Martha tells investigators that rather than dropping Carla off at the location she'd mentioned in her original statement,

she'd actually driven Carla out to Becky's restaurant to meet Wayne.

But Martha claims that when they got there, Wayne shot Carla as soon as she stepped foot outside Martha's car.

Then, in a bizarre twist, Wayne forced Martha to fire the next shot.

The first shot,

that Wayne had shot her in the head.

The second shot, Wayne had grabbed Farmer's hand and made her squeeze the trigger with Wayne holding her hand and shoot Carter the final final time.

The confession strikes investigators as suspect.

In fact, they've come to believe that maybe Wayne isn't even real.

We kept finding leads on Wayne and we felt like Wayne was non-existent.

We felt like we were pulling teeth with Farmer, that she was holding stuff back and wasn't truthful with us and that there was more to be answered.

We're not buying.

the events that she told us Wayne did not exist.

I confronted her with that she's lying and

explained to her that you have to tell the truth, but you're not going home.

Right now, I'm placing you under arrest.

I ran to her Miranda Wrights.

That morning, just 48 hours after Carla Bessard's death, Martha Farmer is charged with murder.

The news comes as a shock to her friends and coworkers.

She was my best friend.

I didn't think Martha could actually take somebody's life.

We worked on the ambulance.

Instead of taking somebody's life, we're actually trying to fix her life.

Less than a week later, as the shock of Martha's arrest is still setting in with her friends and co-workers, detectives receive a call from her attorneys.

District Attorney's Office have been approached by two local counsel attorneys to give us a formal statement as to what happened.

So we sat down with Martha.

This time, Martha vows to tell the truth.

And she starts with an admission that turns her previous confession upside down.

She admits that Wayne, the man she claims orchestrated Carla's murder, is a figment of her imagination.

In the lie, you told that there's a guy named Wayne who didn't exist.

I was known to Wayne's.

One was my cousin, and one was this fuckhead dude.

Martha also tells detectives that the person that really wanted Carla dead was her friend, Gene Bessard.

She indicated that Gene was upset because he thought Carla had not been faithful to Gene and

had disrespected him.

Martha tells detectives that Gene Gene urged her to do the deed, and she claims Gene's ties to a local biker gang made it impossible for Marcia to say no.

He cuts people's eyes out.

Who cut people's eyes out?

Gene.

Okay.

He has a dead head on his right shoulder.

I have no reason to doubt it.

Don't get that unless you've killed somebody.

Martha would promptly indicate that Gene was an enforcer and that she had to do this for fear of her life.

If somebody looks you in the face and tells you, if you don't do this right or if we don't do this right,

they're going to come after us.

Who looked you in the face and told you that?

She did.

According to Martha, Gene gave her the gun and instructed her to lure Carla to the green swamp by promising that he would be there to hand over something Carla couldn't resist.

Did he tell you what to tell her how to get her to go?

What was that?

She was supposed to be there.

The red Mustang.

Martha says that when they arrived at the restaurant, she and Carla got out of the car.

She said that she had to use the restroom, told this to Carla.

Carla said that she had to also.

They had to pull over to the side parking lot.

And that at this point, said she approached Carla

and just shot her in the head.

When you do shoot her, what happened?

She killed me.

But Marcia says that single shot didn't kill Carla.

Both shots.

What was she saying?

He shot her the second time.

Did she move after that?

No.

It's a stunning confession.

But after so many lies, is Marcia finally telling the truth?

Coming up, as detectives dig deeper into Martha's story, the allegations of Gene Bessard's ties to a murderous biker gang come into focus.

See,

we need to corroborate what you're saying.

Has Gene ever hurt anybody else?

Specifically,

some case we can look at to say, yeah, he is bad.

On September 7th, 2006, detectives in Brunswick County, North Carolina have placed Martha Farmer, a well-loved local EMT, under arrest for the shooting death of 36-year-old waitress Carla Bessard.

Martha now alleges that her own best friend, Carla's estranged husband, Gene Bessard, coerced her into committing the crime.

Gene blackmailed Martha.

Gene was with the hell's angels.

Gene wanted Carla to leave him alone.

Martha said, well, what do you want done?

And Gene said, I want her dead.

Gene basically told Martha, if you don't do this, I know where your family lives and I'll take care of them if I need to.

After interviewing Martha, investigators start looking into her claims that Gene is involved with a notorious local biker gang.

We got very little substantiation from anybody else.

There's nothing we could have presented in court at this point against Gene more than just by her staying alone that it was his idea.

She wanted to keep relaying that in fear of my life, I had to participate to the level idea that somebody was going to hurt me.

But there was no proof of that.

Despite the lack of evidence to support Martha's allegations, detectives still have a lot of questions for Gene Bessard.

After the final interview with Farmer, we decided to focus our attention on Gene Bassard to make inquiry more than just knowledge if he had any participating act in this.

He was in a local hospital and he was terminally ill.

And just a couple of days later, he actually died.

When I found out of Gene's death, I was shocked because Gene wasn't sick at all at work.

You know, he didn't have no chemos that he did or anything that we knew of.

Later, investigators inform Martha of Gene's death.

She's stunned.

I don't know what triggered Martha to do it, but I don't think she would have done it if she knew he was about to die.

With no hard evidence to support Martha's allegations that Gene was a member of a violent motorcycle gang, and no way for Gene to confirm or deny his own involvement in Carla's murder, investigators begin to draw their own conclusions about what might have pushed Carla into Martha's crosshairs.

From what we saw from the evidence and from her lack of statements, feel comfortable that there was feelings toward Bazard.

And for a woman that had endured so many heartbreaks in her life, maybe that's all she really wanted.

The outcome would have been that Martha and Gene would have been together because Carla was out of the picture.

We feel confident that there was a relationship between her and Gene to some degree.

She absolutely wanted to do it so that potentially she could have him to herself.

On June 11th, 2007, Martha pleads guilty to first-degree kidnapping and second-degree murder, and is sentenced to a maximum of 28 and a half years in prison.

Even with the sentence, questions still linger.

Like, how did a desire for love turn a selfless friend and dedicated EMT into a vicious killer?

She stood there and watched the detectives process the crime scene.

And to me, that is, again,

something really, really cold-blooded.

Martha will be eligible for release in 2029.

She will be 63 years old.

For more information on Snapped, go to oxygen.com.

How hard is it to kill a planet?

Maybe all it takes is a little drilling, some mining, and a whole lot of carbon pumped into the atmosphere.

When you see what's left, it starts to look like a crime scene.

Are we really safe?

Is our water safe?

You destroyed our town.

And crimes like that, they don't just happen.

We call things accidents.

There is no accident.

This was 100%

preventable.

They're the result of choices by people.

Ruthless oil tycoons, corrupt politicians, even organized crime.

These are the stories we need to be telling about our changing planet.

Stories of scams, murders, and cover-ups that are about us and the things we're doing to either protect the Earth or destroy it.

Follow Lawless Planet on the Wondry app or wherever you get your podcasts.

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