"He went to prison for a long time. His defense was: I'd have never shown it to him except that I knew him.



That didn't help him much



***





Some thoughts linger, and some haunt.





Martin can't wash out of his memory a homicide call to the Skyline area of southeastern San Diego in 2003.



This is a part of what a homicide detective takes with him into retirement: A new mother was staying with her in-laws. One night she went into the kitchen, picked up a knife, went into the nursery and killed her baby. She then went into the bedroom where her in-laws were sleeping and attempted to kill them with a whirling circular saw. The sleeping couple were saved by a short cord that was pulled from the wall as she approached.



The woman was found wandering the street in the early morning in her nightgown. She was eventually sent to a mental health facility.



Postpartum depression is real, Martin will tell you. "I think about that poor baby a lot," he says.



***



Often, criminals are not as smart as they think, or cops as dumb as they hope.



Back in 2000, David Arturo Medina, 24, was an honors graduate of UC San Diego who moonlighted (an appropriate word) as a leader of the street gang Southeast Locos. He was very good at killing, certainly ambitious.



Martin says Medina would play mind games with detectives and tell them incriminating things during interrogations. He knew he was protected because he hadn't been given a Miranda warning against self-incrimination.



Martin describes the case, and obviously savors the memory. "We would invite him to come in and talk to us. He came in seven or eight times.