Extortion Defendant Testifies He Partied All Night to Save Hostage

According to Thomas Martin, he was doing his level best to rescue the hostage, even at the price of partying all night with liquor, marijuana and girls. According to the district attorney’s office, Martin was threatening to dismember the hostage unless he was paid a ransom of $200.

The hostage: a 1985 Lincoln Towncar.

Martin, 33, of North Hollywood, told his story Tuesday at his trial before Judge Ronald Lew in San Fernando Superior Court on charges of attempted extortion and receiving stolen property.

The car, owned by the Hertz auto rental firm, was reported stolen Sept. 21 from a Hertz customer in North Hollywood. Martin told jurors he overheard a conversation between the thief and another man, who said the car was to be stripped and sold as parts. One of the men was “trying to get me hooked on drugs again,” Martin testified, “so I thought I would get him.”

Martin said he reported the theft to Hertz by phone Sept. 23 and an employee asked him to detain the thief. So, believing he had been hired to act as “a spy” for Hertz, Martin rented a motel room in Hollywood and bought liquor and marijuana.

“I had to get the guy drunk to keep him where he was,” Martin testified. “So we partied all night and got some girls.”

The next morning, Martin testified, he was offered a reward by a Hertz employee after Martin returned the car.

Testifying for the prosecution, Hertz security agent Joan Pitts said Martin threatened in a telephone conversation that, unless he was paid $200 or given a plane ticket to Boston, the stolen car “would be chopped up”--disassembled and the parts sold. Pitts testified that she met Martin at a Hollywood coffee shop the following morning and recovered the car.

Martin told jurors that he asked Pitts to call police to arrest the purported car thief but that she refused.

Pitts, who agreed that she told Martin the company was going to pay him a reward, testified that she drove Martin to the Hertz office at LAX, suggesting that he buy a plane ticket to Boston and come back to her office to pick up a $200 check.

Instead, she reported him to police and he was arrested in the ticket line.

The jury began deliberations Tuesday.