| Scott Raymond (Scott R) wrote on Sun, 21 October 2007 04:12 |
Thank You Dave!
The two articles I found were an interesting read but left me hanging as to the outcome.
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Here's the story in brief, as I remember it...
After selling his company to the TGI group for around 1.5M GBP (he stayed on as R&D director) Dave Martin was free to do a few of the things he'd always wanted to, one of which was getting a private pilot's licence. He bought an old Stinson 108-2 and learned to fly it.
Colin James, an old acquaintance of his and also a flying enthusiast, persuaded him to invest in a company trading in helicopter parts. Dave just put up the money but wasn't actively involved in the business.
After around 250,000 GBP had gone into this venture, he found there was no paperwork or accounts to show where or how the money had been spent. Unsurprisingly, this caused a serious falling out with Mr James and after arranging a final meeting with him to try and sort things out, Dave Martin vanished.
His girlfriend became extremely concerned by his disappearance, but everyone else thought he had just decided to go visiting some far off corner of the world. You have to understand 1/ They only lived together at weekends and 2/ He thought nothing of hopping around the world at zero notice, usually to help somebody sort out a sound system. Indeed, I had been helping him with some plans for a sound system design for the Tokio Dome, and thought he had casually hopped off to Japan to have a look at the place - it was just the sort of thing he would do.
He was never seen again. The police investigation eventually came up with sufficient forensic and circumstantial evidence to get a conviction. It is generally thought that if Colin James didn't actually commit the crime alone, he helped somebody else do it and is taking the rap. I think there were only 3 other cases in Britain in the entire 20th century, in which a murder conviction was obtained without a body being found.
The story about a prisoner supplying details of a location turned out to be a red herring. The police excavated the site and nothing was found.
It also turned out that there is a very dodgy international black market in helicopter parts ... it doesn't take much imagination to see why. Poor old Dave had no idea, he thought he was investing in a legitimate business.
One of the police officers involved told me they had quite a few "spinoffs" from the case, including discovering somebody taking bribes to provide false C of A's. A bit worrying, if you live under a flight path.
Helicopters ? Just say no !
.........
Dave Martin always had a fascination for vintage technology.
When I moved to London to work for him, I stayed in his spare room for a couple of weeks while I found a place to live. Most of the space was taken up with an impressive collection of vintage radio sets and a magnificent pair of Klipsch corner horns. Other items of note were a very early RCA compression driver, and an EV 643 Cardiline microphone that was about 7 feet long and could be dismantled into several sections to fit in its transit case.
His home hi-fi was a pair of Quad ESL63's, correctly positioned halfway down his large living room. And his radio bench was equipped with an old National HRO as well as a Racal RA17.
He also had a collection of Bristol sports cars and would occasionally take a client for a hair-raising drive in one of them.
His last project was financing the restoration of a Hawker Tempest Mk2 aircraft (to the tune of around 300,000 GBP) but sadly he never lived to see it fly.
(edit: added picture)
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Topic: David Martin disappearance question (Read 19411 times)