She moved to Charlotte. He threatened to follow her, and he did. Now, he’ll spend 15 years in a federal prison for cyberstalking and threatening to kill her.
Russell Martini badgered his victim — his ex-girlfriend — with messages and threats for more than a month after she left him and their Long Island home, according to court documents. The most haunting words, though, are the ones he said after he showed up and dragged her down the outdoor steps of her new Charlotte apartment.
Go ahead and call the cops. I can kill you before they get here.
Martini’s cyber abuse — which got him charged with cyberstalking, stalking, kidnapping and making interstate threats — started in 2022 about a week after his girlfriend ended their four-year relationship and left New York.
In a plea deal last year, he pleaded guilty to cyberstalking, stalking and interstate threats. The U.S. Attorney’s Office dropped a kidnapping charge, which carried a maximum penalty of life in prison, and two interstate threat charges.
On Wednesday, in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of North Carolina, a judge sentenced the 47-year-old to 15 years in prison followed by nine years of supervised release, plus computer monitoring.
Stalker turned cyberstalker
Martini’s attack wasn’t his first time conflating aggression and love, a psychiatrist testifying in his case said.
Six years ago, he drove a woman off the road when trying to meet up with her.
They later married.
Martini was convicted of stalking a woman in 2018, court records show, and his threats to women started in 1998, Assistant U.S. Attorney Kimlani Ford said. Charges and convictions on stalking, harassment and assault don’t currently taint his criminal record because they are too old, she said.
His 2022 victim, referred to only as Jane Doe in court documents, told the judge Wednesday that Martini’s sentence should serve as some justice to those victims, too.
In 2019, more than 3.4 million Americans 16 and older reported being stalked either physically or over the internet, according to a report by the U.S. Justice Department’s Bureau of Justice Statistics. Women were twice as likely to be targeted as men, and in two-thirds of the cases, the victim knew the tormentor.
Judge Robert J. Conrad denied pleas from Martini’s defense attorneys to shorten his sentence to 11 years. The argument from his public defender, Taylor Goodnight, rested on a psychiatrist’s testimony.
Dr. Donna Maddox, an expert who evaluated Martini for two hours, diagnosed him with bipolar disorder, substance abuse disorder and major neurocognitive disorder. A previous brain injury, one Martini said he wasn’t aware he had until he met with Maddox, she testified, made three of the eight major parts of his brain dysfunctional.
His “trifecta” of diagnoses caused a severe lack of judgment when he entered a state of mania, began using drugs again and planned an attack on Doe, Maddox said while testifying.
Do people choose to have these disorders? Goodnight asked.
“They don’t choose, but they are responsible for what they do,” Maddox replied.
Ford, representing the United States, said the defense rested too heavily on ifs .
Maddox said Martini needed to go to therapy, take medication and stay away from drugs in order to maintain a clear mind and lessen the chances of Doe or another victim being harmed.
He’s never successfully done any of those things, Ford said.
Martini read a statement to the judge before two long-bearded deputy U.S. Marshals led him back to the federal courtroom’s holding area. His mother and stepfather were in the row of seats closest to him.
“I’d like to apologize to the victim for scaring her so much,” he said, “someone I cared about so dearly.”
Martini said he was “spiritually broken” in 2022 and has since become a “good Catholic” who “wants to be a man people want to be around.”
He asked Conrad to send him to the federal prison in Petersburg, Virginia, for its faith-based program.
Charlotte cyberstalking
About a week after Doe left Martini on March 25, 2022, he created fake social media accounts under her name, his indictment shows. He posted topless photos of her, and he threatened to post videos next. He’d share them with her family, too, he said.
He did, according to court records, and he didn’t stop there. With each press of the “send” button, his threats got more aggressive, more deadly.
Not even her pregnant sister was safe, Doe said in court.
“You are going to be in a pool of blood,” he wrote to Doe. “I am killing animals right in front of you. You are hurting me so badly ... that’s it your (sic) dead. I am coming…”
The next day, he boarded an Amtrak to Charlotte.
“... Tomorrow is your last chance,” the Bay Shore, N.Y., man said in an email, according to his federal indictment. “... we get back together willingly or I take you by force… Think I’m kidding(?) good think that.”
On May 7, 2022, he followed through, showing up to her apartment and dragging her down the stairs. An armed bystander held him at gunpoint, Ford said in court, and he ran away.
He left his backpack behind, in Doe’s parking lot. Gloves, duct tape and lubrication were inside it, Ford said.
“I think that gives you a good idea what he was going to do,” she said to Conrad.
Doe, while giving her statement, said she had been “sentenced to life” in a prison fortified by her depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder and a constant fear of being in public. Her emotional scars are rivaled by the physical scars Martini left after his down-stair dragging.
“People ask me ‘what happened?’ and I have to say ‘I fell,’” she said as Martini, who sat to her right, listened.
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