The Contract Murder of Kathryn Ann Martini-Lissy

"He said he wanted a lady murdered and preferably raped, toostrangled or hit over the head," the police informant/prostitute testified for the prosecution.

The informant told the jury that she had arranged for Lissy and Wilson to meet and that she had carried information and money back and forth between them, and that the payments had been made out of the apartment located directly across the street from Lissy's Barbur Boulevard scuba shop. On one occasion, the prostitute said that she had brought Wilson to the shop to meet Lissy where Lissy purportedly had told Wilson that he needed the job "done by the 5^th (of July)...she would be in a motel room in Eugene."

According to another witness for the prosecution, also a prostitute, Lissy allegedly had worked out plans for his wife's murder before he hired Wilson to do the job. The witness said that Lissy, a frequent customer of hers, had asked her several times in June 1984 if she knew where to find a hit man.

"He mentioned to me three specific hits that he wanted donea young woman he wanted strangled and possibly raped, a young man he wanted beaten within an inch of his life and an old couple on the coast he wanted to have an accident," the prostitute testified.

It was pointed out for the jury's benefit that the young man in question was likely Lissy's ex-wife's boyfriend, and the elderly couple Lissy's parents who, apparently, were blocking a business deal of Lissy's.

The young woman testified that after she had read a newspaper article about the murder, she had notified police because the murder described in the newspaper article described "the same manner of death that he'd described to me...it fit exactly."