Mary Ann Collura

Marti's Flight

Within a few hours of the shooting, the cops found Collura's cruiser, abandoned on a side street in Paterson. The way the cops tell it, a cell phone recovered from Marti's abandoned car led them to the Marti family. It is, perhaps, a measure of just how insignificant Omar Marti was as a wannabe gangsta but when police first heard the name "Marti," they assumed that they were looking for Victor Marti Jr., said his lawyer, Gallucio. He was, after all, the one who before his claimed conversion to Christ had been the harder of the two brothers. He had even had an arrest for eluding police in the past, Gallucio admits.

As authorities moved gathered their first leads, Victor Junior received the first of two telephone calls. It was Ivan Marti. "Pick me up by the Friendly's," Ivan Marti told him.

"He goes looking (for) him and can't find him," Gallucio said, adding that Victor Marti continues to maintain that at that point, he still had no idea of the carnage that his brother had left in Fair Lawn. A few moments later, Gallucio said, Victor's cell phone rang again.

It was Omar Marti.

"Pick me up," he whimpered breathlessly into the phone.

"What happened?"

"Don't," Omar snapped. "Just pick me up."

According to Gallucio, over the next few hours the Marti's — Victor Junior and Senior, another relative, Joseph Marti and a cousin, Manuel Brignoni, helped Marti load his possessions into a car, and in the middle of the night, with Brignoni at the wheel, he fled, first to Binghamton, then down to Florida. Before he left, Omar Marti made a chilling pledge. "He said he didn't want to go to prison and would never be taken alive."

It was, it seemed, one of the few things Omar Marti ever got right.

On April 20, three days after he had murdered Collura and shattered Steve Farrell's arm, leg and a big part of his leg, Omar Marti was spotted by sheriff's officers in Florida. After a high-speed chase, authorities finally cornered Marti. Amid a hail of police bullets, Marti stepped from the car, reached into the backseat, pulled out a shotgun, and even as police bullets were tearing into him, he shot himself in the face.

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1. Point Blank
2. Holy Thursday
3. As If He Never Was
4. Small Time
5. An Easy Shift
6. An Act of Courage
7. Last Call
8. The Prodigal Son Returns
9. Not So Innocent
10. A Routine Stop
11. The Chase Begins
12. On His Own
13. Show Down
14. In the Killer's Eyes
15. "Oh, God!"
16. Marti's Flight
17. Legacy
18. Bibliography