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Left: Clarence Martin Jr. during his 2020 arrest (Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department). Right: London Martin (GoFundMe).
A Nevada man who threw his 7-week-old daughter off a balcony and set his apartment on fire will spend the rest of his life behind bars.
Clarence Martin Jr., 37, was found guilty by a jury in October 2024, four years after he killed his newborn baby girl, London, by throwing her off the second-floor balcony of the apartment he shared with the baby’s mother.
Martin’s defense attorneys argued that he was suffering from a mental health crisis at the time and requested a life sentence with the possibility of parole after 25 years. District Judge Carli Kierny instead sentenced Martin to a life sentence with the possibility of parole after 49 and a half years, which had been the prosecution’s request. According to reporting by the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Kierny called the case “the worst case I’ve ever seen. It boggles my mind.”
According to the arrest report, the baby’s mother told police that in the days leading up to the tragedy on Oct. 24, 2020, Martin had not slept or eaten for days. While in bed, Martin reportedly started kicking her and the baby, who was just short of 2 months old. She attempted to move herself and London to another room, but Martin snatched the baby from her and threw London off the balcony. The mother found her baby daughter in the apartment’s parking lot and called 911.
As the mother was calling for help, Martin reportedly set the living room ablaze, killing the family’s pet poodle, before running out of the apartment where a neighbor reportedly overheard him saying “Burn, (expletive) burn. This is what you get for cheating on me.” He then got in his car and drove off as Las Vegas police responded to the scene.
Martin then led police on a wild car chase that resulted in three different crashes before he ultimately abandoned the car at a nearby airport. Martin then reportedly went inside the airport and got onto a luggage conveyor belt that transported him to the tarmac, where he was finally arrested.
Martin was taken to a hospital for injuries he sustained during the crashes as well as a drug evaluation and was booked in absentia for open murder, animal cruelty, and arson.
His defense attorney Betsy Allen argued that Martin was suffering from a mental health episode and was diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder. Allen said her client “has very little memory of that evening, but I can tell the court that what he does remember is that he thought he was in a movie. That’s how delusional he was at the time of this crime.”
Martin was convicted of a total of 13 felony charges including open murder, animal cruelty, arson, two counts of child abuse, and several counts of battery related to the police chase that ensued after the initial crime.
London’s mother, who was in the courtroom for Martin’s sentencing, told the judge, “He just needs help.”