Did the Commonwealth convict an innocent man from Pembroke?
A new paperback authored by Emilio Corsetti III, titled “I WILL RUIN YOU: The Twisted Truth Behind The Kit Martin Murder Trial,” poses the question — and in painstaking detail recounts the events before, during and after the 2015 triple homicide of Calvin and Pamela Phillips, as well as Ed Dansereau, and the eventual conviction of Martin in Hardin County.
Available on Amazon, the 400-plus page, 56-chapter book went on sale in late March. Published by Wild Blue Press in Denver, Colorado, Chapter 38 is labeled: “Judge John Atkins.”
An eight-man, four-woman jury convened for nearly eight hours in 2021, before returning with a verdict to Atkins — one that was aired nationally on Court TV.
Martin appeared stunned at the guilty verdict, and at times was seen shaking his head while being escorted out — bailiffs alongside.
In the moment, Martin’s defense attorney Tom Griffiths said two main pieces of evidence in the case — a shell casing and a military dog tag purported to be Martin’s — were an “amateurish effort to frame his client.” Both pieces of evidence were found by family members of Calvin, and later turned over to investigators.
On the back cover of Corsetti’s book, he wrote that “moments before boarding a passenger flight on 11 May, 2019, as the first officer, Martin, a former Army Ranger, was arrested by a swarm of heavily-armed officers for the murders of his three neighbors. The arrest captured global attention as Martin’s mugshot, clad in a pilot’s uniform, spread across the internet, sparking a media firestorm with headlines such as ‘Monster in the Cockpit.’”
Corsetti went on to write that Martin “had seen his life unravel after seeking a divorce, and his wife’s threatening words, ‘If you leave me, I will ruin your life” were overheard by his daughter, and “seemed to have a grim reality, escalating to a court-martial and culminating in a high-stakes” murder trial.
Corsetti, himself, is a retired airline pilot and author — whose works have appeared in regional and national publications, including the Chicago Tribune, Multimedia Producer and Professional Pilot magazine.
Furthermore, he has appeared as an aviation expert on the show Studio B with Shepard Smith and in the MSNBC documentary Why Planes Crash: Brace for Impact, and he wrote “35 Miles From Shore: The Ditching and Rescue of ALM Flight 980” and “Scapegoat: A Flight Crew’s Journey from Heroes to Villains to Redemption.”
He is a graduate of St. Louis University Parks College of Aviation, and he and his wife live in Dallas, Texas.
Corsetti’s book arrived 2 ½ years after Dateline NBC, with Keith Morrison, explored the details around the case.