A murderous pimp who watched the TV show “Dexter” to learn how to dispose of a body has been convicted of charges he strangled and dismembered a Brooklyn sex worker to collect her life insurance policy.
After a two-week trial, a Brooklyn Federal Court court jury found Cory Martin, 36, guilty of murder-for-hire in the slaying of Brandy Odom, whose limbless torso was found in Canarsie Park on April 9, 2018. He killed her to collect on $200,000 in life insurance taken out in her name.
Odom’s body was identified by her distinctive tattoo of the word “chocolate,” and cops found her limbs nearby in garbage bags the next day.
“I waited six years,” Odom’s mother, Nicole Odom, told the Daily News after the verdict Monday. “That’s one monster that’s off the street right now. Because that’s what he is right now. He’s a monster.”
The top charge against Martin, murder-for-hire, carries a mandatory life sentence.
Martin and his on-again, off-again girlfriend, Adelle Anderson, lived with Odom in Martin’s Rosedale, Queens, house — and he was their pimp, keeping the woman in his home, Anderson testified.
Over the course of a day and a half of testimony, Anderson described the murder plot in stomach-churning detail, explaining how Martin watched “Dexter” — a show about a serial killer who murders other criminals and chops up their bodies in a spotless “kill room” — to prepare.
He also watched the true-crime series “The First 48” to learn about police investigative techniques, she said.
Prosecutors said Martin researched power tools and went to Home Depot after strangling Odom, then came back with a reciprocating saw to remove her limbs.
Martin made Anderson cover the bathroom floor-to-ceiling in garbage bags, then spent the next two days on his grim task, sawing through flesh and bone as he wore a black jogging suit and Timberland boots, she testified. He’d strip out of that outfit every time he left the bathroom, to avoid tracking evidence into the rest of the house, she said.
“Having to hear what I listened to during these past two weeks of the trial, it’s a mother’s worst nightmare,” Odom’s mother said, as her daughters, Aisha and Alisha, stood nearby. “So I’m glad that they came up with the verdict that they did, to make sure it don’t happen to nobody else’s child.”
Martin wouldn’t look at the Odom family during the trial, Alisha Odom recounted. “The defendant don’t have to look at me or my family, but he has to look at the four [walls] in a jail,” she said.
Nicole Odom took the stand on the first day of the trial, explaining how she learned of her daughter’s death from newspaper accounts describing her tattoo.
She said she tried to save Brandy when she first learned about the sex work by having her move into her daughter Aisha’s apartment in Brooklyn — but Anderson was living in the same building, and the two became friends.
Martin’s defense lawyers put the blame entirely on Anderson, saying that she killed Odom out of jealousy, because the victim was sleeping with Martin.
Martin and Anderson were arrested together on wire fraud and aggravated identity theft in November 2020 for taking out policies on Odom and trying to collect on them after her murder. A month after Anderson took a plea deal in the case, Martin was charged with murder for hire.
Odom’s family didn’t give her any credit for taking the stand, and said she should receive the same fate as Martin when she’s sentenced in June.
“He’s monster No. 1, and she’s monster No. 2,” Nicole Odom said. “You’re a mother, just like me. How as a mother could you go on in life and do something like this?”
Defense lawyer Anthony Cecutti told the jury that Anderson lied about Martin beating and raping her in a cynical bid to win the jury’s sympathy, seizing on an answer she gave to prosecutors about how she lied to police early on in the investigation.
“I always lied about the abuse,” Anderson said, explaining that she was protecting Martin because she loved him.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Emily Dean pounced on that argument during her rebuttal Friday, pointing out that Anderson was talking about lying to doctors about how she got her domestic-violence related injuries.
“Consider that when you have to credit anything he has to say to you at all,” Dean said of Cecutti.
In the end, the jury believed Anderson, and the evidence presented by prosecutors to corroborate her account of what happened.
He was convicted of all counts against him, which included murder for hire, wire fraud and aggravated identity theft. He will be sentenced July 23.
“Martin saw the victim as a moneymaker, trafficking her for commercial sex, then after killing her with his bare hands, tossing out her slaughtered body parts like trash so he could profit from her death,” U.S. Attorney Breon Peace said Monday. “Brandy Odom suffered an unthinkable death at the defendant’s hands, but her life mattered, and I hope that this verdict holding the defendant responsible brings some measure of closure to her family.”
