An accused killer pimp studied up on how to dismember one of his sex workers by watching the serial killer drama “Dexter” and the true-crime series “The First 48,” according to testimony at his federal murder trial, which continues in Brooklyn this week.
The case against Cory Martin, 36 — who’s on trial for strangling and chopping up 26-year-old Brandy Odom in April 2018 — has been unfolding in Brooklyn Federal Court including DNA evidence testimony Wednesday from a criminalist with the city Medical Examiner’s office.
Jurors previously got to hear how Martin learned to cover his tracks — from watching television, according to prosecutors.
“He didn’t want the house after he committed the crime to be an active crime scene. So he focused a lot on getting rid of or concealing evidence,” his accomplice turned government cooperator, Adelle Anderson, said, as part of two days of blockbuster testimony.
Anderson, 35, who lived with Martin and Odom in Rosedale, Queens, was arrested alongside the accused pimp in 2020 — two years after a dog walker found Odom’s dismembered torso in Canarsie Park in Brooklyn. Police found her limbs in garbage bags nearby.
As she took the witness stand, Anderson testified he made her watch the two TV shows with him. “He would discuss crime scenes and what not to do, and what things to do to avoid being caught by the police,” she said.
The crime bore some resemblance to fictional killer Dexter Morgan, who on Showtime’s “Dexter” would methodically cut up bodies and dump the severed remains.
While Dexter followed a code of only targeting killers who escaped justice, Martin had something else in mind, prosecutors say: He wanted to collect on $200,000 in life insurance policies on Odom, which Anderson took out in her name.
He made Anderson watch “The First 48” to learn about police tactics, like how investigators use blue ultraviolet light to find forensic evidence.
Martin meant for someone to find the body, prosecutors said, because he wouldn’t be able to collect the insurance payout otherwise.
Martin’s defense attorneys lay the entire plot on Anderson, stating that she was behind the life insurance scheme and is spinning a tale to stay out of prison, while also grilling her about the alleged lies she told police and her history of shoplifting and fraud.
Anderson described Odom’s murder, and her toxic relationship with Martin, on Wednesday and Thursday of last week. She and Martin started dating on-and-off since their teens, when they were students at Canarsie High School.
“He was my high school sweetheart,” she said. But he abused her throughout their relationship, she claimed.
Before moving in with Martin in his Rosedale, Queens home, she had two sons with other men and that constantly enraged him, Anderson said.
Anderson started getting into sex work around 2014, she said, and she met Odom — who was also doing sex work — when the victim moved into her sister’s apartment on Fulton St. in Brooklyn.
Anderson was living downstairs, and the two became friends and moved in with each other. In 2016, they started using Martin’s Queens home for their trade, and started living with him.
He became their pimp and controlled their lives — forcing them to remain naked whenever they were in the house and prohibiting them from showering to satisfy a fetish, Anderson said.
He also beat and repeatedly raped Anderson, she told the jury.
“There was holes all in the walls throughout the house,” she said. “From me dodging the hits.”
Martin talked about killing Anderson’s son and the boy’s father, and about murdering one of his friends, she said. He made her take out life insurance policies against her sons and the youngest child’s dad, but eventually he settled on Odom, and had Anderson pretend to be her sister to take out two policies in her name, she said.
At first, Martin tried to get a friend, Samson Alabi, to shoot Odom in a staged robbery, but Alabi testified last week that he wouldn’t do it.
Finally, in April 2018, after Martin sent Anderson and their newborn daughter to stay with her mother, he killed Odom, Anderson testified.
He sent her a coded text message about a pair of black UGGs shoes to let her know it was done, she said.
“My heart dropped and I said, ‘Oh, s–t he really did it,” she recounted.
Anderson reunited with Martin, and after a takeout dinner from Red Lobster, he went to work disposing of the body. He showed her Odom’s naked corpse in the bedroom, she said. The window was open to help mask the time of death.
“He said this is the first time he’s ever felt somebody’s life leave their body,” Anderson recounted, adding, “He told me that he choked her until she wasn’t breathing no more.”
Martin made Anderson tape heavy-duty garbage bags to every surface in their bathroom, she said. It took two days for Martin to cut up her body, and he had to go to Home Depot to get a motorized saw.
The sound woke her up as she slept one morning, and when she stormed into the bathroom, she saw Odom with her arms cut off, stored in a garbage bag on the floor.
“This s–t is hard,'” Martin said, according to Anderson. “I never chopped up a body before, but this is, like, a meaty area and it’s giving me some trouble.”
When the cutting was done, she drove Martin to Canarsie Park twice in two nights, and helped him ditch her remains, she said.
With Roni Jacobson
