A PUB landlady who inherited a £2.5million fortune from killer farmer Tony Martin said she will be converting his barns into 10 new homes.
Jacqueline Wadsley, now 52, was the sole beneficiary of Martin’s will after they became friends following his release from prison in 2003.
Martin came into the spotlight when he fired an illegal gun at two intruders from his Norfolk farmhouse in 1999, killing one and wounding the other.
He died aged 80 last February and left behind a large inheritance, and last month it was revealed that the millions would go to Jacqui.
The pair formed a “father and daughter” style relationship after they met at the Hare & Hounds pub, where Martin would regularly drink while Jacqui spent more than a decade as manager.
The landlady claims she knew nothing about the fortune she and her husband, David, 45, stood to inherit until Martin’s death.
The estate is understood to be made up of Bleak House, 350 acres of surrounding land and property in Australia.
Jacqui, now a property landlord, and David have recently applied for planning to turn five of the barns on Bleak House Farm into 10 homes.
The application the couple submitted to King’s Lynn and West Norfolk Council said the barns are currently functional agricultural buildings.
This could mean they are eligible for permitted development which allows agricultural buildings to be converted without full planning permission.
The application states that the barns will still appear similar but the walls, roofs and doors will all be upgraded in the conversion.
David previously told the Mirror: “Tony came into Jacqui’s pub which she was running at the time.
“It was after [the shooting] and after Mr Martin had been released from prison. It was a slow burner but Jacqui, by her nature, she’s a very, very caring person so the friendship just grew.
“It became something much stronger and ended up being more like a father and a daughter relationship to be honest at the end.”
He insisted that the fortune still came as a shock to the pair after Martin refused to disclose who he would be leaving his estate to when asked in 2022.
It had been thought that part of Martin’s estate would go to a relative. But the childless farmer appears to have snubbed his family entirely in his will and probate arrangements.
He was said to have been completely estranged from his feuding older brother, Robin Martin, once describing their fractured bond as resembling a “Cain and Abel situation”.
Jacqui was said to have become Martin’s only real family after she reportedly helped him with medical appointments and accommodation, making herself available at all hours to support him.
Martin was even present when she tied the knot with David at the pub in Wisbech, Cambridgeshire, alongside her close friends and family.
Probate papers revealed that Martin’s entire estate was worth £2,567,795.
Tony Martin shot 16-year-old Fred Barras at his Norfolk farmhouse in 1999.
The following year, Martin was jailed for the boy’s murder and for injuring another 29-year-old man, Brendan Fearon, in the same incident.
It is thought the panicked farmer shot at both burglars after they broke into his secluded property.
His defence for the shooting of Fred Barras was that he pulled the trigger as a warning.
Martin’s actions sparked a nationwide debate over the measures homeowners can take to defend their property, and landed Martin a five-year sentence for manslaughter.
But Martin continued to remain defiant over the death of Fred Barras – and never apologised for what happened.
“I tried to defend my home, my private space. I was just a man, asleep, for goodness sake. Not some roaming vigilante,” he said.
Speaking to the Daily Mail, he said he’d visited the teen’s headstone in Newark out of “curiosity”.
Martin fired three shots towards them and both fled through the window, with Barras later dying in the grounds.
Fearon was later jailed for three years for his part in a conspiracy to burgle the property along with Barras.
The unremorseful farmer had told investigators he slept with a shotgun under his head after previous burglaries – and had removed the top and bottom steps of his staircase as a booby trap.
English law permits one person to kill another in self-defence only if the person defending him or herself uses no more than reasonable force.
It is the responsibility of the jury to determine whether or not an unreasonable amount of force was used.
Martin was initially sentenced to life imprisonment was reduced after an appeal in October 2001 included evidence that Martin was diagnosed with paranoid personality disorder exacerbated by depression.
He was also diagnosed with Asperger’s, and on the grounds of diminished responsibility his sentence was reduced to five years for manslaughter.
