Alex Napoliello
A man accused of beating his girlfriend to death inside a Jersey Shore motel room last week stopped for drinks before he checked himself into a hospital following the “brutal beating,” a prosecutor said Wednesday.
Matthew Demartin, 37, was charged with murder in the killing of Sharon Falcetano, 59, the Ocean County Prosecutor’s Office announced last week.
Assistant Ocean County Prosecutor Michael Weatherstone revealed details of the grisly beating at the Glendale Motel in Seaside Heights and the lack of action he said Demartin took afterwards at Demartin’s detention hearing, in which Judge Wendel Daniels ordered he remain jailed pending a trial.
“After the defendant beat her to death,” Weatherstone told Daniels, “he left her in the motel room and then he went and sought medical treatment for himself. He went to the hospital, leaving her there in the motel room.
“He went,” Weatherstone repeated emphatically.
But before Demartin went to the hospital, Weatherstone said, he stopped at a liquor store where he purchased a couple of alcoholic drinks. The following day, Demartin called his father to come down to the motel room. It’s then that his father, Weatherstone said, called the police.
Demartin made a statement admitting he kicked Falcetano in the head and called a friend after the beating to confess, Weatherstone said.”I’m paraphrasing because I haven’t heard the statement, but I’ve been told by the detectives that he calls up (a friend) and says, ‘I killed her,’ or words to that effect. ‘I beat her to death. She’s not breathing,'” Weatherstone explained.
The autopsy report shows that Falcetano suffered “massive injuries,” Weatherstone said, including five broken ribs, a lacerated liver, a cracked sternum and a fractured skull.
In arguing for Demartin’s detainment, Weatherstone also pointed to the defendant’s criminal history, which includes aggravated assault against a police officer and his mother.
Court records show that on Feb. 13, 2015, Demartin pleaded guilty to aggravated assault against a law enforcement officer and was sentenced to one year of probation. He was also ordered to attend support meetings for alcoholics and to submit to random drug tests.
According to the indictment for that case, Demartin “did purposely prevent or attempt to prevent … law enforcement officers of the Brick Township Police Department, from effecting an arrest by using or threatening to use physical force or violence” on Sept. 4, 2014.
He also pleaded guilty to an amended simple assault charged in 2015, court records show.
Weatherstone said Demartin also has a simple assault charge from 2010, a contempt for domestic violence offense in 2009, a simple assault charge in 2011 and an aggravated assault charge from 2016 involving his mother.
“This defendant has demonstrated over the past decade that he is a danger to everybody,” Weatherstone said. “He has an assaultive personality. He cannot be left alone on the streets because he will beat other people.”
Demartin’s attorney, Alexander Coven, said his client should be released because he intends to appear at every court hearing. If released, Demartin would live with his father in Cedar Grove, Essex County, and wear an ankle bracelet so that authorities could monitor him, Coven said.
Coven said Demartin has been treated for alcoholism at various facilities in the past, and “wants to pursue that treatment.” Demartin’s lack of insurance has prevented him from continuing in-patient care for his alcoholism in the past, Coven said.
“This defense concedes this is a serious case,” Coven said. “There’s no doubt about that.”
Demartin, wearing a striped green and white jail-issued jumpsuit, mostly looked down to the floor during the 25-minute hearing. He occasionally shook his head in disagreement as Weatherstone discussed the incident and glanced over at the gallery, where the victim’s family sat in the second row.
Displayed with permission from NJ.com
