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Twist of fate

Coverage reunites jailed woman, father

April 19, 2008 Joanna Smith Ottawa Bureau for The Toronto Star

OTTAWA – Late last month, Tom Martin was reading a story in his local newspaper about a Canadian woman who has languished in jail in Mexico when he had a shock of recognition.

"I picked up the paper and it said 'Brenda Martin, 51 years old.' I knew my daughter would be 51," Martin, 72, said from his home in Surrey, B.C., yesterday.

"I didn't recognize her, naturally. I hadn't seen her since she was a year and a half old."

His daughter Brenda Martin, whose jailing near Guadalajara has become a cause celebre, had believed for 30 years that her father was dead.

Tom Martin was just 21 years old when he married Brenda's mother, 18-year-old Marjorie Currie. He lived on the Air Force base in Comox, B.C., while his young bride and baby girl stayed with his parents 225 kilometres away on the outskirts of Vancouver.

"We had our differences and she (his wife) left with the little girl and went back east and remarried and I couldn't find her," said Martin, who went on to marry a total of three times and had three sons and two other daughters.

He worked at sea as a commercial fisherman and tour boat skipper and said he and his other daughters looked for Brenda for years.

As it turns out, Brenda had sought her father, too, going west as a young woman to look for him.

She travelled out to British Columbia in 1978 but gave up her search when she was told her father had been killed in an accident.

After reading the newspaper article three weeks ago, Tom Martin sat down at his computer to investigate his hunch. He sent an email to Deb Tieleman, the childhood friend who has been campaigning tirelessly to have Brenda Martin released from prison in Guadalajara where she has been held since 2006.

"I think she's my daughter," Tom Martin wrote after typing out detailed information about Brenda's middle names and date of birth.

Within hours he received a phone call from his flabbergasted first wife, now Marjorie Bletcher, and in the morning he got a call from the prison in Mexico.

"Are you really my father?" he recalls of the conversation he had with the daughter he has not seen in 49 years.

"Yes, honey, I am," he said.

"Daddy, get me out of here," she said, starting to cry.

"She spotted the irony of the whole thing," Martin says, recalling the phone call three weeks ago. "If she hadn't gone to prison down there, I wouldn't have found her."

His hope now is for the two to be reunited.

Mexican authorities arrested Brenda Martin in connection with an Internet fraud scheme run by her former boss. She has steadfastly maintained she knew nothing of the scam masterminded by Alyn Waage, for whom she worked as a cook, that bilked investors out of nearly $60 million.

Waage, who is serving a 10-year sentence in a U.S. prison, has also sworn she had no knowledge of his scheme. A Mexican judge is expected to rule on her case Tuesday.

Brenda's mother, Marjorie Bletcher, 69, who had told the Star her first husband was dead, said she is still shocked by the news but happy her daughter has widened her circle of support.

"He told me that he still had a picture of me and Brenda," Bletcher said from her home in Trenton, Ont. "He might have been afraid, but I'm not going to hold that against him. I think it's great that (Brenda's) going to be able to have somebody else that she can count on."