Pummeled Pastor

What happened?

The Yoknapatawpha County Sheriff's Department is investigating the murder of Pastor Wendell Martinson of the Fellowship of the Holy Spirit church in Oxford.

Associate pastor Leo Ingram discovered the body in a church classroom on Easter Sunday.

Pastor Ingram arrived at the church that morning expecting to meet Pastor Martinson to set up for the Easter Sunrise service. Instead, he found Pastor Martinson's body and called 911.

Help investigate the case

The Pummeled Pastor case documents are presented in chronological order in the Case Files.

• Click the Evidence, Interview, Biography, or Press tag at the top of the Case Files page to filter by document type.
• Click the Day tags at the top of the Case Files page to filter case documents by the day they happened in the investigation.

Want more info? Check out the Crime Scene FAQ

Where do you start?

If this is your first look at the investigation, you may want to start with the Case Recap or one of these case documents:

• YCSD incident report
• Biography of victim Wendell Martinson
• Interview with the man who found the body
• The Oxford Weekly Planet's Crime Beat reports on the death
• Interview with the victim's wife
• Interview with the church secretary

Want access to all of the case documents as soon as they're available? Become a Case Detective today.