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Sunday, April 02, 2000 By Chuck Finder, Post-Gazette Sports Writer
First of two parts.
SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. -- Seven miles separate Al Martin's apparent two wives, two lives.
Turn left from the gated community of Canada Vistas where he has lived in a sprawling home with Cathy Martin and their son, Brandon. Make a right onto Pima Road, a two-lane strip that heads north through the cacti, brush, dry Valley heat and tony Pinnacle Peak area of North Scottsdale. Hang a right onto an uphill thoroughfare named Dynamite Boulevard.
The trip to the rented house he shared with Shawn Haggerty-Martin takes all of nine minutes.
It seems such a short drive from former Pirates good guy to criminal mugshot, from a perceived spotless reputation to a record suddenly mottled with misdemeanor criminal charges and unsavory accusations.
On March 20, after a late-night incident that ended with Scottsdale police seizing two guns at the rented house and arresting a bruised wife and a man she sarcastically described in a 911 call as her "pretend husband," this tale started coming out of left field.
Al Martin, domestic violence.
Al Martin, accused of making threats of torture: "I will O.J. your ass so quick ..."
Al Martin, father of two children by a woman in Kansas.
And there could be other accusations:
That is to say, police in this east-Phoenix suburb were preparing to request this week that the Maricopa County prosecutor's office seek a felony charge of bigamy against Martin. Scottsdale authorities were awaiting certified marriage licenses from West Palm Beach, Fla., where he wed Catherine Carita Young at the county courthouse nine years ago this week, and from Las Vegas, where he exchanged vows Dec. 11, 1998 with Shawn Haggerty, in a chapel across the street from the Clark County courthouse.
They could find no record of divorce. And, in a real-estate deed transfer filed with the Maricopa County recorder's office, Al and Cathy Martin were claiming in legal documents to be husband and wife as recently as early February.
The night of the arrest, Martin told police he didn't believe that Vegas ceremony with Haggerty was legitimate. Yet they found a record of a license on the Internet -- it listed him incorrectly as Albert C. (instead of Lee) Martin -- and the second bride claimed she has photographs and a wedding video as further proof. Martin declined to be interviewed for this article.
Bigamy carries a penalty between nine months and two years in prison, though Arizona legal experts say that probation is more likely in this case.
Police said they were preparing to send that additional misdemeanor charge to the Scottsdale city prosecutor this week, contending that he continued to call Haggerty-Martin after the court ordered the two to cease having contact with each other. A detective was meeting with Haggerty-Martin Tuesday in their rented house about calls Martin supposedly made there when she received a call from his cell phone.
In addition to Cathy Martin and Shelly Y. Dillard, the Kansas woman whose lawsuit trying to establish paternity payments for his two children with her has been settled out of court, Haggerty-Martin spoke of a fourth woman -- a Kim from Florida -- who gave birth to a child of his more than five years ago. Haggerty-Martin said there were no legal papers filed because he has made regular $2,500 payments every month or so to Kim.
Is this the same Al Martin whom Pirates fans thought they knew so intimately? The captain of Al's Army and a young clubhouse? The leader who donated 20,000 Pirates tickets and weeks of service to this community over the years? The good guy who came up with the idea of players personally greeting fans at the Three Rivers Stadium turnstiles?
Is this the same Al Martin who bought a Phoenix-area house for his father and invited previous Pittsburgh visitors into homes he had purchased in the Valley area since joining the Pirates in 1991? The gentleman whom neighbors thought they knew as a friendly sort who teased their children before giving them an autographed bat?
Is that mug shot staring out from newspapers across America the same face normally seen smiling from underneath a baseball cap?
Is there any way of really knowing someone?
"After 32 years of doing everything exactly right and being thought of as a pretty decent guy, it's a long fall from glory," the former Pirates outfielder and new San Diego Padres leadoff hitter said March 23, in his last media interviews about his recent off-the-field travails.
"That might be what hurts the most -- you feel like you let so many people down. Then you realize that there is nothing you can really do or say that's going to make it better for the world. You just go on faith on your past and hope that people understand the type of person you are."
He was traded to the Padres for John Vander Wal and two minor-league pitchers on Feb. 23. He requested such a move so he could stay closer to his Scottsdale home and family and life.
Little did anyone suspect there could exist a second home, a second life.
"In fact, when the trade was announced, my mother called and told me, 'You got a good guy, well liked in Pittsburgh,' "recalled Padres President Larry Lucchino, a Pittsburgh native and former lawyer. "No one from the front office to my mother knows everything about a person's private life.
"But we've got to be sure that we don't leap to conclusions here. There are some allegations, and they are serious allegations. We hope there will be some clarity about what happened and who did what to whom."
Certainly, clarity is the hope of the woman residing at the corner of Dynamite Boulevard and North 113th Street.
Is she or is she not Mrs. Al Martin?
Does she have a future with a man she still professes to love?
Are there more questions than answers at this point?
"I think Al is a great person," Haggerty-Martin said during an interview March 25, trying to prevent herself from breaking down -- and failing. "I think he means well and wants to do right by everybody. But I think he has very obviously serious, serious issues.
"I think his heart is in the right place. But I wish it was for one person instead of four or five."
The officer
The Monday night before last, officer M. Johnson was cruising North Scottsdale with his partner J. Stumpf. The 185-square-mile suburb stretches nearly the length of the City of Phoenix itself, from the Tonto National Forest in the north to the Salt River in the south. So many new houses rise from the Valley highlands and peaks in this area, which Johnson compares to a Fox Chapel on red rocks, there are neighborhoods that the police have yet to learn.
At 8:37 p.m., the officers were called to a family fight at a rented house facing Dynamite Boulevard, near Troon North golf course -- an oasis of greens and fairways among the desert brush and dirt.
Shawn Michelle Haggerty-Martin, 31, displaying a Florida's driver's license as identification, told Johnson that she and her husband were arguing over his ongoing relationship with another woman. She told him that her husband was Al Martin.
Officer Johnson was known as Micah Johnson when he was WPXI-TV's news director in Pittsburgh for six months in 1996 and later at a Hartford station. He had moved west and decided to act upon his interest in law enforcement, having spent 15 years in the television business covering crime scenes and hearings and such. He recognized that name from somewhere during his travels from St. Mary's, Pa., to IUP to TV to the police academy in July and the Scottsdale police department in November. But where?
"Al Martin?" he kept saying to himself. "Al Martin?
"Then I saw a picture on the mantel," he recalled. "Oh ... "
Arizona takes domestic-violence situations seriously. Johnson arrested Cardinals running back Mario Bates the week before on the same charge, and the NFL player spent a night in jail, as state law requires. Arizona Diamondbacks pitcher Bobby Chouinard was arrested last Christmas after pulling a gun on his wife. The club later released him.
After Stumpf impounded a .22-caliber pistol from Summer the nanny, who hid the weapon in a bedroom drawer once the disagreement began ("they always argue about stupid stuff," she told him), the officer returned from the patrol car to find out this from his partner:
Haggerty-Martin's husband is a professional baseball player, and he is "presently married to two people."
The incident
Martin had left the gated-community home and readied for sleep around 8:15 p.m. in the bedroom of the rented house where Haggerty-Martin and her daughter, Brittney, 13, were watching television. Her daughter left the bedroom, and he asked Haggerty-Martin to watch somewhere else because he had to wake up early. An argument ensued.
The way Haggerty-Martin remembered it, she had already ingested a glass of wine, a Zanax and codeine medicine for a headache, the combination possibly causing her temper to boil over easily. She informed Martin that she had grown tired of sharing him with Cathy and him maintaining that he was getting a divorce, although it didn't appear that way to her in their five years together. She went "ballistic" -- Martin's term in the report -- and began whaling away, scratching his nose and neck. Martin, who stands nine inches taller and more than 100 pounds heavier than Haggerty-Martin, a 5-foot-5, 116-pound blonde, punched her on the right side of her jaw. Moments later, he left the house.
While Johnson was interviewing Haggerty-Martin, her telephone rang. It was Martin. The officer took the phone and asked Martin to return to the rented house, which he did within minutes, telling Johnson that he also had a .22 caliber gun in the glovebox of his Hummer.
Martin, 32, identifying himself with an Arizona driver's license, admitted that he struck her, though he could not precisely remember how.
It wasn't the first time he hit her, she said.
She recalled a drive from Jacksonville to Orlando in June 1997, during a three-game stint when Martin was on an injury-rehabilitation assignment with the Pirates' Class AA Carolina club. He got abusive in the car, she said, and she required medical treatment in Orlando. She said she had documentation to prove this, adding that she lodged a complaint with the Orange County (Fla.) Sheriff's Department -- which could find no such report last week.
She told Scottsdale police that, since she moved from Sarasota, Fla., to the Pinnacle Peak area around Thanksgiving so they could be together, the two got into several fights, and he once threatened her by sticking the barrel of a gun into her mouth.
She quoted him as saying during previous arguments (although the police report incorrectly listed it as happening only that Monday night, she said): "If you cheat on me, lie to me, betray me, I will O.J. your ass so quick. I will torture you. I'll tie you up and cut you and pour alcohol on you." The alleged statement lead to Martin getting charged with threatening or intimidating in addition to domestic-violence assault.
Martin, barefoot with blood speckling his white shirt, and Haggerty-Martin, her jaw swollen and discolored, were taken to District Two jail for booking around midnight. They spent the night in jail, and at a hearing the next morning were ordered to have no contact until a scheduled April 12 hearing. Little more than a day later, she returned to court and agreed to enter a diversionary program along with a year probation, after which her Arizona record will be cleared.
A week later, she admitted to police that a December fight with Martin resulted in her requiring medical attention, and she produced records to verify it. Scottsdale prosecutors hadn't decided by week's end whether that information would lead to any charges.
"The light gets put on you," Martin said of the allegations of domestic violence, threats, two marriages and paternity out of wedlock. "It isn't that bad."
Tomorrow: The Padres, the husband and the wife (No. 2?)
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Al Martin, felony bigamy. 
