Murderer told Watson, ‘I’m going to kill her’
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That’s when Kevin Martin barreled into the parking lot and started a conversation Watson says he will never forget.
“He told me he was going to kill her,” said Watson. “He said he was going to kill them all.”
The person Martin wanted to kill was his wife, Katrina Nunley, who was about a mile away at Treemont Apartments. The couple had been separated about two months, and friends say tension had been escalating about custody of their children.
Watson said he brushed off the threat thinking Martin was merely running his mouth.
“I told him you’ll get in trouble for doing something like that,” said Watson. “And he said, ‘I ain’t going to get in no trouble.'”
What happened next is documented in police reports. Martin drove over to Treemont Apartments where he confronted and killed his wife, the apartment manager’s son, and then killed himself.
And by a strange twist of fate, Watson was one of the first people on the scene.
“We were in the Ryan’s parking lot when we saw a police car go just flying by,” said Watson. “So I looked over and said, ‘Let’s go see if he really did that.’ When we got there, bodies were lying everywhere. One guy was by the curb, she was on the steps, and he was in the back. People were screaming. It had just happened.”
Watson dated Nunley over a decade ago and they have one child together, Justin, 12. Justin was at the apartment when his mother was murdered, along with the two children she had with Martin, 10-year-old Adrian and 3-year-old Hunter.
“When I got there, my son was on the balcony yelling and screaming, ‘He just killed my mom,'” said Watson. “I really hate he had to see that. I hate that I had to see it. I mean that’s his mother and she was a good mother to him. I just don’t know what to tell him.”
Friends who stopped by the murder scene echoed Watson’s comments. They said Nunley was a caring mother who put her children first.
“She was a wonderful person and she loved her kids,” said Kim Simons, who said she first met Nunley when they were around 10 years old. “She had those kids with her every time I saw her.”
Michelle McCrary said she first met Katrina when the two were fifth-graders at Northside Elementary. Fighting back tears, she said they had been close friends ever since.
“She had a beautiful voice. She could sing anything and make it sound good,” said McCrary.
Simons says she remembers the singer Katrina first began to idolize.
“When we were young and Madonna first came out, she would sing all of Madonna’s songs,” said Simons. “And she sounded great. I was always telling her she should do something with her voice.”
Watson said picking up the pieces will be an emotional thunderstorm – especially for the children. Although Hunter, 3, is too young to understand the situation, Justin and Adrian are old enough to realize what happened. All three of the children stayed with Watson Wednesday night.
“I wanted to keep all three of them together and where else are they supposed to go?” said Watson. “I know for my son, it’s getting dark and it’s all starting to sink in. He’s going to have to get ready for bed and his mother is not around.
“I haven’t talked to him yet and I don’t really know what I’m going to do. Nothing like this has ever happened to me before. I don’t know what I’m going to say.”