Nick Martin: Widow Amanda Martin opens up on 10-year relationship with Rebels bikie boss at standover trial

There were two Nick Martins, according to the slain bikie boss’s widow — “Nick ‘the partner’ and Nick ‘the Rebel’”. Speaking from the witness box at her own criminal trial in Perth’s District Court on Friday, Amanda Martin opened up about her 10-year relationship with the former Rebels chief. Nick Martin was facing similar charges to those Ms Martin is fighting — which allege that she and he both stood over their accountant to get $30,000 cash and assaulted him to steal his car on October 3 in 2013. However, the bikie boss was shot dead in front of hundreds of spectators at Kwinana motorplex as part of a hit by a rival on December 12, 2020, leaving Ms Martin to fight the claims alone. At her trial this week, the 49-year-old pleaded not guilty to one count each of demanding property by oral threats and aggravated assault with intent to rob. She claimed that Nick Martin had been so controlling and short-tempered that there was no way she could have been involved in the incident between him and his accountant almost 10 years ago. Instead, she told the jury that before the day in question, Nick Martin had never planned to include her in his business dealings. “I never asked him about his activities,” Ms Martin said. “It’s not a woman’s place ... (and) he was in business with his mum, so it wasn’t my business.” She explained how Nick Martin’s authority had stretched so far that he’d often made her stay in the car while he caught up with his friends. And on the rare occasion that he had taken her to the Rebels clubhouse, she had been forced to sit at the bar with the young nominees, and wait for him to return. While she stressed the bikie boss — who towered over her at six-feet tall and 137kg — had never physically assaulted her, she said he’d frequently displayed anger and hostility towards her. “He was very controlling,” she said. “(But) I loved him.” Barrister Simon Watters told the court Ms Martin had not been allowed to touch her partner’s phone either, although the same rule did not apply to him. “She quickly learned not to ask him questions as he’d get angry, (and) tell her it was none of her business,” he said. But that all changed after October 3 in 2013 when Ms Martin admits her partner started to lean on her for help with his taxes. “He kept his business to himself … until he wanted to kill (the accountant),” she said. “He was very angry with (him).” The jury was told the reason Nick Martin had lost his temper with his accountant, hit him in the head with a calculator, stolen his $95,000 car, and threatened his family if he didn’t give him $30,000 in cash, was because the gang chief had been hit with a tax bill of almost $400,000. It came after Nick Martin, eager to buy two houses and a Range Rover, had lodged multiple loan applications with the Bank of Queensland that inflated his income, as well as submitted tax returns that downplayed his earnings by hundreds of thousands of dollars. After receiving the massive tax bill, Nick Martin drove to his accountant’s Balcatta office. While Ms Martin says she, like so many times before, was told to stay in the car, State prosecutor Sean O’Sullivan alleges she got out with him, and acted as Martin’s assistant inside the premises. Describing the ordeal during his evidence earlier this week, the accountant said he’d been “very scared”. “He was quite angry to me and yelled to me [sic],” he said. After initially refusing to hand over his car, a raging Nick Martin smacked the accountant in the head with a calculator and ordered the man hand over his driver’s licence and signed transfer papers. That’s when the prosecution says Ms Martin photocopied the documents for the bikie, and took the accountant to a nearby bank to withdraw $30,000. Ms Martin claims she never stepped inside the office that day, and had had no idea why Martin wanted her to drive the accountant to the bank. “Nick was going off. He and (the accountant) weren’t getting along. And (the accountant) wouldn’t deal with Nick anymore, he was too scared. (So) Nick told me to contact him,” she said. It’s only then that Ms Martin says she started assisting her late partner with his tax affairs — by her account exonerating her of the charges against her. The jury was shown a collection of text messages exchanged between the accountant and Ms Martin, which Mr O’Sullivan said showed how her late partner had been using her for her “expertise”. It was a skillset Ms Martin had acquired through the running of her own two businesses — tattoo shops — which Mr O’Sullivan argued her bikie husband would have used to his advantage well before the October 2013 incident. But throughout her cross-examination, Ms Martin maintained “that’s not true”. The trial continues.