Todd to stand trial for murder

Published 12:06 am Saturday, April 16, 2011

The Covington County DA’s office will prosecute one of five murder cases currently on the docket in next week’s criminal court term.

District Attorney Walt Merrell said the state’s case against Harold Elton Todd, charged with murder in the March 29, 2008, shooting death of his live-in girlfriend, Veronica Elizabeth Martinez, will be one of two cases before juries.

Todd and Martinez, who had a long history of domestic violence, lived in the Beulah community. He was 66 at the time of his arrest; she was 72.

Merrell said court will open with a multiple-count sex abuse case, and the murder case will be tried as soon as the first one is finished, likely on Wednesday.

The second of the five murder cases, a vehicular homicide case against David Wiltshire, is set for the May 23, 2011 trial docket. Wiltshire was charged with two counts of murder in a March 2007 traffic accident that claimed the lives of two women, one of whom was a passenger in his vehicle. This case is being tried by the attorney general’s office.