Shelby woman pleads guilty to killing man in Hickory

A Shelby woman will spend at least 20 years in prison for killing a man in 2021.

Bryana Salymar Martines, 25, of Shelby, was sentenced this week to 20 to 25 years in prison. The sentence was handed down in Catawba County Superior Court after she pleaded guilty to second-degree murder on Monday,

Martines took responsibility for taking the life of 72-year-old Robert “Bob” Bruce Godfrey on Dec. 1, 2021.

Officers from Hickory Police Department responded to a Hickory apartment complex on Dec. 4, 2021, after Godfrey’s son found him deceased at his residence. He had been emailing and texting his father for a couple days with no response and went to check on him. The apartment was in disarray, and Godfrey’s vehicle was missing, according to a press release from the Burke County District Attorney’s Office.

Martines, along with Abraham Adon Jr., were stopped in the vehicle in Camden, Georgia, and she was identified as a person of interest in the death of Godfrey.

On Dec. 7, 2021, investigators from Hickory interviewed Adon, who had been with Martines, in Lancaster County, South Carolina, where he was incarcerated. He and Martines had been in a relationship for two months, and he told investigators that Martines confided in him that she had murdered Godfrey by striking him on the head several times with a glass object, according to the press release.

Martines was taken into custody on Dec. 8, 2021, and interviewed. She indicated that she and Godfrey were in a relationship. When that relationship ended, she began seeing Adon.

She told investigators that during a final encounter with Godfrey, she killed him by striking him over the head with a bottle, the press release says.

The autopsy report from Wake Forest Baptist Regional Medical Center revealed that Godfrey died from blunt force trauma to the head.

Adon was charged with fleeing arrest and accessory after the fact.