Ashley Bropho killer: Evan James Martin jailed for life after murdering child snatcher in Hakea Prison

A prison inmate who murdered a high-profile child snatcher in jail and told him to close his eyes, picture his victims’ faces and say goodbye as he brutally attacked him has been handed a life sentence.

Evan James Martin, 43, launched two vicious assaults on Ashley Bropho within a day of each other in Perth’s Hakea Prison in March 2023. The second attack ended the child abductor’s life.

Bropho, a stepbrother of Terence Kelly who abducted four-year-old Cleo Smith in 2021, was awaiting sentencing for abducting a nine-year-old from a park near his home near the western Perth coastal suburb of Doubleview in 2022.

In the first attack in March 2023, Martin smashed Bropho’s head into shelving inside a cell and laid on top of him to pin him for another inmate to punch and stomp on the man’s head. 

READ MORE: Step-brother of Cleo Smith’s kidnapper is accused of snatching a nine-year-old girl from a suburban street

The next day Martin ambushed Bropho and used the guillotine chokehold to render Bropho unconscious in a cell.

Martin then used his full weight to stand on Bropho’s throat — crushing his larynx 

‘Right now, you’re the weak, vulnerable one like the victims were … picture their faces and say goodbye,’ Martin told Bropho.

Afterwards, he called on the intercom for ‘the boss’ and a set of handcuffs.

Martin proudly admitted the murder to other inmates.

A court heard that he attacked the child snatcher after he found out that a fellow inmate who had been sexually abused as a child, was upset to learn that Bropho was his new cellmate.

On being told this Martin reportedly reassured his friend ‘I will kill him’.

A month later, Martin told another inmate he was going to ‘do the public a service’ of disposing of a sex offender. 

In 2020, Martin attempted to murder a different sex offender using two crude knives in Acacia Prison in 2020, which he did with another inmate accomplice and this had kept in jail. 

In sentencing him to a further life sentence, Supreme Court of WA Justice Bruno Fiannaca said Martin acted as a ‘judge and executioner’ in the premeditated and cold-blooded murder of Bropho.

‘It wasn’t something that happened in the spur of the moment,’ Justice Fiannaca said, the West Australian reported.

‘You considered that you were justified in killing him.’

Evan James Martin said he was prompted to launch is attacks on Ashley Bropho after a friend complained of having him as a cellmate (stock image)

Martin, who suffers from chronic paranoid schizophrenia and borderline personality disorder, told the court he felt ‘very guilty over over the murder and expressed that guilt also in confessional letters.

However, Justice Fiannaca said he could detect no ‘remorse or empathy’ in Martin.

‘You have no shame,’ Justice Fiannaca said.

‘There is nothing that I can look at that would indicate you intend on changing.

Martin posed a very significant risk of further violent offending and was handed an additional a minimum jail term of 21 years. 

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