The prosecution and defense began laying the foundation for their cases today in the trial of a Roanoke Rapids interior decorator charged with obtaining property by false pretense and exploitation of the elderly.

Testimony today in the Tony Martin trial by state witnesses showed the alleged victim, Fay Pierce, was incapable of managing the business affairs after her husband, a plumber and property owner, died in 2010. Pierce, 75, had not as much operated a calculator or adding machine, witnesses said.

No mention has been made thus far of a charge lodged against Martin last week for allegedly stalking the victim.

The Pierce family’s relationship with Martin began when he offered to do interior decorating at the house Pierce moved into, which was across the street from her daughter, as a way to pay off a $2,000 plumbing debt.

After that relationship was forged, testimony showed Martin not only hounded Pierce for loans but her daughter and son-in-law as well.

A couple of months after the $80,000 interior-decorating job he did, Martin came back, Pierce said. “He talked about family and grandchildren,” she told the court under questioning by Halifax County Assistant District Attorney Amy Broughton. “I don’t know the date but he asked for a $40,000 loan. He said he would pay it back.”

Martin gave no promissory note but did pay it back.

A number of times after that Martin began asking for more money. “He said he needed it for his business,” Pierce said, “to pay for materials. He would tell me he was going to pay it back.”

Pierce said Martin told her he didn’t want to get on the bad side of her daughter, Wanda Cooke, who kept the business books and was a cosigner with her mother following her father’s death. “We didn’t tell Wanda anything.”

Pierce noted that Martin would bring her flowers for her birthday and Valentine’s.

It was during the aftermath of a break-in that un-cashed checks from Martin to Pierce were found on a closed Citizens Community Bank checking account, testimony showed. “He never told me they were on a closed account,” Pierce said. “He said he would let me know when I could cash them.”

Pierce said she never cashed them because she never got the word she could.

Martin, however, cashed all the checks Pierce wrote to him, she said.

While Pierce told defense attorney Kanter Searcy Morris she could read numbers for charts as a licensed practical nurse, she said her late husband handled all the financial matters. Following his death, Pierce said she only takes the deposits to the bank after her daughter fills them out. “He (Martin) told me he was going to open a business. I didn’t say I’d pay for the business.”

Cooke said her mother was never a financially minded person. “She never did anything business-wise for the company.”

Cooke said soon after the decorating work was done, Martin asked her for $5,000. “I said, ‘Why don’t you ask your own family?’ He said he would pay $500 to loan $5,000. I gave him the $5,000. It was like he was begging and pleading. It was like a desperate plea.”

Martin paid the money back in 35 days, Cooke said.

After Cooke found out about the $40,000 loan, she said her mother said she didn’t know how to tell him no. “I told him not to call her anymore.”

When Cooke went through the contents collected following the break-in, she said the first thing she saw was a bunch of yellow checks. “They had Tony Martin all over those checks. After I was through screaming and hollering, I called mamma and asked her what those checks from Tony Martin were for. She said Tony Martin kept coming by the house ‘begging me for money.’”

When Cooke confronted Martin in a phone conversation he answered from Atlanta. “I told him I had found like 12 checks,” she said and reminded him of the conversation to not bother her mother. “I told him to have a wonderful time in Atlanta spending my mother’s money. There was no excuse for him taking advantage of my mother like that.”

Morris asked Cooke whether she was aware a civil suit the family filed against Martin calls the money a loan. “What else would you call it?” Cooke replied.

Cooke confirmed to Morris that when Martin offered to pay back the some $150,000 by paying $1,000 a month, she told him, “Any further conversation would have to be with (Roanoke Rapids police Detective) John Taylor.”