In the small town of Normangee, Texas, Alice Faye Martin was a beloved and familiar presence. At 72 years old, the retired postmistress was known for her warmth and the routine of her daily walks. As the wife of a respected Madison County commissioner, she was deeply woven into the fabric of the close-knit community. Her life was one of quiet dignity and connection, a life that made the events of February 13, 1987, all the more shocking and difficult for her neighbors and loved ones to
comprehend.
On that Friday, Mrs. Martin set out for her customary walk, a simple pleasure in her peaceful, rural life. But she did not return home. The alarm was raised, and a search began. The following day, her body was discovered in a remote field in neighboring Robertson County. The scene told a story of brutal violence that stood in stark contrast to the gentle life she had lived. She had been abducted, sexually assaulted, strangled with a ligature, and stabbed multiple times in the back. The senseless violence of the act left the community in a state of fear and grief.
With no immediate suspects or apparent motive, the investigation into Alice Martin’s murder was difficult from the start. Law enforcement was baffled, and a profound sense of unease settled over the region. The Normangee State Bank and Robertson County CrimeStoppers offered a reward for information, hoping for a lead that would break the case open, but for months, there was only silence. Investigators briefly looked at another murder suspect for involvement, but he was quickly ruled out, and the trail went cold. The community was left to mourn Mrs. Martin without the closure of knowing who was responsible for her death.
The break in the case came more than a year later and from an entirely different county. In October 1988, a student at Texas A&M University survived a horrific attack. She had been abducted, raped, and had her throat slit, but she managed to provide investigators with a detailed description of her assailant. This led to the arrest of Daniel Lee Corwin, a cabinet maker who had a previous conviction for a violent rape in 1975, for which he had served only nine years of a 40-year sentence.
While in custody for the attempted murder, Corwin began to talk. In the spring of 1989, he confessed to a string of unsolved murders that had terrorized several Texas counties. He admitted to killing 26-year-old Debra Lynn Ewing in July 1987 and 36-year-old Mary Carrell Risinger in October 1987. He also confessed to the murder of Alice Faye Martin, though he claimed her death had been unintentional. His detailed confessions provided information that only the killer could have known, finally linking him definitively to the slaying of the beloved postmistress.
Daniel Lee Corwin was charged with capital murder under a new Texas "serial killer statute," which allowed for the prosecution of multiple murders committed in separate incidents as part of the same course of conduct. In March 1990, a Montgomery County jury convicted him of the capital murders of Alice Martin and Mary Risinger. The jury needed less than 35 minutes of deliberation to recommend a sentence of death.
After spending eight years on death row, Daniel Lee Corwin was executed by lethal injection on December 7, 1998. In a final statement, he expressed sorrow and regret to the families of his victims. For the community of Normangee, the finality of the legal process brought a measure of justice, but it could never erase the memory of the violence that had shattered their peace and stolen the life of Alice Faye Martin, a respected woman who had simply gone out for a walk.
