Suspect is held in homeless man's fiery death in Los Angeles

Suspect is held in homeless man's fiery death in Los Angeles


Witness identifications and DNA evidence lead to arrest of man with an alleged grudge against the homeless.

By Hector Becerra and Richard Winton
January 23, 2009

The detectives assured his family over and over that they would catch the man who splashed gasoline on their homeless brother, John Robert McGraham, and set him ablaze on a Mid-Wilshire street corner last fall. But the man's brother, David McGraham, wasn't so sure.

"They said unequivocally, 'We'll get him,' " he said. "As time passed, I thought it wasn't going to happen. I just figured the killer got away with it."


Then, on Thursday afternoon, his sister Susanne McGraham-Paisley called him at his home in Washington state. She was sobbing as she told her brother that she had just heard from one of the Los Angeles Police Department detectives.

"They got him," she told her older brother.

Detectives arrested Benjamin Mathew Martin, 30, on suspicion of murder just before noon Thursday in Rancho Mirage. Witness identifications and DNA evidence left behind tied Martin to the killing, said Lt. Mark Tappan. But officials did not provide details on what led them to Martin.
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