‘KILLING JUSTIN BIEBER’: Officer details pop star’s stalker's kidnapping, castration plot

Article content

A former corrections officer is speaking out about a man who was plotting to have Justin Bieber kidnapped, castrated, and killed.

“One morning, he wanted to talk to me personally, in private. Right away, he started talking about his tattoo of Justin Bieber,” Edgar Pinon, who worked as a sergeant at the New Mexico Department of Corrections at the time of the incident, recalled of inmate Dana Martin on the Investigation Discovery docuseries Hollywood Demons.

Martin was serving two life sentences for the 2000 rape and murder of 15-year-old DeAndra Florucci.

“He went on and on about how he’s been trying to make contact with Justin,” Pinon continued on the “Stalking the Stars” episode.

“That’s when he started telling us a story. He had arranged for two individuals to travel to the East Coast, and he gave them a hit list.”

Mark Staake, who Martin previously met in prison, and Staake’s nephew, Tanner Ruane, were captured by U.S. Border Patrol on Nov. 19, 2012, as they tried to return to Vermont after accidentally ending up in Canada.

“Their vehicle was searched, and they were able to find shears and neckties. Those were the tools necessary to commit the crimes,” Pinon detailed.

Martin, Staake, and Ruane’s plan was to kill a couple in Vermont, then head to New York to kill Bieber and his bodyguard, according to the series via Entertainment Weekly.

In a phone call Ruane made to Martin the day after he was released from custody following the arrest at the border, he referred to the targets of their scheme as “dogs” and confirmed they would be castrated using garden shears on the singer who was 18 at the time.

Pinon said that Martin told him: “The point of this whole thing was killing Justin Bieber.”

RECOMMENDED VIDEO

We apologize, but this video has failed to load.

Try refreshing your browser, or
tap here to see other videos from our team.

Play Video

During his interrogation, Martin revealed that he felt rejected after his letters to the teen superstar had gone unanswered.

“There’s these people I wanted to get killed,” Martin said in the interrogation.

“What we wanted to do for possible notoriety, which was, you know, kidnapping him… I was going on the hope that, ‘Oh, they’re just going to go up there and kill a couple people in Vermont, so they can probably head out to wherever Bieber is.”

Ruane was convicted of conspiracy to commit murder in 2014, while Staake was convicted on two counts of conspiracy to commit first-degree murder and sentenced to nine years, plus another nine years to be served concurrently the following year.

Martin was moved to the maximum security New Mexico State Penitentiary in 2013, though Pinon has doubts that the killer actually wanted Bieber dead and merely wanted to get the singer’s attention.

Martin explained during his interrogation: “I’m a nobody in prison. I want Justin Bieber to know who I am. It’s crazy, isn’t it?”

In recent months, Bieber’s fans have grown concerned about his mental health.

The “Sorry” singer shared footage of photographers trying to get a shot of him as he tried to make his way to a waiting car.

“This has to stop,” he captioned the Instagram post, as he can be heard repeatedly saying in disbelief, “Look at these guys, man!”

Bieber’s fans agreed, with many lauding him for dealing with the “mental stress” of it all.

“To think this has been happening to you since you were 13 is just absolutely insane,” one person wrote.

Another added, “The POV is so stressful to watch. Breaks my heart.”

A third user commented, “Can’t believe this is legal.”