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According to
the book description of One
Detective’s Journey Into the Abyss:
Roads Traveled, Lessons Learned,
Villainy Exposed, "Being
raised in the New York metropolitan
region but living in the San
Francisco Bay area exposed Martens
to two worlds. One was inundated
with Mafia and racketeering. The
other was the nascent evolution of
the Free Speech, Free Love, and
anti-Viet Nam War movements. Both
experiences shaped his perspective
on government institutions and the
fragile role of the law in ensuring
domestic tranquility.
Only through
experiencing the pernicious powers
of the Mafia could one fully
appreciate the damage that can and
is visited on the body politic of a
region or a state. With the racial
unrest that consumed New Jersey in
the sixties coupled with the
national attention that resulted in
New Jersey being labeled “the most
corrupt state in the nation,” did
Martens come to realize just how
organized crime had become
indistinguishable from government.
The body-politic was terminally
ill; political cancer that had
metastasized.
After an
impressive investigative career in
the New Jersey State Police,
Martens was appointed to the
position of Executive Director of
the Pennsylvania Crime Commission.
While the Mafia had extended its
tentacles throughout the
government, local criminal
organizations posed an
equally-pernicious threat to the
body-politic. Confronted with
political retribution from both
local and state politicians,
investigating the attorney general
proved to be the Commission’s death
knell. In the words of some, it was
a murder-suicide.
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