TOMS RIVER - A grand jury has returned an additional indictmentagainst a Brick man accused of taking part in the murder ofhis father, one which could send him to prison for the rest of his life without any possibility of parole if convicted.
Mark J. Austin, 30, was already facing charges of murder, conspiracy to commit murder, possession of a weapon for an unlawful purpose and unlawful possession of a weapon in connection with the beating death of his father, Mark Richard Austin, 55, of Brick on Sept. 7, 2019,according to the prosecutor's office.
A superseding indictment announced Friday says that Austin allegedly "procured the commission of the murder of his father by paymentor promise of any payment for any monetary value," according to Ocean County Prosecutor Bradley D. Billhimer.
The indictment follows an investigationwhich determined that Mark J. Austin agreed to pay Jeray Melton, 30, of Salem City, $50,000 in exchange for killing his father.
Upon his arrest in the September case, Melton told police in a videotaped statement that the victim's son, Mark J. Austin, put a gun to his head and forced him to kill the elder Austin.
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Changed story
However, Melton's story changed several times over the course of the investigation. In pleading guilty to aggravated manslaughter on Feb. 25, 2020, in a deal that requires him to testify against Austin,he provided his most up-to-date version in court, telling the judge that the victim's son—his one-time prison cellmate — offered him $50,000 to kill his father, according to Mark J. Austin's attorneys, Robert De Groot and Oleg Nekretin of Newark.
When asked by investigators why he changed his story so many times, Melton told them he was scared and has “mental health problems,"according to a transcript of a statement he gave to detectives in February.
In a videotaped confession, which the Asbury Park Press viewed in 2019 at De Groot’s office, Melton said the younger Austin put a gun to his head and told him, “Do it or you die or your family dies."
Melton added Austin also boasted of mob connections in forcing him to take a baseball bat to the elder Austin and beat him to death. The dispute, Melton had told the court, was over a debt between $5,000 and $8,000 the younger Austin owned to his father.
He then later told investigators he had gone to the Austins' home to buy marijuana. Austin handed him a wooden bat and a pair of black gloves and said, "Do this, I'm gonna be sitting right here watching," Melton said in the Sept. 13 confession. After the killing, Melton said Austin drove him back home to Salem.
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Melton gave detectives two other versions of what happened, and those versions were not recorded, officials said.
In one, Melton asserted that Austin killed his father and offered him $50,000 to take responsibility for it, attorneys said.In another, Melton told detectives that Austin asked him to beat his father, but then took hold of the bat and killed his father himself, attorneys said.
In pleading guilty, Melton said his former cellmate— from March 2016 to May 2016 at the Garden Youth Correctional Facility in Burlington County—picked him up and drove him to his Brick home on Sept. 7. Once there, Melton said he picked up a baseball bat and beat the elder Austin to death with it.
Melton has been held at the Monmouth County jail, pending his sentencing date.
Under state law, this additional indictment is an "aggravating factor" under which, if Austin is convicted,requires that he be sentenced to life in prison without the possibilityof parole.
How we got here
The homicide first came to light on the night of Sept. 7, when Brick police received a report of an unresponsive man at 770 Acorn Drive in Brick.
Upon arrival, police entered through the unlocked front door and "discovered what appeared to be a person covered in blankets," authorities said. Underneath was the elder Austin, dead, "with apparent blunt force trauma to the face."
Police got a search warrant in the early hours of the next morning, searched theAcorn Drive houseand recovered a bat "with apparent blood transfer and hair located in the kitchen," authorities wrote. In a back room they found "a beer, spoon, and a belt" and "what appeared to bean apparatus used for ingesting narcotics."
Detectives interviewed the younger Austin later that same day and said he told them he and his 4-year-old son at the time had slept at the Acorn Drive home the night of Sept. 6 and that on the afternoon of Sept. 7 he had spoke with his father.
The younger Austin later told detectives his father had given him instructions "to pick up a black male who would be standing on the side of the road" at routes 70 and 72, which he did after going to his mother's home to drop off his own son, according to an affidavit of probable cause.
He told investigators he'd left the man, whom he described as a black man wearing a beard and red baseball cap, at his and his father's home on his father's instructions, even though he said his father was not home at the time.
Then he went back to his mother's house to drop off his dogs before returning home, retrievingthe ostensible stranger and driving him back to where he had found him.
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"While at the residence Melton said Austin threatened him with a handgun and forced Melton to strike Austin's father multiple times in the head with a bat resulting in his death," the affidavit said. "Melton stated that after striking the victim multiple times in the head with a bat Austin drove Melton back to his residence in Salem City."
Then, Melton told the detectives, Austin took Melton's clothes and put them in a garbage bag with bleach and tossed the bag in a dumpster, Byrne wrote.
After a "thorough and extensive" investigation involving multiple law enforcement agencies across the county, Mark J. Austin and Melton were determined to have conspired in the murder, Billhimer said.
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Mark J. Austin was charged less than a week later with murder and conspiracy to commit murder, as well as weapon charges and has been held at the Ocean County Jail since.
In addition to praise for the work of their own departments and units, Billhimer and Brick Township Police Chief James Riccio issued a joint expression of gratitude to the following law enforcement agencies for their assistance in the arrests of Austin and Melton: the Ocean County Sheriff’s Office, Salem County Prosecutor’s Office, City of Salem Police Department, New Jersey State Police Major Crime Bureau, New Jersey State Police TEAMS Unit, New Jersey Department of Corrections, Port Authority of New York and New Jersey Police Department, Manchester Township Police Department, Millville Police Department, Bayonne Police Department and the FBI.
Joshua Chung is the 9-5 breaking news and weather reporter.A lifelong Jersey Shore resident, he is a recent graduate of Michigan State University. Contact him at jchung@gannettnj.com,917-703-9373 or onTwitter @Joshchunggg
