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The Murder of Sri Lanka’s Star Rugby Player

The Havelock Sports Club had lost another promising rugby player.

Theewari Dulandiya
6 min readJan 31, 2025
Image by Marco Massimo from Pixabay

On May 16, 1986, at around 2:30 a.m., the phone rang at the Bambalapitiya police station in Sri Lanka. On the other end of the call was a frantic female voice.

She complained to the police about the sound of fighting in the house next door. Ten minutes after receiving the call, police officers went to the scene. At first glance, the officers knew that something terrible had happened there.

A Desperate Call

Tony Martin was a great Sri Lankan rugby player who played for Havelock Sports Club. He was unmarried and 35 years old in 1986. By then, he had stopped playing Rugby and was a promising businessman. Tony lived in an annex next to his mother’s house opposite the Havelock Sports Club.

Both houses had separate entrances. The gate to Tony’s house was about 6 feet high. There was a door connecting the two houses between Tony’s and his mother’s bedrooms. However, they did not use that door regularly.

On May 16, 1986, at around 2:30 a.m., the mother heard Tony calling her. “Mommy…Mommy…” The voice was accompanied by the sound of a fight. She then turned on all the lights in the house. When the lights were turned on, the noise…

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Theewari Dulandiya
Theewari Dulandiya

Written by Theewari Dulandiya

Hello! After three-plus years of writing about true crime, I'm excited to announce that I've created my first crime-related newsletter, Crimewatch Chronicles.

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