Tony Martin has sold his story to the Daily Mirror
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Tony Martin, the farmer released from jail after killing a burglar, is reported to be in good spirits after his first days of freedom, though still angry at his sentence.Businessman Malcolm Starr, who led the campaign for Martin's freedom, said the farmer was looking forward to be reunited with his Rottweiler dog, Otto.
Martin 58, was released on Monday after serving three out of five years for manslaughter.
Mr Starr said the farmer was still insisting that he would return to live at the Norfolk house where he killed the teenage burglar.
"He was in a very good mood.
"He was mainly concerned about seeing his dog and getting back to his farm.
"He was very jovial. It's not a side I have ever seen of him when he was in prison."
In an interview with the Daily Mirror newspaper published on Tuesday morning, Martin said the world had gone "quite, quite mad".
The Mirror is being investigated over whether it has broken the Press Complaints Commission's code of practice by paying a criminal for his story.
Friends and supporters of Fred Barras, the 16-year-old traveller killed by Martin, said the farmer should not be treated as a hero by the press.
Charles Smith, of the Gypsy Council, told the BBC: "If you lose a child there's always that resentment.
"If you look at the person and they're being treated as a hero, which is what's going on...
"The press are making this man into some sort of hero and I don't think he is, he's a criminal as well," he said.
But Martin, 58, told the Mirror: "When you've been through what I've been through, you have to just take it. I am not bitter.
"Yes I am angry. I didn't get justice. I got rough justice."
He said: "I can't even find the words to describe what I have been through.
Mobile policing
"Can you imagine it? Being given a murder sentence...
Martin wants to return to his isolated farm despite its state
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"But I have survived it because I have made myself survive it," said Martin, who was initially given a life sentence for murder, later reduced on appeal to manslaughter.
He expressed incredulity about the siting of a mobile police station installed outside his farm, which will be manned 24 hours a day for several weeks to ensure his safety.
Martin said: "Isn't that a case of shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted?
"If they'd done something as simple as listening to my worries before, none of this would have happened. Now I have my own police force.
"The world has gone quite, quite mad."
Fearon suing
Barras's accomplice Brendan Fearon, 33, is still in the process of suing Martin for leg injuries received in the 1999 shooting.
Fearon was himself released from jail on Friday, less than a third of the way through an 18-month sentence for heroin dealing.
Brendan Fearon was wounded by Martin
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That sentence followed a three-year sentence for the farm burglary, of which Fearon served 18 months.
On Monday Home Secretary David Blunkett said he intended to change the law so that in future, access to legal aid by a burglar trying to sue a householder would be blocked.
Martin is staying in a secret location courtesy of the Mirror at the moment.
He is believed to be determined to return to his isolated farm at Bleak House, in Emneth Hungate, Norfolk, in future.
The farm remains as dilapidated and overgrown as it was four years ago.
Steel shutters erected after the farmer was arrested still cover all the windows and the main house is so badly overgrown with ivy that it is difficult to spot.
The Mirror's editor, Piers Morgan, claimed he had not broken the PCC's code because the paper was exempt on the grounds of "public interest".
He told BBC news 24: "In the Tony Martin case there are clearly a number of fundamental issues that will result in changes to the law.
"That relates to the right of somebody to defend themselves and the right of the burglar to then sue somebody for what happened to him."
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Yes I am angry - I didn't get justice, I got rough justice
