Toledo Woman Gets 22 Years After Ordering Lovers To Torture Boyfriend, Offers Shocking Defense

A woman who had been in a polyamorous relationship with six people has been sentenced to prison for more than 20 years after she ordered the assault of one of her boyfriends.

The 29-year-old woman, identified as Martina Esqueda, was sentenced to 22 years in prison in a Lucas County court on May 21. She was sentenced for being the ringleader behind the assault of Austyn McCellan.

Michael Esqueda, Martina’s husband, and several of her boyfriends, including McCellan, Aaron Austin Brandshaw, Chance Johnston, and David Cessna, all lived together in a house in Toledo.

The 29-year-old woman ordered her boyfriends to take McCellan to the Red Roof Inn in Maumee, where they beat him with fists and baseball bats for ten days. He suffered multiple broken bones and was deprived of sleep and food, the Toledo Blade reported.

Esqueda was allegedly the mastermind behind the entire operation, giving direct orders to her boyfriends to beat and assault the victim, according to police. She was sentenced to eight years for first-degree kidnapping and seven years each for two counts of second-degree assault, which will be served consecutively.

Esqueda's husband received a 16-year sentence for the same charges. The other men were serving varying sentences, while Cessna, one of the boyfriends, is scheduled to go on trial in the last week of May.

McCellan told police that the ordeal began after a dog fight broke out at Esqueda’s home. When he and the 29-year-old attempted to break up the brawl, she suffered a broken arm in the chaos. Instead of explaining what truly happened, Esqueda allegedly falsely accused McCellan of breaking her arm, according to police reports. The claim allegedly sparked her lovers’ brutal revenge.

McCellan was rescued only when his captors allowed him a brief trip to a nearby Speedway convenience store on March 21, 2025, according to reports by Fox 8.

During that moment of freedom, he managed to contact someone, who then alerted his mother. His mother immediately rushed to the Red Roof Inn to rescue her son, and police were called to the scene. Officers obtained warrants, placed the hotel under surveillance, and later arrested all six suspects before they could flee the area. McCellan was rushed to the hospital with injuries covering his entire body.

The victim said in a letter read in court on May 21 that he still suffers from nightmares about the ordeal.

“None of this would have happened had you not been the ringleader or mastermind behind every bad thing that happened to me,” he wrote, according to The Blade. He said he was forced to stay in the home and “never did anything to any of them or the animals living in the house.”

Esqueda’s attorney argued that the woman had been s—---- abused as a child and spent her late teens in foster care, which left her unable to form healthy relationships. ‘She does not understand love, because she has never felt it,” Attorney Morgan Isenberg said.

‘The people who were supposed to love her, supposed to support her, supposed to help her grow, they broke her.’

In a statement to the court, Esqueda admitted to McCellan that she should have been a friend when he needed her. “Instead of knocking you down when you were already down,” she said, according to The Blade.