Earlier today, a fugitive out of El Salvador was convicted for his brutal rape and murder of a Maryland hiker back in 2023.
The victim, Rachel Morin, 37, was a mother of 5 who owned a house cleaning business. She went out for a jog one day along the Ma & Pa Heritage Trail in Bel Air, Maryland. It was a jog she never made it home from.
Prosecutors in the case said that Victor Martinez-Hernandez, 24, was guilty of a planned attack.
Martinez-Hernandez appeared in court Friday in a crisp white button-down shirt. He showed almost no emotion and used headphones to hear a Spanish translation of the proceedings.
“I will not give testimony,” Martinez-Hernandez said through a Spanish language interpreter.
“The defendant had a plan,” said Harford County State’s Attorney Alison Healey during her opening statement. She described a 150-foot (46-meter) trail of blood leading to Morin’s body.
The defendant lived and worked less than 1 mile from the trail. He had no alibi, nor would he provide a single word of defense. Martinez-Hernandez exercised his Fifth Amendment right to avoid self incrimination.
Savage Attack
Rachel Morin set out on August 5th, 2023 for a routine bit of exercise. It was a trail she went to almost everyday. Instead of making it home, along the path she was assaulted. After being viciously raped, she was beaten with a rock and strangled to death. Her body was then shoved into a drainage culvert.
Two hikers had passed the victim earlier in the day, while Rachel was still alive.
Kyle Stacy and his girlfriend, Olivia, were walking on the trail that evening with their dog when he heard a tree branch snap.
That’s when Stacy testified that he saw a man in the woods, which made him feel “pretty nervous and uncomfortable.” The man was holding a walking stick and wearing sunglasses and a gray sweatshirt with the hood up.
Thirty seconds to one minute later, Stacy said, he and his girlfriend walked past a woman he’d soon learn was Morin. She was alone.
When police were investigating the disappearance, a sketch was made of the suspect.
Picture Worth A Thousand Words
Upon investigating for several weeks, interviewing people in the area, and checking alibis, police came up with a person of interest.
Victor Martinez-Hernandez was living in the area for approximately 5 months when the attack occurred. When going to interview him, however, police found that Martinez-Hernandez had already fled the state.
His cousin, whom Victor had been living with, said he had no idea where Victor had gone. There were, however, dirty clothes and a toothbrush left behind, which police tested for DNA evidence. The evidence matched DNA left behind on Morin’s body and belongings.
After obtaining an arrest warrant, authorities tracked him to Tulsa, where they found him sitting at a bar, officials said. He was arrested and extradited to Maryland.
Martinez-Hernandez told detectives that he did not know the name Rachel Morin and had never been to Maryland. He suggested that someone wishing to do him harm could’ve planted his DNA at the crime scene.
Harford County Sheriff’s digital forensic supervisor Heather Marsh testified that she analyzed his phone and recovered evidence that Martinez-Hernandez had watched news reports on YouTube about the investigation.
Past Crimes
Upon investigating Martinez-Hernandez’s history, it was found that he was already a fugitive. An arrest was being pursued in his native El Salvador for a January 2023 murder of another young woman.
Another match to his DNA was found in a March 2023 home invasion and attack in Los Angeles.
The cherry on top? Martinez-Hernandez had already been deported three times before he ever set foot in Maryland.
In 2023, U.S. Customs and Border Protection reported that it apprehended Martinez-Hernandez after he illegally crossed the border into the United States and expelled him to Mexico three times.
His attorneys, Assistant Public Defenders Marcus Jenkins, Sawyer Hicks and Tara LeCompte, argued that there were unanswered questions in the case and gaps in the evidence against their client.
“Mr. Martinez-Hernandez is still presumed innocent,” Jenkins said in his closing argument. “You have to find him not guilty unless you have been persuaded, all 12 of you, that he is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.”
The prosecution rested their case Friday. Today, the defense spent less than 10 minutes deliberating before also resting. The Jury returned in under an hour with a Guilty verdict. When the verdict was read, Martinez-Hernandez appeared entirely unfazed.
Justice Rings Hollow
“It is my sincere hope that today’s verdict brings some peace and closure to the entire Morin family,” Harford County State’s Attorney Alison Healey told reporters at a news conference.
“While no verdict or sentence can ever bring Rachel back, I’m proud of the work that we’ve done to ensure that justice was served, and that Victor Martinez-Hernandez will never again be a threat to another woman in his lifetime.”
Matt McMahon, the father of Morin’s oldest daughter, Faye, commented that they “can’t even explain the energy release that you feel inside of you.”
“He was taking everything away from these women,” McMahon said. “And it was amazing to see so many powerful women take that power away from him.”
McMahon’s comments were referring to the arresting officer, the state’s attorney, and the foreperson of the jury. Women who only did their duty to the public, but gratitude goes out to them all the same.
Following the guilty verdict, Harford County Sheriff Jeff Gahler said the U.S. immigration system failed Morin.
“The failure here, again, is the immigration system that allowed this person to enter our country illegally and remain in our country and commit crimes in Los Angeles and then here in Harford County,” Gahler said.
Homeland Security Special Agent in Charge Mike McCarthy said the fact that the suspect was an illegal immigrant “adds another layer of pain and frustration to many of us in the community.”
“It raises questions that deserve to be taken seriously about how we protect our neighborhoods, about how we enforce our laws and how we prevent such tragedy in the future,” McCarthy said.
What Comes Next
The Harford County State’s Attorney’s Office filed a notice of its intention to seek life in prison without the possibility of parole — and prosecutors said they’ll likely ask for even more time at sentencing.
Whatever the sentence is, we can all be sure that it won’t be enough.
