Victor Martinez-Hernandez is an accused killer who has been charged with the murder of Rachel Morin in Maryland
According to police reports Rachel Morin, who was the mother of five would be reported missing by her boyfriend. Police would find her body near the Bel Air’s Ma and Pa hiking trail in Maryland.
DNA from the crime scene would point to a suspect who was involved in a home invasion and assault in Los Angeles months prior however officials did not know the identity of the suspect
Soon however authorities would figure out the suspect was Victor Martinez-Hernandez who had fled his country and illegally entered the USA after he committed a murder in his home country.
Martinez-Hernandez would be arrested and has been charged with the murder of Rachel Morin as well as a host of other charges
Victor Martinez-Hernandez News
Investigators announced Saturday afternoon the arrest of a 23-year-old El Salvadoran man for the murder of Rachel Morin in Maryland last August.
Victor Antonio Martinez-Hernandez was arrested in Tulsa, Oklahoma, late Friday night after a 10-month investigation that included use of investigative genetic genealogy, local and federal investigators said at a press conference announcing the arrest.
Patricia Morin, Rachel’s mother, spoke briefly at the news conference, thanking law enforcement for working tirelessly to find her daughter’s killer.
The 37-year-old mother of five was found dead in in a drainage ditch along Bel Air’s Ma and Pa hiking trail on August 6, a day after her boyfriend reported her missing, as CrimeOnline reported. Shortly afterward, DNA evidence linked the murder to a home invasion and assault in Los Angeles in March 2023. The suspect was seen on video leaving the residence where the crime took place, but investigators didn’t know his name.
Harford County Sheriff Jeff Gahler said the breakthrough in the case came three weeks earlier when DNA evidence uncovered the suspect’s identity.
“Now we knew who he was, but we still didn’t know where he was,” the sheriff said.
That changed quickly over the past two weeks, Gahler said, as investigators tracked him to Oklahoma and obtained an arrest warrant Friday afternoon.
Gahler said that Martinez Hernandez crossed into the United States illegally in February 2023, a month after he allegedly killed a woman in his home country. While US Immigration and Customs Enforcement has placed a detainer on him, Gahler said that he will face charges in Maryland and California before he is deported.
The sheriff did not provide details about the arrest, but he said that the suspect faces a trespassing charge in Tulsa related to the arrest process.
Harford County State’s Attorney Alison Healey said her office has already initiated the extradition process to bring the suspect back to Maryland, adding that she would “personally be leading the prosecution of this case.”
Bill DelBogno, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Baltimore field office, said his team provided investigative genetic genealogy to identify family members of the suspect, and the agency’s legal attaches in El Salvador coordinated with Salvadoran authorities on the identification.
Gahler said that the suspect is believed to have some connection with Salvadoran gangs who helped him travel around the country, but he faces no charges related to gang activity either in the United States or El Salvador. He added that investigators have seen “nothing to indicate anyone other than him was involved” in Morin’s murder.
Maryland investigators have gone to Oklahoma to work on the case from there, he said. When he’s brought back to Maryland, Victor Martinez-Hernandez will face charges of first degree murder and first degree rape.