A migrant from El Salvador, Victor Martinez-Hernandez, has been charged in the brutal rape and murder of Maryland mom Rachel Morin.
A migrant from El Salvador has been charged in the brutal rape and murder of Maryland mom Rachel Morin. 23-year-old Victor Martinez-Hernandez has been accused killing Morin on a Maryland hiking trail last year.
Cops matched Martinez-Hernandez's DNA to the crime scene, following which he was tracked down in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on Friday, June 14, according to Harford County Sheriff Jeffrey Gahler, New York Post reported. “Rachel's murderer is no longer a free man and, hopefully, he will never have the opportunity to walk free again,” Gahler said.
Who is Victor Martinez-Hernandez?
Police said that Martinez-Hernandez has connections to Salvadoran street gangs and has a violent history. In fact, he is believed to have committed at least one other murder.
“Victor Hernandez did not come to this country to make a better life for him or his family, he came here to escape the crimes he committed in El Salvador. He came here to murder Rachel and God-willing, no one else,” Gahler said. “But that should have never been allowed to happen.”
Martinez-Hernandez allegedly crossed into the United States illegally back in February 2023, after he killed another young woman. He was in the US for six months before attacking and killing Morin while she was walking alone on the Ma & Pa Heritage Trail in Bel Air.
“We all suspected that Rachel was not his first victim,” Gahler said, according to Fox News. “It is my understanding that this suspect, this monster, fled to the United States illegally after committing the brutal murder of a young woman in El Salvador a month earlier, in January of 2023.”
Morin's naked body had suffered very severe trauma, so much so that her family said it looked as though “her head had been smashed in with a rock.” About a month after Morin was murdered, Martinez-Hernandez's DNA was matched by officials to a sample found at the scene of a home invasion and assault in Los Angeles.
“Once in our country, and likely emboldened by his anonymity, he brutally attacked a nine-year-old girl and her mother during a home invasion in March of 2023 in Los Angeles,” Gahler said. “And as everyone I believe is aware, that was our first DNA match linking Rachel's case to the one in Los Angeles.”
Gahler said that they were able to identify the suspect only in May. After tracking down Martinez-Hernandez in Tulsa two weeks back, an arrest warrant was finally executed on Friday, just before midnight.
The suspect has now been taken into custody, and booked on first-degree murder and first-degree rape charges. A motive for the murder has not been revealed.
Morin's mother, Patricia Morin, thanked investigators for finally tracking down her daughter's killer. “At some of the points during this, I didn't think that we were ever going to have an answer and that it would be a cold case,” Patricia said. “At one point when things looked really bleak and hopeless, the lead detective told me, ‘Patience will win in the end.'”
‘American citizens are not safe because of their failed immigration policies'
Gahler addressed the crisis at the Southern border, and directed his comments to the White House and to “both members of Congress.” “We are 1800 miles of the southern border,” Gahler said. “And American citizens are not safe because of their failed immigration policies.”
“This is the second time in two years that an innocent Harford County woman has lost her life to a criminal in our country illegally,” he added. “In both cases, they are suspects from El Salvador with ties to criminal gangs. This should not be happening.”
