fugitive from El Salvador was convicted on Monday in the 2023 slaying of a Maryland woman who was attacked while exercising on a popular hiking trail northeast of Baltimore.
Prosecutors alleged that Victor Martinez-Hernandez, 24, carried out a planned attack when he abducted Rachel Morin from the trail, struck her head against nearby rocks, raped her, and concealed her body in a drainage culvert. Their case heavily relied on DNA evidence linking him to the crime.
According to Randolph Rice, an attorney representing Morin’s relatives, a jury found Martinez-Hernandez guilty of first-degree murder and first-degree rape, among other offenses.
“The Morin family is incredibly relieved that justice was served today,” Rice stated.
Martinez-Hernandez was accused of illegally entering the United States after allegedly murdering another woman in his home country. Authorities also connected him to a 2023 home invasion in Los Angeles.
Morin was killed in August 2023. This violent act sent shockwaves through Bel Air, a suburban community northeast of Baltimore, and became a political flashpoint during the 2024 presidential election campaign as Donald Trump called for increased border security and mass deportations of immigrants living in the US illegally.
Martinez-Hernandez was apprehended last summer in Oklahoma. Prosecutors stated that he had been residing in Bel Air around the time of Morin’s death and that Morin regularly walked or ran along the same route, typically in the evenings.
Defense attorneys challenged the prosecution’s assertion that the crime was a random attack, arguing that police had apprehended the wrong individual. They also urged jurors to pay close attention to unanswered questions during the trial, including the matter of motive.
According to prosecutors, detectives collected DNA from multiple locations on Morin’s body and identified Martinez-Hernandez as a suspect. Following interviews with some of his relatives, detectives matched DNA from the crime scene with DNA collected from socks left behind by Martinez-Hernandez when he fled Maryland.
Morin, 37, is survived by five children. Her 14-year-old daughter was the first witness to testify last week, fighting back tears as she described the immediate aftermath of her mother’s disappearance.
