The murder case of Rachel Morin got worse with new information. For example, it was revealed that the Maryland mother of five was “badly beaten” before she was raped.
According to a story from the New York Post, Victor Antonio Martinez Hernandez, a 23-year-old illegal El Salvadorian immigrant is accused of raping and killing Morin, beating, strangling, and raping his victim before leaving her partially naked. This happened in a Maryland court on Friday.
A lawyer for the Morin family, Randolph Rice, told the New York Post that the mother of five had “ten to fifteen head wounds and the manner of death was strangulation and blunt force injuries.”
Police say Morin’s killers hit her so hard that her family thought she looked like “her head had been smashed with a rock.”
He said, “She was attacked on the trail while she was working out and dragged through the woods to the tunnel where she was found.” This was the same point the State Attorney’s office made at Hernandez’s bail hearing.
Judge Kerwin A. Miller did not give bail to the El Salvadorian immigrant because he thought Martinez Hernandez was likely to run away and could be a danger to society. The judge also said that Martinez Hernandez had an ICE detainer and an Interpol warrant because he had come into the country four times without permission.
The lawyer for the Morin family told the New York Post that seeing the defendant on the video screen was “emotionally challenging” for them.
And the lawyer said that the judge’s choice to “deny bail in such a serious case is not unexpected.”
“Given the gravity of the accusations in this case – rape and murder – it’s clear that the court found significant reasons to keep the defendant in custody,” said Rice. “This decision underscores the court’s priority to ensure public safety and the integrity of the judicial process.”
Martinez Hernandez is accused of murder in the first and second degrees, rape in the first and second degrees, and attack in the second degree. He didn’t use the chance to say something at the meeting.
At the meeting on Friday, it was shown that DNA evidence was very helpful in identifying Martinez Hernandez as the suspect. DNA found at the scene of Morin’s murder was linked to DNA found on a water bottle and cap at a Los Angeles home invasion in March that hurt a 9-year-old girl.
The March burglary was caught on surveillance tape in Los Angeles, but Martinez Hernandez was not identified as a suspect at the time. He was finally caught in a bar in Tulsa, Oklahoma, earlier this month.
According to the story, Martinez Hernandez’s family gave back two bags of clothes and a pair of shoes that he left behind in Maryland when he ran away from the state.
The police say Martinez Hernandez first left El Salvador for the United States after they say she killed a woman there in January 2023. That month, he tried to cross the U.S. border twice, once in Texas and once in New Mexico. Both times, he was caught and sent back to Mexico.
A month later, Martinez Hernandez tried to cross again, this time in New Mexico but was caught and sent back to Mexico. That same month or the next month, he made his fourth and final successful attempt to cross the line without permission.
