An illegal immigrant from El Salvador was sentenced to life in prison without parole on Monday over the rape and murder of a 37-year-old Maryland mother.
Victor Martinez-Hernandez, 24, was found guilty in April over the rape and death of Rachel Morin, who was the mother of five children. Martinez-Hernandez had earlier entered the country illegally and was released in 2023. He later committed the crime in that same year.
U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem issued a statement about the sentencing given in the Harford County Circuit Court.
“This criminal illegal immigrant should never have been in our country in the first place. Rachel should still be here watching her 5 children grow up,” Noem said.
“We hear far too much in the mainstream media about sob stories of gang members and criminal illegals and not enough about their victims. God bless Rachel and her family,” Noem added.
Hiking on Trail
On Aug. 5, 2023, Morin’s boyfriend reported her missing after she left for a hike on the Ma & Pa Heritage Trail and did not return. A day later, law enforcement found her body in a wooded area off the trail.
The DHS said that Martinez-Hernandez bashed Morin’s head with rocks and then raped her deceased body. He then attempted to hide her corpse in a drainage culvert.
Following sentencing, Harford County State’s Attorney Alison M. Healey stated that the county has never seen a case or a defendant more deserving of every single day of the maximum sentence that the court imposed.
“This has been a long and grueling process for Rachel’s family, and it is our hope that this sentence provides some sense of justice as they close this chapter and move forward in their grief and toward healing,” she said.
Morin’s family also commented on the sentencing.
“I was relieved to know that he will never see the light of day outside of a cell. That someone else won’t feel this pain,” said her mother, Patty Morin, to local Baltimore media outlet WBAL-TV.
“We couldn’t ask for anything better, so that gives us some peace,” Morin’s sister Erin Layman told reporters.
Martinez-Hernandez’s Past
Jeffery Gahler, sheriff of Harford County, near Baltimore, told a media event on June 15, 2024, of Martinez-Hernandez’s past criminal activity.
“We all suspected that Rachel was not his first victim,” Gahler said. “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.”
The sheriff said a DNA match for Martinez-Hernandez was also linked to an attack in Los Angeles in March 2023.
“Once in our country, and likely emboldened by his anonymity, he brutally attacked a 9-year-old girl and her mother during a home invasion in March of 2023 in Los Angeles,” he said. “That was our first DNA match linking Rachel’s case to the one in Los Angeles.”
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