The person from El Salvador who is accused of brutally murdering a mother of five in Maryland and then trying to run away from the police is planning to ask for a change of location on Friday. This would mean moving the trial out of the town that got a lot of attention after the murder happened.
Victor Antonio Martinez-Hernandez, aged 23, is facing serious charges of first-degree murder and first-degree rape. The police claim that he attacked, raped, and killed Rachel Morin on the Ma & Pa Trail in Bel Air, Maryland in August 2023.
Morin, who was 37 years old and a mother of five, was reported missing when she didn’t come back from her usual run. The police later found her body stuffed in a drain pipe near the trail.
She suffered savage injuries that her mother told House members during a congressional hearing were so severe she was unrecognizable even after morticians tried to make her up for the funeral.
Martinez-Hernandez made his first in-person court appearance in October, coming face to face with Morin’s mother for the first time after repeatedly attending court dates virtually.
Victor Antonio Martinez-Hernandez, 23, arrives in Maryland. He is charged with first-degree murder and first-degree rape in Rachel Morin’s death on the Ma & Pa Heritage Trail in Bel Air, Maryland. (Jerry Jackson/The Baltimore Sun/Getty Images)
There was an Interpol warrant out for his arrest at the time he came to the U.S. Border Patrol agents had blocked his entry to the country three times before he finally snuck in.
Police captured him in Tulsa, Oklahoma in June 2024, 10 months after Morin’s murder. He was extradited to Maryland days later and is also the subject of an ICE detainer.
Martinez-Hernandez remains in the Harford County Jail pending trial. He faces a sentence of up to life imprisonment without parole.
