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The illegal immigrant also allegedly murdered a young woman in El Salvador
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Victor Antonio Martinez-Hernandez is no longer a free man.
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The accused killer of Maryland mom-of-five Rachel Morin was arrested late Friday in Tulsa by FBI agents as he casually sipped a drink at a low-rent watering hole.
It also emerged that the illegal immigrant from El Salvador allegedly murdered a young woman in his home country before fleeing to the United States.
Morin disappeared on Aug. 5, 2023, after she went running on the Ma & Pa Trail in Bel Air, Md. Her boyfriend reported her missing later that evening.
The 37-year-old’s body was discovered the next day, triggering a nationwide manhunt for her killer.
Cops say that Martinez-Hernandez was linked to Morin’s murder via DNA from a brutal sex attack on a nine-year-old girl and her mother in Los Angeles. He faces charges of first-degree murder and first-degree rape in Morin’s death.
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“Rachel’s murderer is no longer a free man,” Harford County Sheriff Jeffrey Gahler alleged. “Hopefully, he will never have the opportunity to walk free again. I want him to die in a Maryland prison system.”
The accused is being held without bond and on a detainer from the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement at a Tulsa County jail. He is now awaiting extradition from Oklahoma to face charges in Harford County.
According to cops, on what would have been Morin’s 38th birthday, detectives received the DNA evidence that put a name to the suspect in a video from Los Angeles that was released two weeks after the Maryland mom was killed.
Investigators tracked Martinez-Hernandez from Prince George’s County in suburban Washington to Tulsa. The feds zeroed in on the Oklahoma city and busted him Friday. Allegedly, he initially lied about his real identity and denied any knowledge of the crimes.
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Officials said the citizen of El Salvador illegally crossed into the U.S. in February 2023.
“We all suspected that perhaps Rachel was not his first victim, and it’s 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,” Gahler told reporters.
Gahler said the accused was “likely emboldened by his anonymity,” and alleged he unleashed the L.A. home invasion attack in March 2023.
The veteran cop said that Morin’s murder was the second time in two years that an illegal immigrant with ties to El Salvadorian street gangs has allegedly murdered a Harford County woman. In 2022, a 17-year-old boy from El Salvador, who cops say is also a member of MS-13, was arrested for the murder of 20-year-old Kayla Hamilton. She was found dead on a street and had been strangled.
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“Victor Hernandez did not come here to make a better life for himself or for his family,” the sheriff said. “He came here to escape the crime he committed in El Salvador. He came here and murdered Rachel and, God willing, no one else. But that should have never been allowed to happen.”
Morin’s devastated mom thanked the cops for their doggedness.
“At one point, when things seemed really bleak and hopeless, the lead detective said to me, ‘Patience will win in the end.’ And that’s what they’ve been doing,” Patricia Morin said.
“They’ve been diligently working very hard, and they’ve been patiently working through all the leads. And it’s because of that we have an arrest today. So I’m very thankful and just very grateful.”
She added: “I didn’t think that we were ever going to have an end, that it was going to be a cold case.”
bhunter@postmedia.com
@HunterTOSun
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