Ten-year-old Victoria Martens’ burning body was discovered in an Albuquerque apartment building on August 24, 2016. When police arrived at the second-story apartment building after responding to the 9-1-1 call from neighbors reporting a domestic disturbance/fight next door, they noticed smoke coming from behind the locked bathroom door. When the responding authorities opened the door, they discovered Victoria Martens’s body wrapped in a burning blanket.
Victoria’s body was covered in trash bags after her limbs were cut off with a knife and dismembered. Additionally, some of her organs were discovered by the detectives in the living room’s laundry hamper. She was wrapped in plastic and a sheet before being lit on fire after the smoke sensors were turned off. She had been se*xually assaulted, strangled to death, then sta*bbed, dismembered, and set on fire, according to a post-mortem.
The victim’s mother, 35-year-old Michelle Martens; her boyfriend, 31-year-old Fabian Gonzales; and Gonzales’ cousin, 31-year-old Jessica Kelley, (mugshots) were imprisoned and indicted on many charges, including intentional abuse of a child, aggravated criminal se*xual penetration, murder, and tampering with proof.
Michelle Martens initially denied any involvement but later admitted that the young girl had been held down, given alcohol and meth the night of the murder so Gonzales and Kelley could ra*pe her while Martens watched with pleasure. She then watched as Kelley sta*bbed the young girl and Gonzales choked her. Additionally, Gonzales confessed to the police that he had se*x with Victoria “shortly after the child was deceased.” According to the transcripts, he claimed, “I think I hurt the little girl,” adding, “She was screaming.” Victoria had human papillomavirus (HPV) at the time of her death, according to a post-mortem report, which suggests she had been se*xually abused in the months before she passed away.
How it had been reported by the police and media
New Mexico’s Albuquerque The mother of the 10-year-old New Mexico girl who was brutally ra*ped and ki*lled in August, Michelle Martens, is said to have told investigators a variety of tales before allegedly confessing that she did nothing while her daughter was being tortured by her boyfriend and his cousin, despite the fact that the child begged them to stop, according to the transcripts of the police interviews with her.
According to KRQE News, one of the stations that made the interview information public on Friday, October 7th, Martens initially told police that she and her boyfriend, Fabian Gonzales, were attacked in the middle of the night by his cousin, Jessica Kelley.
According to KRQE, she told police that “Jessica comes into our bedroom and asks me if I think in God.” She continued to punch me and hit me repeatedly.
Martens claimed that she was on the run to seek assistance after managing to escape when Kelly yelled that Victoria Martens had passed away.
But as she was being questioned, her story changed. According to the station, in a second version, she allegedly claimed that she had left Victoria at home with Gonzales and Kelley, who has been found guilty of ra*pe.
Martens said Victoria died after taking some methamphetamine that had been left out on a table, and that Gonzales and Kelly had tried to dispose of the child’s body, the transcripts showed.
The pair also threatened to ki*ll her, she claimed.
“That if I say anything, I’m going to be the next one,” Martens said.
However, according to Albuquerque television station KOB, Martens once more changed her story hours after the interview started. She then claimed to have witnessed Gonzales and Kelley giving the child meth, which Martens claimed would “calm her down,” so they could ra*pe her, according to the television station.
Martens is alleged to have admitted to detectives that she did nothing as her daughter asked them to stop.
According to the transcripts, Martens said, “I let them do it.”
Detectives were then informed by the woman that “Jessica was stab*bing her” and that she and her cousins had begun “cutting [Victoria’s] arms.”
The three “acted like nothing ever occurred,” Martens told police, after Victoria was ki*lled.
Only 20 minutes had passed since Victoria’s alleged ra*pe and death when she had s*ex with Gonzales. According to KRQE, the three also prepared dinner and cleaned up.
The police transcripts also contained startling and disturbing information about the child’s brief life’s final month.
Martens claimed that Victoria had been se*xually assaulted three times in the days prior to their alleged strangulation and sta*bbing death, and she suspected that her boyfriend had been abusing the young girl se*xually for about a month. KRQE
Martens is accused of kidnapping and child abuse that resulted in death. Along with child ra*pe, Gonzales is accused of the same crimes.
Kelley was also charged with kidnapping, child abuse resulting in death, and child ra*pe.
The district attorney declared on Friday, after months of silence in one of Albuquerque’s most disturbing homicide cases, that much of what has been reported regarding the violent ra*pe and mur*der of 10-year-old Victoria Martens is “simply not true.”
The public’s knowledge of the case, according to DA Ral Torrez, was “derived approximately exclusively” from statements made by Victoria’s mother, Michelle Martens, 36, to the police that night.
Neither Victoria nor her boyfriend Fabian Gonzales, 33, were home when she was ra*ped and k*illed in August 2016.
Torrez, however, claimed that Jessica Kelley, a relative of Gonzales, and an unnamed man were both present.
Martens admitted early Friday afternoon to child abuse that caused her daughter’s death as a result of those revelations, and prosecutors dropped the most obvious charges against Gonzales, such as mur*der and ra*pe, after nearly two years in custody. And in relation to the unidentified fourth person, the state has brought a John Doe indictment.
At least one DNA profile from an unidentified man was discovered on Victoria’s body, according to Torrez. On the basis of this, Torrez’s office submitted a fourth indictment, in which John Doe was accused of mu*rder, ra*pe, child abuse, and numerous other offenses.
The newly discovered information has not altered Kelley’s case, and she is still facing a mu*rder charge. Her trial is scheduled to begin in early 2019. Her lawyer was unavailable for comment Friday afternoon.
Contrary to her mother’s admission, the results of the postmortem reveal Victoria had neither meth nor alcohol in her system. There is no proof that Michelle allowed Victoria to be se*xually assaulted on that day or any other occasion. As a result, Martens had lied about ever abusing Victoria or allowing someone else to do so. She wasn’t even at the house when Victoria was ra*ped and ki*lled, nor was Fabian Gonzales.
Martens’ claims were “contaminated,” according to an expert.
According to Michael Welner, a forensic psychiatrist who collaborated with the District Attorney’s Office on the case, Martens’ admission that she saw the crime was caused by a combination of her passive and gullible personality, the way police officers appeared to be on her side, and the circumstances surrounding the recent death of her daughter. He claimed she was unaware of her own involvement.
“The officers in the questioning revealed certain details within the case that Michelle later incorporated into her story,” Welner said in an interview. “In the course of interviewing her about specifics and going over details, they went over details,” Welner said. “Including them in her story gave the impression that what she was saying had some credibility.”
District Attorney Raul Torrez told in a news conference Friday the state doesn’t have any evidence Martens was trafficking her daughter for se*x. He said the STD found in Victoria’s body during a postmortem originated from a se*xual assault that Martens had reported to authorities.
“She took sudden steps to identify and notify the related law enforcement officials and as far as we know severed contact with that person,” he said.
More Facts
Michelle and Fabian Gonzales left Victoria at the apartment so that they could buy marijuana from his brother. Victoria was attacked, ra*ped, and mur*dered while Jessica Kelley was watching her. Victoria is the John Doe whose DNA was found at the scene. Police believe that this man is a rival gang member of Gonzales.
Gonzales and Martens came back to the house. During a private conversation, Kelley informed Gonzales that Victoria had passed away. They made the decision to cover up the mur*der, tidy up the scene, and bury Victoria’s body. Gonzales ‘put her to bed’ after having Martens prepare dinner to divert her attention.
Victoria’s arms were cut off by Gonzales and Kelley using a knife. Gonzales used a trash bag to remove organs from her body. Victoria’s remains were placed in a trash bag by Gonzales and Kelley. The blood and other evidence in the apartment was cleaned up. Victoria’s body was taken into the bathroom by Kelley and Gonzales, who then put it in the bathtub. After being wrapped in plastic and a sheet, Victoria’s body was burned. Smoke detectors were also removed.
CONCLUSION
Jessica Kelley entered a no contest plea in January 2019 to charges of aggravated assault (for hitting Michelle Martens and Fabian Gonzales after Victoria died), tampering with evidence, and child abuse recklessly caused resulting in death. The plea arrangement is comparable to the guilty plea that Judge Brown rejected in September. Judge Brown ruled that despite the District Attorney’s Office and Kelley’s defense attorneys having at the time agreed to a guilty plea agreement, there was insufficient evidence to convict Kelley of child abuse because it was impossible for her to have known the man would visit Victoria and do that. I concur with the judge that the child abuse charge is dubious, but Victoria’s body was dismembered and burned.
Michelle Martens, Victoria’s mother, admitted to child abuse recklessly resulting in death over the summer and now faces a sentence of 12 to 15 years in prison. I’m conflicted about this. Yes, she left her daughter with Jessica Kelley, a meth addict, while she and Gonzales went to buy some weed, but she couldn’t have known that a gang member would show up at that time and ra*pe and ki*ll her daughter. In my opinion, the police blew it in this investigation.
Additionally, Fabian Gonzales is charged with tampering with evidence and willful child abuse that resulted in death. The only one of the three who will face trial is him.
Gonzales’ lawyer Stephen Aarons has argued that the child abuse charge against his client should be dropped because Gonzales had no way of knowing that threats he texted to “gang members” would result in the daughter of his girlfriend being strangled.
Beyond all else, Victoria’s k*iller is still at large. The main query is that. But some continue. I still don’t get the picture – Once they (Kelley, Gonzales) knew Victoria died, why didn’t they call the police? Perhaps because they had run-ins with the law and didn’t want police awareness on them? But holy shit the kid was dead, this is not some petty shit like someone stole their bicycle.
Why did Michelle initially deny being involved before making a false confession? How did she initially come up with those horrible details? How could someone be SO easily persuaded by police that she would falsely confess to feeding her daughter meth and getting se*xally aroused by her daughter’s ra*pe and mur*der?
According to a leading psychologist, Martens has slightly below-average intelligence and a strong desire to please others. There were talks of police incompetence since the start of the cause and it seems there was a lot of manipulation and shadiness on their part. Could the confessions to that significance have been forced? It’s baffling to me.
