The story of Rachel Morin, a 37-year-old mother of five from Maryland, rocked the nation back in 2024 when it was revealed that a Salvadoran illegal with a criminal past had been arrested for her August of 2023 rape and murder. Now, nearly two years later, that illegal, Victor Martinez-Hernandez, has been found guilty of first degree murder, first degree rape, first degree sexual offense and kidnapping.
On Monday, it took less than an hour for a jury in Bel Air, Maryland to find Martinez-Hernandez guilty on all charges. This, according to members of the media who were present in the courtroom, came after his defense team offered only a ten minute closing argument.
BREAKING | after only an hour of deliberations, the jury finds Victor Martinez-Hernandez guilty on all counts:
— Rebecca Pryor (@RebeccaPryorTV) April 14, 2025
-1st degree murder
-1st degree rape
-1st degree sexual offense
-kidnapping
Local media had initially downplayed Morin's violent murder in August of 2023, first placing intense focus on her boyfriend and then theorizing that perhaps a local vagrant might have committed the heinous act. It took almost an entire year for Martinez-Hernandez to be tied to the crime, and the big breakthrough came after family members offered up some of his clothes to law enforcement, leading to a DNA match to evidence found on Morin's body.
A manhunt began in earnest after Martinez-Hernandez's DNA also linked him to a March 2023 home invasion in the Los Angeles area where a woman and her 9-year-old daughter were assaulted. He was eventually arrested while "casually sitting" in a bar in Oklahoma, and it later came to light that he had illegally crossed the southern border at least three times over the course of two months in early 2023, eventually becoming a "gotaway" who successfully evaded federal law enforcement officials.
At the time of Martinez-Hernandez's arrest, the Morin family's lawyer speculated that the illegal entered the United States in order to escape prosecution for the murder of a woman in El Salvador. And while Rachel's family did not want to make her murder into a political spectacle, Morin's mother partially laid the blame at the feet of Joe Biden and his administration's lax border policies.
Patty Morin, the mother of 3[7]-year-old Maryland mother Rachel Morin who was killed last year, said in an interview with Fox News that there is an immigration crisis that the White House is not doing enough to solve. The National Desk reached out to Patty Morin through her attorney but has not yet heard back.
"It’s like they’re pretending these immigration problems don’t exist and people aren’t being harmed and killed by their policies," Patty Morin said in an interview with Fox News. "The victims are those that are being killed but also their loved ones that they've left behind. It's devastating to the community."
It was the Biden administration's refusal to take any responsibility for the series of events that led to Rachel Morin's murder, and those of Laken Riley and Jocelyn Nungaray, that led then-candidate Donald Trump to make these crimes a centerpiece of his 2024 presidential campaign. Ironically, Victor Martinez-Hernandez's conviction came on the very day that El Salvador President Nayib Bukele visited the White House and voiced his refusal to return another Salvadoran criminal to the United States.
So, the big question now is what's next for Martinez-Hernandez now that he's been found guilty? Will he, too, find his way to El Salvador's infamous CECOT mega-prison? Or, pending his sentencing, will taxpayers find themselves footing bill for his lifetime stay in the U.S.?
No one from the Trump administration has weighed in on this conviction yet, but you can be sure Democrats and their media lapdogs will be following the repercussions closely. After all, they've made it their mission of late to advocate for murderers and convicts, particularly if they are of the illegal variety.
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