An illegal migrant from El Salvador has been sentenced to life in jail for raping and murdering a Maryland mother on a popular hiking trail.
Victor Martinez-Hernandez, 24, was found guilty of first-degree murder, first-degree rape and kidnapping following a jury trial in April this year for his attack on the 37-year-old Rachel Morin.
Prosecutors alleged he carried out a planned attack when in August 2023, he grabbed the mother of five off a popular Maryland hiking trail, bashed her head against nearby rocks and concealed her body in a gutter.
During a hearing on Monday, a judge handed down the maximum sentence, condemning Martinez-Hernandez to serve life without the possibility of parole, another life sentence, and an additional 40 years in prison.
Victor Martinez-Hernandez received the maximum sentence for his crimes
Alison Healey, Harford County state attorney, described Martinez-Hernandez as “completely and entirely unamenable to treatment or rehabilitation” as she called for the toughest possible sentence.
“If he is released our community is in grave danger … It’s not a matter of if, it’s a matter of when,” she told the court.
The judge concurred, telling the killer: “You are not a candidate for rehabilitation. There is simply no hope to rehabilitate you.
“You took a life that was not yours to take. Your acts not only brutalised a young woman but also terrorised a community. The Ma & Pa Trail is a place of beauty … your acts turned that into a place of terror.”
Morin’s brutal killing – in which she was raped and strangled to death – sent shocked the suburban community of Bel Air, northeast of Baltimore.
It became a flashpoint during the 2024 presidential election as Donald Trump called for mass deportations of immigrants living in the US illegally.
In April, Mr Trump embraced Morin’s mother, Patty Morin, in the Oval office, telling reporters: “She’s been through hell.”
Patty Morin in the Oval Office with Donald Trump in April – The White House
Ms Morin also spoke at a press briefing alongside Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, in which she said: “This person took my daughter so violently and so gruesomely and so graphically that they sealed the pictures because I don’t want my granddaughters to see these pictures.”
The court previously heard that Morin was running along the Ma and Pa Trail in Bel Air when she was dragged into the woods and killed.
A post-mortem found she died from a combination of blunt-force trauma and strangulation.
Martinez-Hernandez was arrested last summer in Oklahoma after DNA from Morin’s body linked him to the scene. Police said he had been living in the US illegally since February 2023.
They also linked him to a 2023 home invasion in Los Angeles.
In the months after Morin’s death, her killer had searched online for information about the case and taken a screenshot of a media report, prosecutors said.
Martinez-Hernandez will not be deported to El Salvador, which has been used by the Trump administration to relocate alleged foreign gang members, as judges in Maryland only have the power to incarcerate people within the state.
During the sentencing hearing on Monday, members of Morin’s family, including four of her children, aged nine, 12, 15 and 20, issued tearful statements about how the death of their mother had affected them.
“She was a good mom,” her son said, according to WBALTV. “Every time I see a picture of her, I think about the life I had with her and my four sisters. I miss her.”
A memorial for Rachel Morin displayed on a tree on the Ma & Pa Trail in Bel Air, Maryland – Baltimore Sun/Tribune News Service
Morin’s eldest daughter, who is now a mother herself, asked the prosecutor to read her written statement on her behalf.
“I had to relive the worst two days of my life in order to write this,” she said, describing her mother as “kind, strong, honest, determined and funny”.
Patty, Morin’s mother, said that she had been suffering with nightmares, insomnia and anxiety attacks ever since her daughter was killed
“The depths of grief are equivalent to the depths of love felt. This will impact generations to come,” she said.
‘Immigration system failure’
Jeff Gahler, the Harford County Sheriff, blasted the immigration system for allowing Martinez-Hernandez to enter the country despite his criminal record.
“The failure here, again, is the immigration system that allowed this person to enter our country illegally and remain in our country and commit crimes in Los Angeles and then here in Harford County,” Mr Gahler said, according to The Daily Mail.
“We all suspected that Rachel was not his first victim. 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.”
After Martinez-Hernandez was convicted, Mr Trump paid tribute on social media to the “beautiful mother of five” who had been “heinously murdered”.
“Moments ago, the Illegal Criminal, who was allowed into our Country by Crooked Joe Biden, was convicted of the heinous murder of Rachel Morin,” he wrote on Truth Social at the time.
“Rachel was a beautiful mother of five from Maryland, and her life was taken at the hands of a monster who should have NEVER been here in the first place.”
