A ten-year-old girl who was allegedly raped and murdered while her mother watched suffered additional horrors before her unspeakably brutal death.
As CrimeOnline previously reported, Victoria Martens of Albuquerque, New Mexico, died the day after her tenth birthday, allegedly at the hands of her mother Michelle Martens, her mother’s boyfriend Fabian Gonzales, and the man’s cousin Jessica Kelly — a convicted rapist.
Martens reportedly admitted to watching and doing nothing while Gonzalez sexually assaulted and strangled the little girl to death, and Kelly allegedly stabbed Victoria’s dead body multiple times.
After the tortuous, senseless killing, Martens reportedly made dinner for her daughter’s murderers. All three suspects pleaded not guilty, despite Martens’ reported admission that watching her daughter’s violent assault gave her sexual gratification. Each suspect will be tried separately, beginning with Martens’ trial in July 2018.
Victoria’s brutal murder brought scrutiny on the social services meant to protect at-risk children in New Mexico: KRQE reports that the Children, Youth and Families Department had contact with Victoria at least four times before she was killed, but the child remained in the home where she would later die a horrific death.
According to a new KRQE report, one of Marten’s boyfriends, David Hernandez, kissed Victoria when she was nine years old. The alleged assault was reported to police, but the Albuquerque Police Department reportedly determined that the incident did not warrant further investigation.
But Victoria’s grandparents did investigate the allegations, and reportedly discovered that the man who was living with their granddaughter during her final year of life had been arrested for attempting to kidnap another little girl.
“An adult man kissing a young girl and that’s dismissed as not as important to investigate, that’s shocking. But if you go further and know what they knew in their own files, they could have connected — this guy’s a pedophile,” the grandparents’ attorney Jason Bowles told the news station.
“She did what she could as a small child to tell adults, help, help me,” he said.
A thorough investigation may have also revealed that Hernandez did more than kiss her. Earlier this year KOAT reported that after her arrest, Michelle Martens admitted that she had allowed multiple men to rape her daughter, and possibly her son. And the grandparents’ lawyer says he believes the little girl was sexually assaulted by her mother’s then-live-in boyfriend.
“It’s our information that he was sexually assaulting her, not just kissing her,” Bowled told KRQE. “That’s something APD should have found out, investigated and taken her out of the home.”
Feature photo: Facebook
