An illegal immigrant from El Salvador has been found guilty of the murder of mother-of-five Rachel Morin on a popular hiking trail.
Prosecutors believed that Victor Martinez-Hernandez, 24, was carrying out a planned attack when he grabbed Morin off the Ma & Pa Trail in Bel Air, Maryland.
The case hinged on DNA evidence connecting Martinez-Hernandez to the crime.
A jury found Martinez-Hernandez guilty of first-degree murder and first-degree rape, among other offenses, according to Randolph Rice, an attorney representing Morin’s relatives.
Rice said in a statement: “The Morin family is incredibly relieved that justice was served today.”
Martinez-Hernandez was accused of entering the United States illegally after allegedly killing another woman in his home country.
Authorities also linked him to a 2023 home invasion in Los Angeles.
Morin was killed in August 2023. The act of violence sent shock waves through Bel Air, a suburban community northeast of Baltimore, and became a political flashpoint during the 2024 presidential election campaign as Donald Trump called for increased border security and mass deportations of immigrants living in the U.S. illegally.
Martinez-Hernandez was arrested last summer in Oklahoma.
He had been living in Bel Air around the time of Morin’s death, prosecutors said. They said Morin went walking or running along the same route almost every day, usually in the evenings.
Defense attorneys challenged the prosecutors' assertion that the crime was a random attack and said police simply got the wrong man. They also asked jurors to pay close attention to unanswered questions during the trial, including questions of motive.
Detectives collected DNA from several places on Morin’s body and developed Martinez-Hernandez as a suspect, according to prosecutors. After interviewing some of his relatives, detectives matched DNA from the scene with DNA collected from socks that Martinez-Hernandez left behind when he fled Maryland.
Morin, 37, left behind five children.
Her 14-year-old daughter was the first witness to testify in court last week, fighting back tears as she described the immediate aftermath of her mother’s disappearance.
