John Jefferson
Marbella Martinez (Salt Lake County Sheriff’s Office).
A father in Utah authorities have likened to a “jealous lover” is accused of stalking his own daughter, a corrections officer, strangling her to death, fleeing the U.S. using his twin brother’s ID, and confessing to the sibling over text that he had committed an “unforgivable sin.”
In early August, the Salt Lake County Sheriff’s Office announced the loss of one of its own, deputy Marbella Martinez, saying that the 25-year-old was found dead at home on Aug. 1, that her death was regarded as “suspicious,” and that the tragedy unfolded seven months after she graduated from the academy and was sworn in as a corrections officer.
“Deputy Martinez was a dedicated member of our Sheriff’s Office family. In her short time with us, she became a cherished friend and an integral part of our team. Her untimely and tragic death is a profound loss for us all,” Sheriff Rosie Rivera said in a statement days after Martinez was found dead in a bedroom during a welfare check. “Our thoughts and prayers are with her loved ones during this heartbreaking time. We hope that the investigation will provide answers and some measure of justice for our Deputy and her family.”
Now, more than one month later, authorities have revealed their shocking theory of the case: that 54-year-old Hector Ramon Martinez-Ayala of Tooele, Utah, like a “jealous lover,” stalked his own daughter, took her underwear and kept it in a bag in his room, strangled her, left the country, and then texted his own brother — his twin — to say he “made a big mistake, an unforgivable sin” that led him to the conclusion he had to leave and “never come back.”
Prosecutors charged Martinez-Ayala with murder, identify theft, obstruction, and stalking, after it was learned that he and the victim had been living at a residence together until the alleged behavior became so severe that it sparked her to stay at a hotel for a period of days before her death, the Associated Press reported.
In February, the month after the victim was sworn in, she allegedly found a bag of her underwear in Martinez-Ayala’s room. Between then and late July, the “increasingly obsessed and controlling” defendant is accused of sending texts to his daughter that were more indicative of “a jealous lover than a father. Days before the suspected strangulation murder, he allegedly followed his daughter while she was on a hike with a “romantic interest” after buying “a tracking device and hidden spy cameras” and putting the tracker in the victim’s car.
KSL reported that there was a “confrontation” and Martinez stayed at the hotel thereafter. But on July 31, the victim did go to her father’s house, and camera footage after Martinez-Ayala got to the residence that afternoon was “deleted or never existed,” the report said.
After the victim was found dead in bed with “apparent fingernail claw marks” on her “face and neck,” the defendant allegedly dumped the victim’s cell phone while on his way to an airport to flee the U.S., flying to California and Texas and leaving the country to “whereabouts […] unknown” by using his twin brother’s ID and by withdrawing money from his daughter’s account.
Adding on to the shocking details, the suspect allegedly sent a text to his brother acknowledging that he committed an “unforgivable sin.”
“My brother, you know much I love you, I made a big mistake, an unforgivable sin, now I’m too scared and I don’t know what to do,” he allegedly said. “I think I will never come back.”
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