Authorities to outline case against accused contract killer
Published 10:30 am Tuesday, October 6, 2015
- FILE - In this March 18, 2015 file photo, a demonstrator holds a photo of late prosecutor Alberto Nisman that reads in Spanish "I am Nisman" at an protest outside a court house demanding justice, two months after his death in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Nisman was found dead in his bathroom, with a bullet in his head, on Jan. 18, on the eve of congressional hearings where he was due to present his accusations against President Cristina Fernandez of shielding Iranian officials from prosecution over the 1994 bombing of a Buenos Aires Jewish center. Tests results on the gun released on Monday, Sept. 7, 2015 show that the gun that shot him leaves gunpowder on the hand of the person who pulled the trigger. Two tests showed no traces of gunpowder on Nisman’s hand. Nisman’s ex-wife, Judge Sandra Arroyo, says that’s proof someone killed him. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko, File)
FRESNO, Calif. (AP) — A man who admitted to killing dozens of people across the United States as an enforcer for drug cartels in Mexico will begin to hear evidence in court Tuesday that prosecutors say proves he gunned down nine people throughout Central California.
Authorities say Jose Manuel Martinez opened up to them after his arrest in 2013, detailing a long, violent career with over 30 victims.
Martinez has pleaded not guilty to the charges, which make him eligible for a death sentence if he is convicted. Attorneys in the Tulare County Public Defender’s Office did not respond to requests for comment Monday on Martinez’s behalf.
In California, he is accused of killing people in Tulare, Kern and Santa Barbara counties between 1980 and 2011. The victims ranged in age from 22 to 56, authorities say.
Investigators say that in 1980, Martinez shot a man who was driving to work with three others in the vehicle. Martinez is accused of shooting another man in bed early one morning in 2000 while the man’s four children were home.
Martinez, 53, had lived at times in Richgrove, a small farming community in Central California about 40 miles north of Bakersfield. He was arrested shortly after crossing the border from Mexico into Arizona.
Authorities first took Martinez to answer charges in Alabama, where they say he began to talk.
“After he confessed to it, it was just like opening up the floodgate,” Tim McWhorter of the Lawrence County Sheriff’s Office in Alabama said at the time.
Prosecutors have said they believed him because he gave details that nobody else would have known. McWhorter said Martinez stopped short of naming his cartel associates.
In Alabama, Martinez pleaded guilty and accepted a 50-year prison sentence last year for shooting a man to death for making derogatory remarks about Martinez’s daughter.
Prosecutors in California have made public few details about evidence they have linking Martinez to the nine killings. Stuart Anderson, a spokesman for the Tulare County District Attorney’s Office, declined to comment ahead of Martinez’s preliminary hearing.
At the hearing’s end, a judge will decide if there is enough evidence to order Martinez to stand trial.
Martinez also awaits two murder charges in Florida.
