Maryland police arrested an illegal immigrant on suspicion of murdering a mother whose naked body was found on a remote hiking trail nearly a year ago.
Suspect Vítor Martínez Hernández, 23, was arrested Friday in Tulsa, Oklahoma and charged with murder and rape in the August 2023 death of Rachel Morin, 37.
Hernández illegally crossed the southern border in February 2023 after he allegedly murdered another woman in El Salvador a month earlier.
The case remained a mystery after Morin, a mother of five, was reported missing by her boyfriend, who said she disappeared after going trail running.
Maryland police arrested an illegal immigrant on suspicion of raping and murdering 37-year-old Maryland mother Rachel Morin in August 2023.
Morin’s naked and battered body was found on the Ma and Pa hiking trail in Bel Air, about 45 north of Baltimore, the day after she was reported missing.
Six months later, Maryland investigators released a portrait of Morin’s alleged killer as his family pleaded with the public to help solve the case.
At a news conference Saturday, Hardford County Sheriff Jeff Gaylor announced Hermandez’s arrest and said he had been on a trail of criminality since entering the country illegally.
Before arriving at Morin in Maryland, Hernandez attacked a nine-year-old girl and her mother in a home invasion in Los Angeles, California, in March 2023, Gaylor said.
DNA evidence from the home invasion was later linked to Morin’s case, and Gaylor added that Hernandez is known to have gang ties.
‘I understand that this suspect, this monster, fled to the United States after the murder of a young woman in El Salvador a month earlier, in January 2023,’ he said at Saturday’s press conference.
‘Once in our country, he brutally attacked a nine-year-old girl and her mother in a home invasion in March 2023 in Los Angeles.’