An aspiring actress has helped police track down a suspect in her father’s 1986 slaying.
Periodically, during the past few years, Joselyn Martinez would try to find information about the man accused of shooting and killing her father outside his restaurant on Nov. 22, 1986, when she was nine years old.
Beginning in 2006, she trolled Myspace and Facebook for information. In 2011, she wrote a letter to the TV show America’s Most Wanted. Through it all, she spent her own money, dishing out payments of US$69.99 to various online search programs that turn up potential addresses and telephone numbers for people.
And on Friday, her efforts were vindicated when police arrested Justo Santos on charges he murdered her father, Jose Martinez, outside his Dominican restaurant in the city’s Washington Heights neighborhood 27 years ago.
“It’s amazing,” Joselyn Martinez, 36, said on Tuesday. “I didn’t plan for this. It’s been surreal.”
Police said Santos, whose arrest in Miami was first reported by the Daily News, has made statements implicating himself in the killing.
On Tuesday, Santos agreed to let police return him to New York later. He was in police custody on Tuesday and was not available for comment. There was no information on whether he had an attorney.
Witnesses to the 1986 killing said they had seen Santos, and he was quickly named by detectives as a suspect, but he fled to the Dominican Republic shortly after.
Joselyn Martinez, who has appeared in Spanish-language music videos, radio commercials and a video game and wants to be in TV shows and movies, said there was “no plan” in her search efforts over the years.
“It was totally, absolutely in my eyes, totally random,” she said.
New York Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly told reporters on Tuesday that Santos, 43, had been jailed in the Dominican Republic in an unrelated case about two years after the Jose Martinez killing, but served just more than a year before he was released. Kelly said Martinez’s case was closed upon news of Santos’ incarceration in the Dominican Republic — something that should never have happened.
“They should not have closed the case,” Kelly said.
Joselyn Martinez said in February she met with detectives from a cold-case squad to turn over all the information she’d uncovered, including Santos’ name, address and telephone number in Miami.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in