A Utah father was accused of killing his adult daughter, a Salt Lake County sheriff’s deputy, by prosecutors on Friday.
Prosecutors stated in court filings that Hector Ramon Martinez-Ayala, 54, of Tooele, admitted to making “a big mistake” in a text message to his brother before leaving the country and taking out cash with his daughter’s bank card.
Colbey Bentley, a spokeswoman for Tooele Police, identified the victim as 25-year-old Marbella Martinez.
Martinez began his employment with the Salt Lake County Sheriff’s Office in January as a prison officer. The department had paid tribute to her on Facebook on Thursday, mentioning that Tooele police were looking into her death, labeling it “suspicious.”
According to court filings, she had resided in Tooele, west of Salt Lake City, with her father until she was forced to check into a hotel for a few days due to her father’s increasingly intense monitoring, stalking, and compulsive messaging.
According to the allegations, the woman had been the target of stalking for several months, and the defendant’s texts to her “have the tone of a jealous lover rather than a father.” Prosecutors say Martinez discovered a bag containing her undergarments in his room. Then, according to the allegations, he put a tracking device on her car when she was traveling abroad in mid-July and used it to locate her and a love interest along a hiking trail.
Investigators reported that on July 31, when she came home, her father had strangled her. The property’s cameras were promptly turned off or unplugged, but Martinez-Ayala left behind a lot of digital evidence, authorities said. These included location data on both his and his daughter’s phones and a text message sent that afternoon to his brother.
“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. I suppose I will never return back,” the message said, according to the charging documents.
He went to California, then Texas, before his phone records halted, authorities claimed. He was then recorded getting through customs in an unnamed nation where he used his brother’s identity.
Martinez’s corpse was located on Aug. 1 in her bedroom after police were called to undertake a welfare check.
Martinez-Ayala is accused of murder as well as misdemeanor identity theft and crimes include stalking, bank card fraud, and obstruction of justice.
Online court records in Utah do not show Martinez-Ayala’s attorney, and efforts to reach him through other channels proved fruitless.
