Who is Victor Martinez-Hernandez? Migrant from El Salvador arrested for murder of Maryland mother Rachel Morin, nearly a year after he raped and killed her

Police have arrested Victor Martinez-Hernandez, an illegal immigrant from El Salvador, for the murder of Rachel Morin, a Maryland mother of five. Harford County Sheriff Jeffery Gahler announced the arrest during a news conference Saturday.

Martinez-Hernandez, 23, was arrested late Friday night in Tulsa, Oklahoma, with the help of federal authorities, nearly a year after the brutal rape and murder of Morin. He was charged with first-degree murder and first-degree rape. Sheriff Gahler announced that Martinez-Hernandez entered the United States illegally in February 2023.

“We all suspected that Rachel was not his first victim,” Gahler said. He explained that Martinez-Hernandez fled to the United States after committing a brutal murder in El Salvador in January 2023. The first DNA match on Martinez-Hernandez came from an attack in Los Angeles in March 2023.

“While he was in our country, probably emboldened by his anonymity, he brutally attacked a nine-year-old girl and her mother during a burglary in Los Angeles,” Gahler said. That incident provided the first DNA link to Rachel Morin’s case.

The sheriff criticized current immigration policies, stating, “We are 1,800 miles from the southern border and American citizens are not safe because of failed immigration policies.” He stressed that this is the second case in two years in which an innocent Harford County woman has been killed by an illegal immigrant from El Salvador with gang ties.

“Victor Hernandez did not come here to build a better life for himself. He came here to escape the crimes he committed in El Salvador and to murder Rachel,” Gahler added. “This should not have happened.”

Rachel Morin, 37, was reported missing by her boyfriend on August 5, 2023, after she failed to return from a run on the Ma & Pa Trail in Bel Air, a normally quiet city northeast of Baltimore. Her body was discovered the next day. In February, police released sketches of the then-unidentified Martinez-Hernandez based on DNA evidence from the Los Angeles burglary.

The DNA evidence was linked through the Combined DNA Index System (CODIS). Los Angeles police had collected a hat left at the scene of the March 2023 burglary. The burglary ended in violence and several people, including children, were injured. Surveillance footage shows Martinez-Hernandez leaving the crime scene shirtless.

Rachel’s mother, Patricia Morin, expressed her gratitude for the police efforts. “I want to take this opportunity to thank all the police officers for their hard work,” she said. “They really cared about our family and our daughter. They worked hard and found the killer.”