DNA testing solves cold-case murder
Small-business owner fatally shot during robbery; Tomball man gets 60 years
Genealogical DNA testing helped convict a Tomball man this week in a deadly 2002 robbery at a convenience and check cashing store in the Montgomery County city of Oak Ridge North.
Martin Isaac Tellez, 45, pleaded guilty on Tuesday to murder in the death of Subir Chatterjee, an immigrant from India who owned and operated the business just east of The Woodlands for five years.
Judge Lisa Michalk sentenced Tellez to 60 years in prison and he will not be eligible for parole until he serves half of the sentence, according to the Montgomery County District Attorney’s Office.
Neil Chatterjee, a nephew of the slain man, said Tellez took his uncle from the community of fellow immigrants who lacked access to traditional banking services.
“My uncle was a beloved figure in that community and the defendant robbed all these people of his service,” according to a victim impact statement the nephew read at sentencing.
Oak Ridge North Police Lt. Charles Nation said Chatterjee’s slaying has been the sole murder in the city in the 25 years he has been on the force.
The family is “happy that we worked on it for as long as we did because they felt that it would probably never be solved. They were relieved,” Nation said Wednesday.
An employee found Chatterjee shot to death Feb. 15, 2002, in the secured clerk’s booth at Coastal Gas Station, 26914 Interstate 45 North, and about $160,000 in cash had been taken, authorities said.
The 58-year-old man was shot in the head and neck.
There were initially few leads, vague witness descriptions, no surveillance video and no suspects, the DA’s Office said.
Det. Kent Hubbard worked leads on the case for more than 15 years before reading an article on how law enforcement in California used genealogy and DNA to solve homicide cases. The detective reached out to Parabon Nanolabs, a Virginia-based organization that uses genetic genealogy, ancestry and kinship analysis to develop potential suspects for cases where DNA evidence is available, the District Attorney’s Office said.
Civil asset forfeiture funds paid for the testing, the agency added. The method of testing, according to the Conroe Courier, cost $5,830.
In 2018, Parabon reported that three members of Tellez’s family were potential sources of evidence collected in the crime scene. On Dec. 4, 2019, Hubbard learned the DNA extracted from the fork, coffee cup and piece of toast collected from a table where Tellez was eating was an exact match to the DNA evidence.
A Texas Department of Public Safety analyst also informed Hubbard that with advances in DNA technology, fingernail scrapings from Chatterjee’s autopsy could be re-examined.
Hubbard arrested Tellez on Dec. 10 and prosecutors initially charged him with capital murder.
Locating Tellez “was just as simple as a Google search on the name” with a LinkedIn profile matching his driver’s license,
Oak Ridge North Police Chief Tom Libby told the Courier in 2020.
Tellez was arrested at an electric wiring company where he recently began to work. He had just returned from lunch, Nation said.
Tellez told authorities that Chatterjee struck him in the head with a telephone in self-defense, leaving the robber’s blood at the scene.
In early 2021, Tellez, who was out on $500,000 bail, cut off his GPS monitor and fled to Mexico. A Texas Ranger, with help of agents from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Marshals, tracked and persuaded him to return to the U.S. to await trial, officials said.
Law enforcement authorities praised Hubbard for his “dogged” efforts.
Chatterjee’s family was “left with an empty chair and aching hearts, believing they might never know who was responsible,” according to a statement from Assistant DA Donna Hansen. Hubbard “never gave up on this case, and it was my privilege to be able to assist him in bringing justice and closure to Subir’s family.”
District Attorney Brett Ligon had similar praise for the now retired detective.
“Fortunately, a relentless instrument of dogged justice in the form of Det. Hubbard made what was wrong, right, and we hope that this measure of accountability will bring some relief to this (Chatterjee’s) grieving family,” Ligon said in a statement.
On Wednesday morning, Tellez’s defense attorneys could not be reached for comment.