State seeks death for confessed hitman
He claims to have killed more than 30 people while working as a Mexican drugcartel hitman.
And he might soon be facing death in Florida.
Jose Manuel Martinez opened up more than two years ago about the killings during an interview with Marion County Sheriff ’s Office detectives.
They were talking with him about the 2006 slaying of two Volusia County men found dead near the Marion-Lake County line. Martinez’s DNA matched some found at the scene, the Sheriff ’s Office said.
At the time, he was awaiting prosecution in a murder in Alabama.
He has since been sentenced to 50 years in prison for that killing — described as a personal vendetta — and has pleaded guilty to nine murders in California. He was sentenced earlier this month to life in prison without parole on those charges.
Martinez, 53, has little to no chance of living a free life, serving a sentence civil-rights groups often call “living death.”
Local prosecutors say that isn’t enough, though.
They plan on having Martinez brought back to Florida
so he can stand trial for two counts of first-degree murder stemming from the 2006 killings.
And so if convicted, he could face death.
Neither Alabama nor California sought the death penalty against Martinez.
Alabama’s parole laws make it so Martinez won’t be eligible for release until he’s in his 90s, and though California technically has a death-penalty system, a federal judge ruled it unconstitutional in 2014. No one has been executed in the state since 2006.
Sheriff’s Office spokeswoman Lauren Lettelier said Marion County investigators started meeting with prosecutors in October to decide whether it would be worth the time and cost to have Martinez brought back to Florida for prosecution.
Prosecutors took several weeks weighing their options and decided it would be worth it for one reason: Florida’s death penalty.
“No other state has sought the death penalty for him,” said Ric Ridgway, chief assistant state attorney in Marion County.
“We are doing so because he is subject to the death penalty in Florida, and the facts and circumstances of this case are such that we will be seeking the death penalty,” Ridgway said.
Murder for hire
People who know Martinez told detectives he often bragged about his killings.
He talked about working with a “compadre” of the Arellano-Felix drug cartel based out of Tijuana, Mexico, as a debt collector of sorts.
During an interview with Marion County detectives, a family friend said Martinez would find and collect drug debts from people.
If they didn’t pay, Martinez would kill them, the friend said.
Detectives said Martinez did just that on Nov. 6, 2006, when he lured 20-year-old Javier Huerta and 28-year-old Gustavo Olivares-Rivas, both of Pierson in northwest Volusia County, to a remote area near the Marion-Lake County line.
That evening, the Pierson men told family members they got a call from a new homeowner looking for an estimate on a masonry job, an arrest report states.
Martinez allegedly told detectives he set them up by posing as the homeowner.
When the men showed up, he pulled two 9 mm handguns on them and forced Olivares-Rivas to call his wife to get money he had buried in their backyard.
Martinez said he eventually got more than $200,000 from the men, forced them to tie each other up and then shot them, reports say.
DNA found
Their bodies were found Nov. 8, 2006, in the back of a pickup off the shoulder of State Road 19 just north of S.R. 40.
The case went unsolved until 2013 when detectives got a hit on DNA found on a cigarette butt left in a Mountain Dew can. That linked Martinez to the scene, according to a report.
The Sheriff ’s Office got a warrant to arrest him on two counts of first-degree murder but held off on serving it while he faced prosecution in the other states.
Those cases are almost wrapped up, though, and Florida is the next in line to charge him.
When that will be isn’t exactly clear, Ridgway said.
“Right now he’s in a local jail in California, and we can’t extradite him until he’s transferred to the state prison,” Ridgway said.
That most likely won’t happen soon, he said, as there are still too many loose ends.
“Then it depends on whether he waives extradition and, if not, how long it will take the Florida and California governors to complete the paperwork to extradite him back,” Ridgway said. “In any event, it’s not something that will happen real soon, possibly not until the first part of next year.”
“No other state has sought the death penalty for him.” Ric Ridgway, Marion County chief assistant state attorney