The suspected Modesto mass murderer of a family of five females last weekend has also been charged now in the suspicious death of a toddler boy in 2014.
Martin Martinez, 30, was arrested last week for brutally killing five female relatives -- one of whom was his own infant daughter -- at a home in Modesto California.
He was apprehended shortly thereafter as he exited a movie theater with his father.
Prior to Martinez’s last show of violence, the suspect had been the subject of an almost year-long homicide investigation into the killing of his murdered ex girlfriend’s 2-year-old son by blunt force trauma.
The dead boy’s mother, Dr. Amanda Crews, was one of Martinez’s most recent victims, and the motive for those multiple homicides has also not been determined.
Crews’ ex husband and the father of the young boy who died in 2014 suggested to reporters this week that, had officials moved more swiftly to charge Martin Martinez for his toddler’s fatal beating, the mass killings over the weekend would not have occurred.
“I keep asking the Modesto Police Department why they didn’t arrest him on Friday, and why they didn’t put the case together sooner,” he said. “I don’t think they were in all that big a hurry.”
MPD investigators, however, defended their apparently deadly delay in prosecuting Martinez for the prior offense, citing a laborious inquiry into the young boy’s mortal injuries, as well as conflicting statements from the child’s now-slain mother, Crews.
A warrant for Martinez’s arrest in the child’s abuse and killing was issued just one day before he went on a murderous rampage at Dr. Crews’ residence, slaying her, three young girls, and his very own mother.
The accused mass murderer was arraigned on Thursday and is currently being held on $5-million bail for the Modesto kill spree.
Coincidentally that’s the same community where infamous death-row murderer Scott Peterson lived in 2002 when the notorious philanderer slew his 8-month-pregnant wife Laci and an unborn son, dumping their remains in the ocean.
He was arrested in disguise months later, with items on his person that appeared to be in preparation for the abduction and killing of another young woman he dated while married to Laci Peterson.
Thirteen years later, Peterson’s still appealing his sentence, blaming a hostile public and circumstantial evidence for his *wrongful* conviction.
