Salvadoran fugitive convicted in deadly attack of Maryland hiker

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BEL AIR, Md. (AP) — A fugitive from El Salvador was convicted Monday in the 2023 slaying of a Maryland woman who was attacked while exercising on a popular hiking trail northeast of Baltimore.

Prosecutors alleged that Victor Martinez-Hernandez, 24, was carrying out a planned attack when he grabbed Rachel Morin off the trail, bashed her head against nearby rocks, raped her and concealed her body in a drainage culvert. Their case hinged on DNA evidence connecting him to the crime.

A jury found Martinez-Hernandez guilty of first-degree murder and first-degree rape, among other offenses, according to Randolph Rice, an attorney representing Morin’s relatives.

“The Morin family is incredibly relieved that justice was served today,” Rice said in a statement.

Martinez-Hernandez was accused of entering the United States illegally after allegedly killing another woman in his home country. Authorities also linked him to a 2023 home invasion in Los Angeles.

Morin was killed in August 2023. The act of violence sent shock waves through Bel Air, a suburban community northeast of Baltimore. It also became a political flashpoint during the 2024 presidential election campaign as Donald Trump called for increased border security and mass deportations of immigrants living in the U.S. illegally.

Trump posted on social media about the verdict Monday night, saying Morin’s “life was taken at the hands of a monster who should have NEVER been here in the first place” and blaming the Biden administration for failing to properly secure the border.

Martinez-Hernandez was arrested last summer in Oklahoma. He had been living in Bel Air around the time of Morin’s death, prosecutors said. They said Morin went walking or running along the same route almost every day, usually in the evenings.

Defense attorneys challenged prosecutors' assertion that the crime was a random attack and said police simply got the wrong guy. They also asked jurors to pay close attention to unanswered questions during the trial, including questions of motive.

Detectives collected DNA from several places on Morin’s body and developed Martinez-Hernandez as a suspect, according to prosecutors. After interviewing some of his relatives, detectives matched DNA from the scene with DNA collected from socks that Martinez-Hernandez left behind when he fled Maryland.

Morin, 37, left behind five children. Her 14-year-old daughter was the first witness to testify last week, fighting back tears as she described the immediate aftermath of her mom’s disappearance.