Grand jury transcripts detail Martinez slayings
Cristopher Martinez awoke Sunday, April 15, to find his 5-year-old brother with a runny nose.
The 9-year-old got out of bed and went to find Alejandro a tissue.
When he opened his bedroom door, Cristopher saw blood everywhere. His mother and sister had been brutally slain. His father, with at least 17 skull fractures, was dazed and unable to speak.
Cristopher told a Clark County grand jury that he spent that day caring for Alejandro and sheltering him from the grisly scene, court transcripts show.
"Well, I just didn't let him out of the room and we just went to his room," Cristopher testified. "And so then he wanted juice. He jumped out of the bed and he started running to get juice and so then he saw my mom and then he said, 'Mom.' But I said, 'It's OK.' And then he grabbed his juice and we went back to the room."
A prosecutor asked whether he ate that day.
Cristopher said no. He only drank water. He gave Alejandro all the food he could find.
"Well, he ate all of my chocolates, leftover candy from Easter."
A BREAK IN THE CASE
Las Vegas homicide detectives have called the attack on the Martinez family the worst they have seen.
Cristopher's 38-year-old mother, Ignacia, and his 10-year-old sister, Karla, were both raped and then beaten to death with a hammer.
His father, Arturo, survived the attack but has visible scars, including an inch-deep indentation on the back of his head.
Cristopher was one of 22 witnesses to testify to the grand jury in May and June as prosecutors sought a murder indictment against Bryan Clay, the 22-year-old man accused in the slayings.
The transcripts of the testimony, totaling more than 300 pages, detail the bulk of the evidence against Clay.
Crime scene investigators, analysts and homicide detectives linked Clay to the Martinez home on 1016 Robin St., near Washington Avenue and Tonopah Drive, through DNA evidence from the sexual assaults. Clay's bloody fingerprints were found around the victims and on the hammer, which was found shoved into a gap at the top of a cinder block wall outside the home, according to law enforcement.
Detectives worked around the clock for almost two weeks hunting for a suspect. But the break in the case came after linking the slayings to a sexual assault that occurred about a half-mile away at Vegas Drive and Tonopah about 2 a.m. April 15.
ASSAULT RECORDED BY 911
The woman who reported the assault was the first to testify to the grand jury in the case.
She realized she was being followed after leaving a party near J Street and Owens Avenue. The woman testified that she confronted the man as she was nearing Martin Luther King Boulevard. He asked her for a cigarette and change. She told him she had none.
He kept following her.
The woman said she picked up a rock and called her husband. She yelled at the man. "I told him if he keeps messing with me I'm going to hit him with the rock."
The man didn't respond.
Her husband said he was on his way to meet her. The woman than called 911.
Minutes passed. The man turned and seemed to be heading away.
The woman stayed on the phone with a 911 operator and asked several times why police had not arrived. "I said, well, 'What's taking so long, why is nobody coming?' And she (the 911 operator) said somebody will be there in a minute," the woman testified.
The woman crossed the street, still on the phone with 911.
The man then grabbed her from behind in a "bear hug" and around the neck. She hit him twice in the head with a rock, but he was able to drag her into the desert area at Tonopah and Vegas drives.
The man got on top of her. "I'm fighting, I'm fighting and I'm fighting and I'm fighting trying to get his hands off my neck," she said.
Police sirens began to sound, she said, but they were on the wrong side of the street.
She couldn't breath. She was pinned down. "Jesus help me, please, God, give me strength," the woman said aloud, according to her testimony.
The man spoke. "If you want Jesus to help you then you need to do what I want you to do," he said.
And then a police helicopter light shined down on them. The man used his hand to sexually assault her, she said.
He ran.
The woman got up and stumbled out of the desert area toward the police.
The suspect left behind a Cleveland Indians baseball hat. He took the victim's cellphone.
The entire attack was recorded by the 911 operator. At the end of the attack, the suspect could be heard running away.
Detectives now think that after the assault, the suspect ran southwest toward Robin Street and the Martinez home.
'MY MOM AND MY SISTER ARE DEAD'
On Monday morning, April 16, 9-year-old Cristopher got ready to go to Hoggard Elementary School. He washed up using a bottle of water - he didn't want to use the bathroom because of the blood, he said.
Before Cristopher left, he told his younger brother to stay home. "I just told him ... don't go to school because I don't want you to get lost or something," Cristopher said.
Once at Hoggard, Cristopher got in line to go to class. He was crying.
His fourth-grade teacher, Candace Wagner, testified she noticed the tears immediately. "And because he's just not a crier I automatically said, 'Cristopher, what happened?' And he said, 'My mom and my sister are dead.' And I was like, 'What?' And he grabbed his head and he said they've been murdered."
On June 5, the grand jury indicted Clay on 10 felonies, including two counts of first-degree murder and four counts of sexual assault.
Clay pleaded not guilty to the charges as prosecutors announced they were seeking the death penalty against him.
During his court appearances, Clay has said little and his lawyers have declined to comment.
Veteran homicide detective Dean O'Kelley testified to the grand jury that during his interrogation, Clay said he had no recollection of what happened April 15. He was high on drugs and alcohol, including PCP and Ecstasy.
Clay remembered waking up at a friends house with a cellphone. Police think it was the same phone taken from the sexual assault victim at Tonopah and Vegas.
Police tracked down Clay through the calls and text messages he made to his friends from the phone, which he dumped when it ran out of minutes.
O'Kelley added that Clay recognized the Cleveland Indians baseball cap found near Tonopah and Vegas. He said it was his brother's.
O'Kelley said that throughout the interview with Clay, he did not deny what the police said they believed he had done.
Clay told them: "I don't even remember what the hell happened that night."
Contact reporter Francis McCabe at fmccabe@review
journal.com or 702-380-1039.
