Friday, October 28, 2016

CONVICTED KILLER PLEADS GUILTY TO MANSLAUGHTER FOR 1998 RAPE AND KILLING OF RUNAWAY BRONX TEEN


Defendant Will Be Sentenced to 20 Years Consecutive to His PA Prison Term

Bronx District Attorney Darcel D. Clark today announced that a 44-year-old convicted murderer has pleaded guilty to Manslaughter for raping and strangling a14- year-old girl in the Bronx in 1998, and will get 20 years in prison to run consecutive to his sentence in Pennsylvania.

District Attorney Darcel Clark said, “This defendant brutally killed a young girl and was finally brought to justice 13 years later, when DNA tied him to the crime. He is currently in prison for murdering his wife, and now this sentence ensures that he will remain there for many more years.”

District Attorney Clark said the defendant, James Martin, 44, pleaded guilty on October 27, 2016, to first-degree Manslaughter before Chief Administrative Judge Robert Torres. Martin is expected to receive 20 years in prison when he is sentenced on November 10, 2016. The sentence will run consecutively to 22 to 40 year sentence he is serving in a Pennsylvania prison for the 2005 murder of his wife. 

According to the investigation, on Feb. 23, 1998, the body of Marleny Cruz, 14, who was from the Dominican Republic and was living in the Bronx, was found on Valentine Avenue in the University Heights section of the Bronx. Her body was bruised and she had been sexually assaulted and strangled. 

In 2011, the Bronx Homicide Task Force connected DNA recovered from Cruz’s fingernails to Martin, who lived in the Bronx at the time, and he was indicted in 2012.

The case was prosecuted by Senior Homicide Counsel Nancy Borko of the Homicide Bureau, under the supervision of Christine Scaccia, Deputy Chief of the Homicide Bureau and Chief of the Gangs/Major Case Bureau.   

No comments:

Post a Comment