Rachel Morin

Case background and investigation

Rachel Morin, a 37-year-old mother of five from Bel Air, Maryland, went out on the Ma & Pa Trail on the evening of August 5, 2023, and did not come home. According to CBS News Baltimore, she stopped responding to messages at about 7 p.m. She was reported missing, and the following day her body was found in a drainage culvert roughly 150 feet from the trail. The Harford County Sheriff's Office treated the death as a homicide.

DNA recovered at the scene gave investigators an early lead. WMAR-TV reported that within days the profile was matched to an unsolved home invasion in Los Angeles in March 2023, in which a woman and a nine-year-old girl were assaulted. The match linked the two crimes but did not supply a name, and the search for the person responsible lasted about ten months.

On the night of June 14, 2024, officers arrested Victor Antonio Martinez-Hernandez, then 23, at a bar in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and the Harford County Sheriff's Office announced the arrest the next day. News reports, citing the sheriff's office and federal officials, said he was a citizen of El Salvador who had entered the United States unlawfully in February 2023. Officials also said he was wanted in connection with a killing in El Salvador; that allegation has not been tried in the proceedings described here. He was returned to Maryland and charged with first-degree murder and first-degree rape.

The trial was held in Harford County Circuit Court in April 2025 after the judge denied a defence request to move it elsewhere. According to CBS News Baltimore, prosecutors told jurors that the defendant's DNA was present on every piece of evidence they presented, and that a phone seized at his arrest contained searches relating to the Bel Air area. The defence argued that there was no motive and that he had never known Morin. On April 14, 2025, after deliberating for less than an hour, the jury found him guilty of first-degree premeditated murder, first-degree rape, a third-degree sex offence and kidnapping.

On August 11, 2025, he received the maximum sentence on each count: life without the possibility of parole for the murder, a consecutive life term for the rape, and a further 40 years for the remaining counts. Members of Morin's family addressed the court; her sister told reporters the family would always feel her absence but had gained some closure.

State's Attorney Alison Healey said she expected the defence to appeal and was confident the sentence would stand, WMAR-TV reported. No ruling on an appeal was found in searches carried out in September 2026. The case also drew national political attention because of the defendant's immigration status.