Gonzales denied having involvement with Victoria’s death while reporters yelled questions at him as he was led out of the police station in handcuffs late Wednesday.
Advertisement
Police are accusing a New Mexico mother of helping drug and sexually assault her 10-year-old daughter hours before her birthday party on August 24.
Police in the U.S. state of New Mexico found a schoolgirl’s dismembered body in a burning bathtub after she was allegedly drugged, raped, chopped up and set on fire on her 10th birthday.
Police said the young girl was sexually assaulted by Gonzales and his cousin, 31-year-old Jessica Kelley.
Police say Victoria was injected with methamphetamine, sexually assaulted, strangled and stabbed before being dismembered.
Police were called to the Arroyo Villas Apartments in northwest Albuquerque about 4.30am Wednesday.
“This homicide is the most gruesome act of evil I have ever seen in my career”, Albuquerque Police Chief Gorden Eden Jr. said in a statement.
Throughout the day, people stopped to pay their respects and laid balloons, flowers and stuffed animals at the base of a tree.
The shrine grew as people gathered for an evening candlelight vigil on Thursday.
New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez says what happened to the little girl “is unspeakable and justice should come down like a hammer” on whoever is responsible.
Authorities arrested the mother, 35-year-old Michelle Martens, her boyfriend 31-year-old Fabian Gonzales and 31-year-old Jessica Kelley, The Washington Post reports. Gonzales and Kelley have also been charged with criminal sexual penetration of a minor.
Tanner Tixier, spokesman for the Albuquerque Police Department, told reporters that what Gonzales said isn’t a lie. No details were disclosed about why she was hospitalized.
The Albuquerque Journal reported that in one case, Kelley acted as a lookout while a woman allegedly raped another inmate at the Metropolitan Detention Center in September 2012.
The newspaper says Kelley pleaded no contest to conspiracy to commit criminal sexual penetration and was sentenced to three years in prison minus almost a year for time served.
The mother also reportedly told the police that once they were finished, Kelley stabbed the girl in the chest after Gonzales choked the girl to death before dismembering her.
Martens claims Kelley placed her hand over Victoria’s mouth and then stabbed her.
The complaint also states that the mother told investigators that Gonzales and Kelley dismembered the girl.
When police entered the house – they saw Victoria’s dismembered and burnt body in the bathtub and blood stains all over the place. The officer put it out.
Gonzales has a previous criminal history which includes a felony child abuse charge, driving while intoxicated and resisting arrest.
He pleaded guilty to child abandonment in 2015.
Kelley’s arrest record includes battery, domestic violence and drug charges – a lot of them dismissed.
Methamphetamine, much of it provided by Mexican drug-trafficking organizations, is the foremost drug threat in New Mexico, according to a 2011 report by the U.S. Justice Department.
Martens is facing kidnapping charges along with Gonzales.
According to the criminal complaint, Martens told detectives she watched as Gonzales and his cousin gave her daughter meth, then the two raped her.
She was incredibly social, Zamora said while visiting the makeshift memorial.
It just hurts, Madrid said, crying.
Laura Bobbs, a minister and close friend of the family, said Martens, who lived alone with her children, had no contact with Victoria’s father.
The girl had just turned 10 the day before she was killed, and her friends told KOAT they were supposed to celebrate her birthday.
Bobbs said she got a phone call she will never forget, to come to the apartment complex as quickly as possible.
Advertisement
“I can’t speak to what this mother was planning for her child other than the horrific events that happened to this child”, Tixier said.
