José Franco Martínez in 2018.
Photo: Nassau County Police Department / Courtesy
A jury found José Franco Martínez (58) guilty of brutally stabbing his ex-girlfriend María Larín (51) 23 times after traveling a thousand miles by land from Kansas to kill her at her workplace, a racetrack on Long Island (NY).
The verdict came on Wednesday, almost five years after the crime happened in June 2018 in Nassau County. At the time of his arrest, Franco Martínez was a undocumented immigrant, according to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Service (ICE).
Franco Martínez is scheduled to be sentenced on May 19. He faces between 25 years and life imprisonment.
Larin worked at the Belmont Park Race Track in Elmont, where he walked the horses after the races to help them cool off. She was doing these tasks when on June 17, 2018 Franco Martínez appeared and attacked her, stabbing her and cutting it with a kitchen knife.
A Larín co-worker who witnessed the incident hit the suspect over the head with a shovel, but that didn’t stop him from running away, remembered Daily Voice.
Franco Martínez was finally caught by the A staffNew York Racing Association (NYRA) after a brief chase. As he fled he threw the murder weapon into nearby bushes.
According to the prosecution, Franco Martinez had moved out of New York state and I was working in Kansas, from where he traveled by land to commit the crime. He got angry with Larín after she ended her relationship and he suspected that she might be dating another man.
Franco Martínez paid an acquaintance to take him from Kansas to New York to commit the crime. “Our prayers are with the Larín family as they mourn this completely senseless loss,” District Attorney Anne T. Donnelly said Wednesday.
“Without warning, on the morning of Father’s Day 2018, (Franco Martinez) showed up at the Belmont racetrack where she worked, waited for her to show up, and without saying a word, brutally attacked her with a knife. He stabbed and cut her 23 times as her co-workers ran to try to save her life, “summed up the prosecutor, quoted by patch.com.
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