An alleged cartel hitman responsible for murdering several people in California, including a Santa Ynez man, will be sentenced to life in prison, according to officials from the Tulare County District Attorney’s Office.
As part of an October plea agreement, Jose Manuel Martinez will be spared the death penalty for the murders of nine men, six of which were in Tulare County. Sentencing is scheduled for Nov. 2 in Tulare County Superior Court.
Known by monikers such as “The Black Hand” or “El Mano Negro,” Martinez’s is said to have killed several men spanning a period of more than 30 years, according to Stuart Anderson, public information officer for the Tulare County District Attorney’s Office.
According to Anderson, one of Martinez’ victims was Sylvester Ayon of Santa Ynez.
In the plea agreement provided to the Sun by Anderson, Martinez confessed to killing Ayon on the morning of Oct. 1, 1982, shooting Ayon several times as he drove a tractor on a ranch off of Refugio Road. Martinez also shot a 17-year-old witness in the stomach. The witness, identified only by the initials G.G., survived, the plea agreement states.
Martinez admitted that he was hired to kill Ayon in retaliation for Ayon’s involvement in a dancehall shooting in Durango, Mexico, in 1979 where four people were killed. Martinez said in the plea agreement that he was related to at least one of the people who died.
There were three other men, Martinez said, that were with him when he drove to Santa Barbara County to kill Ayon, although he refused to identify them.
For years, the murders went unsolved and Martinez’s identity as a contract killer stayed hidden. Yet, for as long as he went undetected, his downfall can be traced to a Walmart receipt in Alabama.
In early March 2013, two hunters who were scouting hunting land in Lawrence County found the body of 32-year-old Jose Ruiz lying in a pasture, according to Lawrence County District Attorney Errek Jett.
The two hunters were actually off-duty police officers, Jett said. A receipt for a purchase at Walmart was found crumpled up next to the body.
The receipt would eventually prove Martinez’s involvement in the crime. Jett told the Sun that investigators traced the timestamp printed on the receipt to a suspect shown on a surveillance video making the purchase at a Huntsville, Ala., Walmart 24 hours before the killing of Ruiz.
Police then arrested a suspect, Jaime Romero, who was dating Martinez’s daughter, who was living in Alabama at the time. During questioning, the suspect admitted that Martinez was the killer, and he was present at the time of the shooting.
According to Jett, Romero told investigators that the murder stems from an incident the night before when he, Martinez, and the victim were sitting in a car. Ruiz had apparently made a comment sexual in nature regarding Martinez’s daughter. Martinez took offense and decided to kill Ruiz, Jett said, adding that Martinez also wanted to kill Romero for not defending his daughter’s honor.
The next day, on March 4, all three drove out to a remote field where Martinez shot Ruiz twice in the back of the head execution style. Jett told the Sun that the only reason why Martinez didn’t kill Romero is because he didn’t know where he was and needed Romero to drive him back out.
Martinez then fled to Mexico, but was apprehended while crossing the U.S.-Mexico border into Arizona in May 2013. He was sent back to Alabama.
During questioning, Jett said, Martinez admitted to killing at least 30 people while being employed as a hitman for a Mexican drug cartel. Martinez refused to say which cartel, Jett said, but added that most of Martinez’s contracts had to do with drugs and retaliation, and that he reportedly killed sex offenders.
The case bewildered detectives because Ruiz had no connection to that part of the country, Jett told the Sun. It’s the type of case that doesn’t happen too often in a place like Lawrence County, with a population of fewer than 35,000 people.
“It was a very big case to say the least,” Jett told the Sun. “It had the hallmark of being a murder that would never be solved there.” Martinez was eventually escorted back to Tulare County. The Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Office was also involved in the investigation, Tulare County’s Anderson said.
This article appears in Oct 22-29, 2015.
