Mother charged with murder in 2003 'Beloved Doe' case
Police say mother left starved boy's body in trash
April 25, 2008, 6:45AM
The forensic sketches — the scars on the dead boy's body, in particular — were just too familiar for José Martinez Sr.
They were images broadcast Tuesday night on a Spanish-language television show that featured the death of a 5-year-old boy whose emaciated body was discarded in a southeast Houston trash bin five years ago. The little boy known as "Beloved Doe."
The boy in the sketch, he believed, was his son. He later learned that he was right.
Authorities identified the boy as José Bernardo Martinez and on Thursday filed criminal charges against the boy's mother.
"I saw the sketch, and I recognized his markings," said the boy's father, José Martinez Sr. of Houston. "I know the markings on his body. Then I saw the sketch on the TV show. After talking to family members, they agreed that it was him."
The child's mother, Ma Dana Martinez, 30, of the 8300 block of Fountain, is charged with felony murder, accused of failing to provide adequate nutrition and hydration to her son, who was blind.
The steel yard worker, also known as Maria Dana Martinez, was booked into the Harris County Jail overnight and has been ordered held without bail until a court hearing Monday. She has three other children, all found to be in good condition, police said.
The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement ordered that he Mexican citizen be detained, since she is in this country illegally.
The boy's father said he was at a loss to explain his former wife's alleged actions.
"I really don't know how it happened. I just don't have a good understanding — just that she dumped him," the father said. "I just don't know her motivation. I was here for him, his family was here for him — we could have helped him, if she would have let us. She didn't want help. There was nothing we could do to try to help."
He said he had not had seen their son in eight years, noting his former wife kept them apart.
Police said the woman had repeatedly lied to the boy's father, telling other family members the boy was in a hospital and claiming that she was the only person authorized to see him.
"She would tell me José was fine and not to worry about anything," said José Martinez Sr. "But she always said I couldn't see him for whatever reasons."
Only wearing a diaper
A maintenance man found the tiny boy dead in a trash bin at the Willow Creek Apartments at 7575 Office City Drive on the rainy morning of March 13, 2003.
Clad only in a diaper, the boy weighed between 18 and 28 pounds at the time of his death. He was wrapped in an Afghan-style blanket and stuffed inside a woven bag.
An autopsy revealed he died from starvation and dehydration.
Despite Houston police's frequent appeals to the public, the boy's identity remained a mystery until his father caught the end of a story about the case on Univision's Aquí Y Ahora newsmagazine program.
Other members of the Martinez family also saw the internationally broadcast program and called authorities.
With Crime Stoppers' help, HPD homicide investigators reached the boy's father, who watched a rebroadcast of the same show hours later and confirmed the boy was his son, said Houston Police Department homicide investigator Rick Moreno.
The boy's mother appeared surprised and nervous when Houston police first approached her 5 p.m. Wednesday, Moreno said. She agreed to go voluntarily to HPD headquarters to give a statement.
Ma Dana Martinez is being charged with felony murder in the death of her 5-year-old son....
"She ultimately gave a partial confession on her role in this crime," Moreno said.
Police would not elaborate on the mother's statement, but say they think she told them only part of the story.
"It appeared this child was singled out due to some type of illness and was allowed to die," Moreno said.
Despite the arrest in the case, investigators are still gathering information about the little boy.
"What we have right now is not a full picture," said FBI Special Agent Shauna Dunlap.
More details sought
For instance, investigators don't yet know specifically what illnesses or ailments the boy suffered. They have not yet obtained his medical records, which they hope will reveal more details.
The child — born Oct. 14, 1997 — was sickly and had lost his eyesight years ago while still living in Mexico, his father said.
He had two vertical scars on his abdomen and a surgical scar on the right side of his neck. The boy's mother confirmed one of the abdominal scars was from a feeding tube.
Child Protective Services could not locate any records to indicate they had investigated the family. The family never lived at the apartment complex where the boy's body was dumped, Moreno said.
Known as 'Maria'
The boy's mother and the man she now calls her husband moved with the surviving children into a house in the Sunnyside neighborhood almost three years ago, said Rich Pennie, whose grandmother lives next door to the family.
Pennie knew the accused woman as "Maria" and said he sometimes shared meals with her family. She and her current husband often quarreled, and it was clear she was the more controlling, Pennie said.
"She was a tough, strict woman," Pennie said.
Officers who had pursued the boy's identity for years never gave up, even though cases of other slain children who were discarded drew far more media attention.
"My baby has a name, too," Moreno said last fall, shortly after another slain child, 2-year-old Riley Ann Sawyers, was found in Galveston Bay and identified. "He's buried under a pauper's burial handled by the county, and I think my kid needs his little headstone updated also."
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