Before Girl's Brutal Killing, Mom Sought Men to Rape Her: Cops

Victoria Martens was assaulted before brutal night that ended her young life, mom tells cops
By Polly Davis Doig,  Newser Staff
Posted Sep 14, 2016 3:58 PM CDT
Before Girl's Brutal Killing, Mom Sought Men to Rape Her: Cops
A picture of Victoria Martens, a 10-year-old Albuquerque girl brutally murdered, is placed in a memorial outside her former Albuquerque apartment on Monday, Aug. 29, 2016.   (AP Photo/Russell Contreras)

The death of Victoria Martens was a brutal, unthinkable assault on the innocence of childhood: The Albuquerque girl was slipped meth on her 10th birthday, raped, strangled, stabbed, and finally dismembered, before what remained of her battered body was set on fire in the bathtub of her apartment—allegedly at the hands of her mother, her mother's boyfriend, and his cousin. The life of Victoria Martens wasn't much less grim, reports the Albuquerque Journal, in a look at police documents which the newspaper notes contained details so disturbing it opted not to publish them. Victoria's mother, Michelle Martens, told police she had sought out at least three men to sexually assault her daughter; in the Journal's words, "she didn't do it for the money. She set up the sexual assaults because she enjoyed watching."

The story gets worse, with Martens telling cops that she used Plenty of Fish to seek out men, and, as one inspector wrote, "Michelle said ‘yeah’ when asked if she would agree with them over the internet or over the phone that they would come over and have sex with her children." Martens has one other child; his father is seeking orders of protection against all three suspects and, per his lawyer, "will do what he needs to do to protect his son." Martens, meanwhile, told investigators that she arranged for at least two other men to rape Victoria; the Journal notes that it's unclear how long she'd been doing so. Police are reviewing a camcorder and various electronic devices seized from the apartment to see if they were used to record assaults, and say more charges could be coming. "This will be a very thorough, long investigation," says a police rep. The Journal's full story is here. (More murder stories.)

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