Buzzfeed: The Life Of One Of America’s Bloodiest Hitmen

[visionary]

https://www.buzzfeed.com/jessicagarrison/martinez-hitman-cartel-black-hand-mano-negra-contract-killer?utm_term=.jkkBN9jvQ#.jlnyOkbj3

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The Life Of One Of America’s Bloodiest Hitmen

 

“Look, Jose,” the cop said to the genial grandfather sitting across the desk. “The fact is, you’re being charged with murder.”

 

Tim McWhorter, the chief investigator for the Lawrence County Sheriff’s Office in rural Alabama, was reaching. He had very little to tie Jose Manuel Martinez — a soft-spoken man with an easy smile who’d spent much of the last few months playing soccer and make-believe with his grandchildren — to the bloody body of a young man found in a nearby hayfield.

 

But Martinez seemed to make a decision. “You guys have been real respectful to me, and I appreciate that,” he said. “Do you want me to tell you the truth?”

 

McWhorter nodded.

 

“Yeah, I killed that son of a ****.” Martinez’s eyes, which McWhorter had found so friendly moments before, were now black and cold. “He said some bad stuff about my daughter. I stand up for my family. I don’t let anyone talk about my family.”

 

McWhorter was still trying to make sense of that when Martinez delivered a much bigger revelation: “I’ve killed over 35 men in my life.”

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With a lethal professionalism, Martinez set up a fake traffic stop or a false business front or hired honeypots who lured men to lonely places. Then he killed, often with a bullet to the head. Afterward, he collected his money and slipped back into his quiet, unassuming life, taking his children to Disneyland and on other adventures. “Good parents take their kids camping,” he told police officers.

 

It was for his family, Martinez said, that he had chosen just days before to leave the safety of a glorious beach on the Sea of Cortez, where he had been enjoying himself with a cold Corona and a beautiful young woman. He had heard that police intended to question one of his beloved granddaughters about the dead body in the hayfield, and he couldn’t bear the thought of it. “My family don’t have to pay for any of the stupid things I done in my life,” he insisted.

 

His story seemed fantastical, but he urged McWhorter to call around. It turned out that Martinez had been suspected of involvement in plenty of murders, though he had never been charged. After months of investigating on the part of police officers from at least three states; after consulting Martinez’s hand-drawn maps of where he dumped bodies; after marveling that he remembered the number and caliber of each bullet he fired, the angle and repose of each fallen victim — detectives from departments across the country decided it was true.

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Sitting in his cell, he writes to his beloved granddaughters and other family members, dispensing advice and showering praise. He has also written his life story, twice. He suggests headlines for this article, including, in one letter over the summer: “True Evil has a face you know and a voice you trust. El Mano Negra.” He also revealed that he has done research on me and my editors, even obtaining a photo of us, which he keeps in his cell.

He reads almost anything he can get his hands on, including crime books and romance novels by Danielle Steel. And he writes love letters, such as a two-page missive to Melania Trump. “I don’t care if I get a federal charge for loving a woman,” he explained. “I’m very, very good to do love letter. I mean real good.”

 

[zoony]

Not buying it... the media has a fascination with portraying violent killers as leading double lives... because people are fascinated by the possibility.  Remember the Iceman Tapes from hbo in the 90s, when they said he had a family he loved.  Turns out he had a family he tortured and abused.  Media even tried with several serial killers to paint them as normal in many respects

 

This guy is a sociopath and a guaranteed piece of ****.  His family is terrified of him

[visionary]

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Eventually he found an opportunity to contribute. Jose Ruiz, a friend of her then-boyfriend’s, had a debt to collect for his business. Martinez figured he could lend his expertise, and in the process get Ruiz to tell him a little bit more about the man his daughter was dating.

 

Instead, Ruiz, according to police and Martinez, made a fateful mistake. Not knowing who Martinez was, or, more crucially, who his daughter was, Ruiz described his friend’s girlfriend as a **** and a slut and a terrible mother.

 

Martinez was enraged. Ruiz, he decided, would have to die. But he said nothing at the time. He knew that he and Ruiz had been seen together. Ruiz’s DNA was all over the car Martinez was driving. Revenge would have to wait.

 

So he went home to California to be with his mother. As the winter sky hung low over the fields, parched after years of drought, his anger over Ruiz’s comments festered.

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Martinez returned to Alabama from California, and on March 4, 2013, five days after detectives over in Florida received the lab report on Evidence Item 28, he found a pretext to go for a ride with Ruiz and his daughter’s boyfriend, Jaime Romero.

 

At Martinez’s direction, they drove south and west, through ever-smaller towns that petered out into fields of hay and then eventually dissolved into the Bankhead National Forest of dense, old-growth trees cloaking mossy green canyons and sparkling waterfalls. When they stopped next to a hayfield to stretch their legs, Martinez pulled out a gun.

 

The woman you bad-mouthed “is my daughter, you stupid son of a ****,” Martinez said. He fired his gun, shooting Ruiz twice in the head.

 

Martinez watched Ruiz’s body crumple to the ground. He got back in the car and glared at the startled Romero.

 

“Drive,” he said, “and keep your mouth shut.”

 

In the remote field where Martinez shot him, Jose Ruiz’s body might not have been discovered for a long time. But as it happened, nearby hunters heard the shots and came upon it in less than an hour. Tim McWhorter, the Lawrence County Sheriff’s chief investigator, arrived at the scene and looked down at the lifeless body.

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Martinez was back in California, at the Earlimart home where his sons lived, when local police showed up at his door on April 16. With the murder he had committed in Alabama fresh in his mind, Martinez took one look at them and bolted out the back.

 

Tulare County Sheriff’s Deputy Christal Derington gave chase. But Martinez had run for nothing. Derington didn’t know anything about the Alabama killing. She was part of a task force investigating a series of violent, drug-related robberies, one of which involved an allegation of attempted sexual assault.

 

Martinez was not a suspect, but he was a felon in possession of ammunition. As cops were cuffing him, a colleague whispered to Derington that he was El Mano Negra, the man who was rumored to be a hired assassin, the man who had been suspected of involvement in at least four local murders.

This man? With his pleasant air and wry humor?

 

During the drive to the station, Derington told Martinez about the string of stash-house robberies. Hearing the part about a young woman threatened with gang rape, Martinez appeared almost on the verge of tears. He told her he couldn’t bear the idea of men hurting women.

 

Derington said she was not naive. She knew the man in the back of her car was a criminal, likely a violent, manipulative one. She knew he was working some kind of angle, although she didn’t know what it was. But he was also fascinating to talk to.

 

Authorities could have locked Martinez up for the ammunition they found, but they let him walk free with a promise that he would help them.

 

[Spaceman Spiff]

42 minutes ago, zoony said:

Not buying it... the media has a fascination with portraying violent killers as leading double lives... because people are fascinated by the possibility.  Remember the Iceman Tapes from hbo in the 90s, when they said he had a family he loved.  Turns out he had a family he tortured and abused.  Media even tried with several serial killers to paint them as normal in many respects

 

This guy is a sociopath and a guaranteed piece of ****.  His family is terrified of him

 

Whatever with facts, zoony, jeez.  

[Fresh8686]

Interesting start to his killings... and by interesting I mean understandable. I can't say I wouldn't of done the same **** for my sister.

Is he a straight up sociopath or is he a guy who started for revenge, got twisted by it, and continued for the money?

“I was a nice man, until they killed my sister,” he said. “And since then, I said, ‘**** the rapers. And the child molesters.’ When my father was in the funeral, I told my dad, ‘I’m going to get those mother****ers.’ He said, ‘Son, let God take care of them.’ I said, ‘Dad, God ain’t gonna do ****.’”

When he killed the people he believed were responsible for his sister’s death, “I feel so proud,” he recalled. “It was, I don’t know, you feel good. You feel something relax in your heart when you take revenge.”

No matter how many murders he cops to, he won’t be giving up the location of those three bodies. Those bones, he said, don’t deserve to be found.

[Fresh8686]

1 hour ago, zoony said:

Not buying it... the media has a fascination with portraying violent killers as leading double lives... because people are fascinated by the possibility.  Remember the Iceman Tapes from hbo in the 90s, when they said he had a family he loved.  Turns out he had a family he tortured and abused.  Media even tried with several serial killers to paint them as normal in many respects

 

This guy is a sociopath and a guaranteed piece of ****.  His family is terrified of him

From the article

"And yet, she adored her dad. When the Army gave her a choice of jobs, she picked mechanic, because her dad was great with cars and she thought it would make him proud. When he came to visit, she dropped everything to make his time with her special.

His long visit in 2013, when he had so doted on his grandchildren, had exceeded all her expectations. She had begun to entertain hopes for a future in which her dad gave up his criminal activities and lived with her for at least part of every year, a steady, loving presence in her children’s lives in the way he had not always been in her own."

[BurgundyMalaise]

Buzzfeed Content

 

[zoony]

1 hour ago, Fresh8686 said:

From the article

"And yet, she adored her dad. When the Army gave her a choice of jobs, she picked mechanic, because her dad was great with cars and she thought it would make him proud. When he came to visit, she dropped everything to make his time with her special.

His long visit in 2013, when he had so doted on his grandchildren, had exceeded all her expectations. She had begun to entertain hopes for a future in which her dad gave up his criminal activities and lived with her for at least part of every year, a steady, loving presence in her children’s lives in the way he had not always been in her own."

 

Im sure hes an awesome guy

21 minutes ago, MondayNightCowboyKilla89 said:

Buzzfeed Content

 

 

 

 

This

[Fresh8686]

1 minute ago, zoony said:

 

Im sure hes an awesome guy

 

 

This

Eh, to some people I'm sure he was an awesome guy. And to others he was the last thing they saw before bullets put their brains on the windshield.

People have many sides, and some of those sides only get shown to certain people. People are like a deck of cards, sometimes you'll pull a Joker and other times...

[visionary]

This is 2018.  Buzzfeed has put out many amazing articles that are well-researched, in depth, and high quality, including this one.

 

 

That said, I think the guy is a murdering lunatic, but it does seem he can charm people into liking him somehow.