KARLA MARTINEZ - 10 yo/ Accused: Stranger-Brain Clay - Las Vegas NV

LAS VEGAS — Using a hammer as a weapon, a "complete stranger" with no
significant criminal history allegedly chose a family at random and
attacked them in their home, killing a woman and her daughter, in a
brutal crime that left investigators both baffled and aghast.

Bryan Clay, 22, was arrested Friday in the April 15 rape and
bludgeoning deaths of 38-year-old Ignacia Martinez and 10-year-old Karla
Martinez. He had no connection to the family of five, Lt. Ray Steiber
said Saturday.

"This was a complete stranger killing a mother and daughter and
attacking the father," Steiber told The Associated Press. "I've been
doing this (police work) 24 years, and you don't see cases like this. I
can't even put this into words."

Police were notified about the case when a 9-year-old boy, who was
not injured by the attacker, came to school the next day and informed a
counselor that his mom and sister were dead.

Nothing was taken from the house, and investigators were unsure of the motive for the attack.

"There's no rhyme or reason to why (it happened)," he said, adding Clay doesn't have a "significant" criminal history.

Clay also was booked in the beating and rape of a 50-year-old woman
in the same west Las Vegas neighborhood hours before the slayings.

Steiber said he didn't know why the two boys, 9 and 4, were spared in the home invasion attack.

Arturo Martinez, 39, the husband and father, was critically injured
in the attack and remains hospitalized with head injuries. He has been
unable to talk to investigators. Both the mother and daughter were
sexually assaulted, Steiber said.'

In the earlier attack, the 50-year-old woman was walking near an
intersection when an assailant forced her into a nearby desert area and
violently sexually assaulted her April 15. "(She was) chased, beaten and
raped," Steiber said.

DNA results linked Clay to both attacks, investigators said. A
baseball cap left behind by the woman's attacker turned out to be a key
piece of evidence, KLAS-TV reported.

Authorities found the bodies of the girl and the mother in separate
bedrooms. The two boys remained in the home for at least 24 hours with
the bodies and their severely injured father, Steiber said.

The boys were placed in protective custody with the Clark County
Department of Family Services after the attack, and police declined to
say where they now are.

"They're safe and OK," Steiber said.

Police made the case a top priority as up to 60 investigators were
involved. "Our goal was to get this guy into custody, and we weren't
going to stop until we did," Steiber said.

Steiber said he didn't know if Clay had a lawyer, and attempts to reach a police spokeswoman were unsuccessful.

Clay was being held without bail Saturday pending an initial court
appearance. He was booked on various charges, including murder, battery
with a deadly weapon and sexual assault.
http://onlineathens.com/national-news/2012-04-29/man-booked-hammer-deaths-vegas-mom-child

The end came viciously for a mother and her young daughter.

And it came, Las Vegas police say, at the hands of Bryan Devonte Clay
Jr., who broke into their home at about 2 a.m. last week, tormented a
family, sexually assaulted the mother and her daughter, 10, and then
bludgeoned them to death with a hammer.


The father lay in critical condition in the blood-splattered house
for more than 24 hours with his two terrified sons, ages 9 and 4, unsure
what to do.


But the boys knew their dad, Arturo Martinez, an undocumented Mexican
immigrant who worked as an electrician by day and coached boxing to
teens in the evening, always stressed how important school is, their
aunt told The Associated Press on Monday.


"The first thing he always tells kids is that he will teach them, but they have to do well in school," Gaudia Martinez said.


So the next morning, April 16, the fourth-grader walked four blocks
to his elementary school and told a trusted teacher that his mom and
sister were dead at home. School officials called police.


"He also reported his father had two holes in his head, was acting
strange and there was blood all over the home," Las Vegas police said in
a chillingly detailed arrest report made public Monday.


Neither the boys nor Arturo Martinez, 39, who remained Monday in a
medically induced coma at a Las Vegas hospital, could tell investigators
what happened. He is said to have severe head injuries. Rumors swirled
for several days as police backtracked from initial assurances that they
didn't think an intruder was involved.


Police now say the keys to solving the intense 11-day investigation
were a DNA match to evidence of the sex assault on 38-year-old Ignacia
Yadira Martinez, a bloody thumbprint from the house, and a baseball cap
and cellphone records pointing to the 22-year-old man now facing charges
that could get him the death penalty.


Clay was arrested Friday morning on a warrant in an unrelated case,
then linked to the slayings after jailers obtained a warrant and a DNA
sample. He was booked late Friday in the slayings and sex assaults.


Las Vegas Police Lt. Ray Steiber, who characterized the slayings as
"savage" and "heinous," said investigators don't know why Clay, who had
no connection to the family, allegedly picked the Martinez home. Steiber
said the intruder apparently entered through an unlocked front or back
door.


But "the physical evidence, including DNA, makes us confident we have
the right person and he is the only person involved in these crimes,"
Steiber said.


Clay was being held Monday at the Clark County jail without bail
pending an initial court appearance Wednesday on charges including
murder, kidnapping, assault with a deadly weapon and sex assault with a
minor under 14. He did not yet have an attorney.


The two boys were placed in protective custody with the Clark County Department of Family Services.


Child forensic counselors have spoken with the boys, but Nichols said
police haven't questioned the children directly about what happened in
the house.


"We're not going to push them," the police lieutenant said. "You can only imagine what they saw."


Clark County District Attorney Steve Wolfson said Monday that the
case was getting "the highest degree of attention" from prosecutors. A
decision whether to seek the death penalty won't be made for several
weeks.


A public defender may be named to represent Clay, said Daren
Richards, an administrator in the Clark County public defender's office.


Clay also faces a court appearance Tuesday on the original warrant
accusing him of failing to appear April 3 on a felony summons in a child
abuse case involving a teenage girlfriend, police and court officials
said. Justice of the Peace Melissa Saragosa also has scheduled a hearing
for Clay on yet another pending felony case accusing him of robbery and
domestic battery.


Clay told Las Vegas police that he partied heavily with alcohol,
Ecstasy and PCP, and didn't remember the home invasion, sex attacks and
hammer slayings of the mother of three known as "Yady" and her
10-year-old daughter, Karla Edith Martinez, and the near-fatal
bludgeoning of Arturo Martinez.


"He did not deny being involved," police said in their report, "only ... (that) he did not remember what happened."


Police added that Clay told detectives they should "kill him now instead of taking him to jail."


Authorities allege that after leaving his brother's home less than a
half-mile from the Martinez home, Clay followed a 50-year-old woman on a
nearby neighborhood street and tried to rape her before she clobbered
him with a rock.


The woman managed to call 911 before the attacker escaped with her
cellphone. Officers who found the woman about 2 a.m. April 15 also found
a baseball cap that Clay later acknowledged was his, according to the
police report.


Investigators think the home invasion attacks occurred between about 2
a.m. April 15, when several calls were placed with the phone taken from
the 50-year-old woman, and just after 4 a.m., when there was a final
call, Steiber said.


The calls were to acquaintances of Clay, including a 17-year-old girl
and two people who Clay later told detectives would be "the first
people he would call if he was in trouble or scared." Clay denied making
the calls.


The crucial break came when a DNA sample collected from Clay
following his arrest on the child abuse charge matched evidence from the
attempted rape and the attacks at the Martinez home, Steiber said.


Clay's DNA was also was found on blood spots on the woman's jacket,
Steiber said. Tests are still being conducted on a T-shirt and jacket
that a neighbor found wadded up on the rear tire of his pickup truck.
The neighbor told police he thought the clothes belonged to Martinez so
he tossed them into the bed of Arturo Martinez' pickup.


Police have a claw hammer believed to be the murder weapon, Steiber said. He wouldn't say where it was found.


Steiber said Clay had only traffic offenses before his arrest Friday
morning at his mother's home in northeast Las Vegas on a warrant
charging him with felony child abuse in a separate case involving a
teenage girlfriend. He had not been formally charged.


Gaudia Martinez said she has visited her brother in the hospital, but he hasn't been able to communicate.


"The boys are OK. Thank God, physically OK," their aunt said.


Read more: http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/news/2012/05/01/police-have-suspect-dna-proof-in-death-mom-10-year-old-daughter/#ixzz1tdRoWb3P

Relatives of mother, daughter killed in brutal attack reflect on the family’s shattered dreams

By Jackie Valley


Monday, April 30, 2012 | 9:36 a.m.

Relatives of the young girl and her mother who were bludgeoned to death April 15
have released a stirring letter to the community, sharing the family’s
love story and their hopes for living the American dream, and expressing
deep concerns for the father and husband, who was left for dead in the
attack.

The two-page letter from Bruno and Gaudia Martinez, the brother and
sister of family patriarch Arturo Martinez, expresses their anxiety over
his recovery and the long road ahead for him and his two sons.

Arturo Martinez was severely beaten in the attack that took the lives
of his wife, Yadira, and 10-year-old daughter, Karla, whom he called
his queen and princess. According to the Metro Police arrest report,
evidence indicates mother and daughter were sexually assaulted.


The next morning, the couple’s 9-year-old son went to school and told
the staff that his mother and sister were dead. At the house, police
found the bodies of the mother and daughter as well as the gravely
injured father, who also was attacked on the head, and the youngest
child, a 4-year-old boy, who was not physically injured.

“Now, their America Dream has been snatched away from them, soiled,
stained, by this outrageous act,” Arthur Martinez’s siblings wrote.
“After they came back home from a gathering and while they were resting
in their modest home, Queen and Princess were brutally murdered, and
their Champion, Art, left devastated, with a destroyed family, and
severely injured, struggling between life and death, perhaps with severe
consequences, and with a harsh future to come.”

Metro Police on Friday arrested 22-year-old Bryan Clay, accusing him
of the double homicide, attempted murder and sexual assault. Police said
he is also a suspect in the April 15 sexual assault of a 50-year-old
woman not far from the Martinez family home. Police said DNA evidence
linked the two cases.

The relatives’ letter laments the tragedy, calling it an “evil, terrible atrocity,” which has destroyed the young family.

“Art and his sons will never recover from this act of hatred and of
what has been taken away from them,” Gaudia and Bruno Martinez wrote.

But mostly, the letter reflects on the couple’s hard but love-filled
life and love for their children. Relatives said Art and Yadira met as
law students in Mexico, but family circumstances forced them to leave
school.

The couple moved first to Los Angeles and shortly thereafter to Las
Vegas, where she worked at fast food restaurants and he found a job as
an electrician apprentice, relatives said.

Yadira, who went by the nickname Yady, “was a striving woman, hard
worker, and of good principles who instilled into her children the love
for God and respect for others,” the letter said. “She was a
stay-at-home mother dedicated to the care and education of her little
angels and caring for her husband; and in her spare time she sold
perfumes to help her and him with the financial situation of the
household.”

Of Arthur, his siblings wrote: “Art always has been outstanding,
excellent and a hard worker in every job he has held. He has gotten
promotions, recognized for his great responsibility, and welcomed into
the electrician brotherhood, truthful co-workers day by day at the
Electrician Union of the State of Nevada.”

Together, the couple enrolled the older two children “in gymnastics,
karate, boxing, athletics, etc.; always looking to have them involved in
extracurricular activities to help them become good, honorable, and
successful people. That’s their way of thinking; they lived a true
American life, the eagle that was added to their American life.”

The letter described the youngest child as “playful, bold, perspicacious, and loving.”

With money from savings, they decided to open a gym, where Art worked
as a trainer in the evenings, relatives said. All the while, the couple
“kept their promise of sending money to their families” in Mexico,
Art’s siblings wrote.

Donations to help the family are being accepted by the International
Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 357, 808 N. Lamb Blvd. in Las
Vegas. The nonprofit Construction Industry Workers Charitable Foundation
also is accepting donations directly for the Martinez family. Checks
can be mailed to the foundation at 7030 Smoke Ranch Road, Las Vegas, NV,
89128, with the name Arturo Martinez in the subject line.

http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2012/apr/30/relatives-mother-daughter-killed-brutal-attack-ref/

Mother and Daughter Murdered by 22-year-old Man

By Alberto Angulo

Bryan Clay, 22, was arrested early Friday morning for the double
homicide of 38-year-old Yadira Martinez and her daughter, ten-year-old
Karla Martinez. He was initially booked on an unrelated felony
child-abuse warrant from an incident in March. Police said they
suspected his involvement in the brutal slayings and sexual assaults.

“I have been doing this for 22 years and this is the type of case you
hope you never get to see,” said Las Vegas Police Lt. Ray Steiber at a
late night news conference on Friday.

A car wash fundraiser for the Martinez family was held at 9 a.m.
Saturday at the Real K-O Boxing Club, at 3240 B Civic Center Drive.

Family of the victims of the horrific, April 16th double homicide are
afraid to speak out publicly after the loss of their family members,
but they have been gathering nearly every day outside the Martinez
family home near Lake Mead and Rancho to pray.

They are devastated by the loss of Yadira Martinez and her 10
year-old daughter, Karla. The family is still looking for any sort of
answer as to why this brutal attack happened in the first place.

The father and patriarch of the family, Arturo Martinez, remains in a
local hospital and is in and out of surgery. His injuries have still
left him unable to speak with anyone, let alone with detectives who want
to know what happened inside the home.

“We think it’s best to keep our mouths tight-lipped as police do
their investigation. We don’t want to put anyone’s life in any kind of
danger,” a family member said. “The children are … we don’t know what
they’ve been through. We just gotta make sure they’re as healthy as they
can possibly be from this point on.”


http://guardianlv.com/2012/05/mother-and-daughter-murdered-by-22-year-old-man/