Thread: 1 Suspect In Jail For 2 Cold Case Murders

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1 Suspect In Jail For 2 Cold Case Murders

June 26, 2006, 04:56 PM

Two young Austin women were beaten, raped and strangled in their apartments years ago. Police now say their killer is behind bars.

Forty-four-year-old Martin Vega Torres is charged with two counts of murder, but it's for two crimes that happened back in 80s and 90s.

Monday, Torres is in the Travis County Jail on just over $1.2 million bond. He's accused of the heinous murders of Jeeta Graeber and Cerrelle Belt.

Graeber worked as a Braniff Airlines flight attendant. She was described as a happy-go-lucky person. She was killed in her Spyglass apartment in June 1984. Graeber was 33 years old.

Belt was beaten, raped and strangled in her Central Austin apartment in June 1990. Belt was just 19 years old. She was a gifted singer and a college student at Austin Community College and Concordia.

Police say in 1999, they discovered both cases had a DNA connection and a fingerprint. It wasn't until 2004 that the evidence pinpointed to Torres.

The trouble was Torres had been deported to Mexico and was incarcerated in a Nuevo Leon prison for an unrelated crime.

This is the first time a murder suspect has been successfully extradited from Mexico to Austin. Police say they're still trying to connect Torres to other possible victims.

"It's not believed he knew either one of these women. He did reside at the same apartment complex that Cerrelle Belt lived at in 1990. We are working to try to find any connection to the Spyglass Apartments in 1984," Sgt. John Neff with the APD Cold Case Unit said.

The family of Belt said they are relieved and say they don't have to wonder if the killer is walking the streets.

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APD Homicide Cold Case Unit charges suspect in 2 murders
Monday, June 26, 2006, 03:15 PM

From the Austin Police Department:

Austin Police Department Homicide Cold Case Unit detectives have arrested and charged a suspect in connection with the 1984 murder of Jeeta Lynn Graeber, 33 (DOB: 10-04-50) and the 1990 murder of Cerrelle Lee Belt, 19 (DOB: 11-07-70). Martin Torres, 44 (DOB: 11-11-61) has been indicted for two counts of Murder, first-degree felonies, and bond was set at $1,250,000.

In October 2004, all detectives in the Cold Case Unit and a latent print examiner began working on both cases as a group. After an arrest warrant was issued for Torres in December 2004, detectives began their attempt to locate him. It was discovered that Torres was deported to Mexico in 1997. In January 2005 detectives began preparations for the extradition of Torres when it was determined that he was incarcerated in a Nuevo Laredo prison for an unrelated crime. Before extradition preparations could be completed, Torres was released from prison. During the next several months’ detectives and a prosecutor from the Travis County DA’s Office met with the United States Department of Justice (US DOJ) to begin the extradition process and relocate Torres.

The Mexican Provisional Arrest Warrant (PAW) was issued on November 1, 2005 and agents with the U.S. Marshal’s Service, as well as the Mexican Federal Police (AFI) began searching for Torres. He was taken into custody on November 11, 2005 without incident. The final extradition packet was sent to Mexico in December 2005 and the Mexican Foreign Ministry granted extradition in May 2006. The diplomatic note was received by US DOJ in Mexico City on June 16, 2006 ordering that Torres be turned over to US custody.

On June 29, 1984 patrol officers were dispatched to an apartment complex in the 1700 block of Spyglass Drive on a check welfare call. The officers entered the apartment and located the body of Graeber. The Medical Examiner’s Office ruled the death a homicide as a result of asphyxia due to ligature strangulation associated with sexual assault. APD Identification Technicians recovered latent fingerprints from items in Graeber’s bedroom. In addition, evidence was collected that confirmed Graeber had been sexually assaulted.

On June 3, 1990 patrol officers responded to an apartment complex in the 6300 block of Burns on a deceased female call. Officers entered the apartment and located Belt. A friend discovered the body and called police. The Medical Examiner’s Office ruled the death a homicide as a result of asphyxia due to ligature strangulation associated with sexual assault. Shortly after the murder a sergeant conducted a canvas of the apartment complex. Martin Torres’ name was included in that canvas. On November 13, 1998 the DPS Crime Lab was able to extract a male DNA profile from one of the evidence items collected at the scene.

In May 1999 the DPS Crime Lab also reported that the male DNA obtained from Graber’s crime scene and the DNA profile developed from the Belt crime scene were consistent with one another. In October 2002 an APD Identification Technician was able to develop and recover additional prints from a newspaper coupon collected at the Graeber crime scene. In November 2004 detectives were able to confirm the identity of Martin Torres that resided in the apartment complex on Burns. In December 2004 an APD Latent Print Examiner was able to confirm that a print from the Graeber crime scene belonged to Torres. The examiner also confirmed that a fingerprint recovered from the newspaper coupon belonged to Torres.

Through continued investigation by the Homicide Cold Case Unit, with assistance from the DPS Crime Lab, the Orchid Cellmark Lab and the University of North Texas DNA Lab, it was determined that the DNA evidence collected at both scenes belonged to Torres.

These murders were solved and the suspect was taken into custody as a result of multiple agencies assisting the Austin Police Department Cold Case Homicide Unit. APD would like to thank the Texas Department of Public Safety DNA Crime Lab, the Texas Rangers, the United States Department of Justice, the Mexican Federal Police Agencies, the Travis County District Attorney’s Office and the APD Forensics Science Division. APD would like to extend a special thank you to the US Marshals Office who returned Torres from Mexico to Austin. Original and past detectives who inherited these cases over the years contributed a great deal to bringing Torres to justice.

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The hunt for Martin Torres
Police, prosecutors had to dig through old evidence and persuade Mexico to extradite a suspect in two slayings.
By Steven Kreytak
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Sunday, July 02, 2006



Two giant obstacles stood between Austin police and the man they have accused of raping and strangling two Austin women in 1984 and 1990.

First, physical evidence. Crime scene fingerprints were too imperfect to match digitally, requiring laborious visual comparison that might never lead to a match. DNA checks came up empty.

Second, an international boundary. When authorities finally identified a suspect, he was in Mexico, meaning they'd need to have him extradited — something Austin police had never accomplished with someone in that country.

Yet nine days ago, Martin Vega Torres boarded an American Airlines plane in Mexico City in the custody of two U.S. marshals, bound for Austin. The 44-year-old is now awaiting trial in a Travis County jail, facing two murder charges.

It took a succession of detectives years to track down Torres.

Then it took piles of paperwork to satisfy the complex requirements of an international extradition treaty.

Last fall, homicide detectives and prosecutors traveled to Washington to visit Justice Department officials who would handle negotiations with their Mexican counterparts.

The prosecutors promised not to seek the death penalty against Torres and laid out their case against him in reams of paper that were translated into Spanish, stamped with the seal of the United States and shipped to Mexican judges.

Now the families of Jeeta Lynn Graeber, a 33-year-old flight attendant found raped and strangled in her South Austin apartment in 1984, and Cerrelle Belt, 19, a student killed in a similar manner in her apartment in North Austin six years later, at last know that someone will answer in court for their pain.

"These are truly innocent victims," said Sgt. John Neff, head of the Austin police cold case unit. "In their own apartment. At night, and they are attacked. How much more violated can you get?"


Graeber had gone to see the movie "Ghostbusters" with a friend on June 28, 1984, and about 10 p.m. returned home alone to her Spyglass Drive apartment near the Barton Creek greenbelt.

The next day, police found Graeber dead in a "semi-fetal position" in a blood-streaked bathtub, according to an affidavit. She had been hit in the head and strangled with a black and yellow scarf and beige women's underwear.

In her ransacked apartment, police found some fingerprints, including one on a bedside lamp. Some of the prints matched Graeber's friends, who were ruled out as suspects. Other fingerprints they couldn't match.

Six years later, on June 2, 1990, Belt spent the evening with friends in her apartment near Airport and Lamar boulevards. About 2 a.m. she drove one of them to his car in the Highland Mall parking lot and then returned home alone.

The Concordia University choir member, who grew up in Lampasas, was found later that day strangled and beaten, an affidavit said.

Police conducted a canvass of neighbors, asking them whether they saw or knew anything about the crime, Neff said. Detective Ed Balagia, who has since died of cancer, knocked on the door of No. 101 and spoke to members of the Torres family. They said they hadn't seen anything, Neff said, but Balagia wrote down the names of everyone living there, including a brother-in-law, Martin.

That slip of paper went into the file on Belt's case, which, like Graeber's before, quickly went cold.

It wasn't until 1999, aided by advances in DNA technology, that Department of Public Safety crime lab investigators determined that Graeber and Belt had been attacked by the same person.

Detectives entered the DNA into a database to see whether it matched any known offenders. They got no hits.

"We were like, OK," Neff said, "we are going to have to do this the hard way."


The hard way meant combing through two thick case files that had grown to thousands of pages over the years.

For several years, detectives re-examined evidence, ordered DNA tests to eliminate possible suspects and crossed others off the list when their alibis checked out.

In 2004, the four detectives in the cold case unit combined the cases to work as one, and they went through every page and searched computerized law enforcement records, pulling out names to create a database of potential suspects.

The list grew to more than 1,000, including neighbors and local ex-convicts.

The fingerprints lifted from the two crime scenes were not of a high enough quality to run through digital fingerprint systems. So Charles Parker, a latent print examiner from the Texas Department of Public Safety crime lab, was assigned to work on the case, and detectives fed him dozens of names at a time so he could visually compare potential suspects' fingerprints to the crime scene prints.

In November 2004, detectives gave Parker a new batch of names, including Martin Vega Torres.

Detectives had found the name Balagia had scribbled in 1990 and learned that Torres had been arrested by Austin police on charges of theft, drunken driving, driving with a suspended license and marijuana possession in the 1990s. They had his fingerprints on file.

A month later, Parker called the detectives on a Friday night.

"Don't leave your office," Neff recalled him saying. "I am heading over."

Torres' prints matched a print lifted from the lamp near Graeber's bed, Neff said.

Police filed a warrant for Torres' arrest.

Then they learned that Torres had been deported to Mexico in 1997 after his drug conviction, Neff said.


Mexico had long been a dead end for Austin police and other U.S. authorities who learned that crime suspects had crossed the border.

Homicide Sgt. Hector Reveles estimates that of the more than 30 people wanted in Austin on murder warrants, two-thirds are in Mexico.

Austin police had tried to extract Mexican citizens from their homeland and had been rebuffed every time, in part because of Texas' reputation for sending convicted killers to the death chamber.

In the 1990s, Austin police even tried to take advantage of a Mexican law that allowed its citizens to be tried in Mexico for crimes committed in other countries.

But that process "took a tremendous amount of time and energy" and was never successful, Reveles said.

But things have changed since Vicente Fox was elected president in 2000.

That year, Mexico extradited 12 crime suspects to face trial in the U.S., according to the Justice Department. That number doubled by 2004 and rose to 41 suspects extradited last year.


Austin police asked Texas Ranger Investigator Sal Abreo to join the hunt and work his contacts on the border, Neff said.

In January 2005, Abreo found Torres in a Mexican prison in Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas.

Detectives wouldn't say why Torres was in prison in Mexico, but they were told he would be there for a while, Neff said.

Prosecutors and detectives traveled to San Antonio, which has representatives of the Mexican attorney general's office.

The Mexicans brought Torres' prints, which proved he was the man Austin police were seeking, Neff said.

They also brought some news: Torres had been released.

Neff called it another letdown in a case that had proved difficult to close.

But the Mexican officials had a couple of possible addresses for Torres.

Before the search could continue, Austin detectives and prosecutors in Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle's office had to work with Department of Justice officials in Washington to prepare a request for an arrest warrant in Mexico, as required by the international extradition treaty.

They knew Mexico wouldn't extradite anyone facing the death penalty, so they had Torres indicted on first-degree murder charges for both killings, even though he was eligible for capital murder.

"We knew that that's what we would have to do," Assistant District Attorney Darla Davis said.

"You have to weigh that against the fact that he is out in Mexico maybe with the ability to come across the border undetected and hurt someone else."

The process took most of 2005. Cold case detectives and Assistant District Attorney Robert Smithtraveled to Washington to meet directly with Justice Department lawyers and ask them to make the Torres case a priority over the others pouring in from across the country.

The lobbying worked.

"Your case doesn't go to the bottom of the pile; it goes right on the top," Neff said.

The U.S. officials got the paperwork to Mexico, and on Nov. 1, a Mexican court issued an arrest warrant for Torres.

Ten days later, U.S. marshals stationed in Mexico City accompanied Mexican federal police, who found Torres in Nuevo Laredo and arrested him.

Working together, they tracked him through an address he gave prison officials when he was released.

Torres was taken to Mexico City, and U.S. authorities had 60 days to prepare a full summary of the evidence against Torres, translate it into Spanish and ship it to the Mexican capital.

Travis County prosecutors talking to colleagues were not given a lot of hope, Davis said.

"We just were on pins and needles waiting for him to actually get here," she said. "It was like a 'we'll believe it when we see it' kind of thing."

American diplomats heard from their Mexican colleagues on June 16 that they could take custody of Torres.

He faces up to life in prison on each murder charge.

"I hope it's a sign," Davis said, "that we can continue to work with the Mexican authorities and make both sides of the border safer."


skreytak@statesman.com; 912-2946