Victoria Martens' mother is final trial witness

Jul. 30—Michelle Martens used to call Victoria her "miracle child."

"I delivered her by myself at home — I just went into labor with her at my house and they took me to the hospital afterwards with her," Martens testified on Friday. "Basically I wasn't having no doctor visits, I didn't have no prenatal care but she was healthy."

It's been almost six years since 10-year-old Victoria Martens was strangled and then dismembered and set on fire in the bathtub of her mother's apartment. It was a gruesome crime that shocked the city.

Then prosecutors revealed, two years later, that much of the prevailing narrative — that Martens had watched as her then boyfriend, Fabian Gonzales and his cousin Jessica Kelley, raped and killed her only daughter — was simply not true. Instead, prosecutors say, Gonzales and Martens were out of the home when Victoria was killed and Kelley had let an unknown man in, who killed the girl.

Martens, 41, was the last person called to testify by Gonzales' defense team. It was the final day of testimony in the weeks' long trial before Judge Cindy Leos in 2nd Judicial District Court.

Gonzales, 37, is charged with reckless abuse of a child resulting in death, conspiracy to tamper with evidence and several other counts of tampering with evidence. He appeared virtually on Friday, from his couch at home, after testing positive for COVID-19.

Both Martens and Kelley have already taken plea deals. Martens pleaded guilty in 2018 to reckless child abuse resulting in death and faces between 12 and 15 years in prison. In 2019 Kelley, now 37, pleaded no contest to six felony charges including reckless child abuse resulting in death, aggravated assault and other charges. She was sentenced to 44 years in prison, although she will be eligible for parole in half the time. She testified as a witness for the prosecution early in the trial.

The jury is scheduled to begin its deliberations on Monday.

Eager to please

Over the years and during the course of the trial, investigators, a psychiatrist and even her own attorney have described Martens as eager to please and as agreeing to any statement brought before her.

That was evident in court on Friday as she frequently appeared to agree to contradictory statements — saying she was vigilant about her daughter after a bad experience with an ex-boyfriend but also that she allowed Gonzales — who she had known for about a week, and who didn't have a job and smoked marijuana — to move in with her.

Martens said Kelley, who had been out of prison for three days when she moved into Martens's home, seemed "nice" and although she at first was not OK with her staying with them she decided it was fine if she stayed for just a week. But, she said, Kelley's arrival shifted something between her and Gonzales, and he was more distant afterwards.

Prosecutors have made the case that Gonzales was a "trigger" for Kelley's addiction, and the two were going all over town together, talking frequently on the phone and smoking methamphetamine together.

They say that a fight Gonzales got into with a pregnant woman at a barbecue left him with a black eye and was also the spark that led to Victoria's death. Prosecutors said that Gonzales was making threats, invoking his gang member brothers, and in return an unknown man went to Martens' Northwest Albuquerque apartment and killed her daughter. The unknown man then ordered Kelley to clean up the crime scene, prosecutors said.

With occasional deep sighs and wiping away tears, Martens described the days leading up to her daughter's death as tumultuous, with disagreements with Gonzales and fear of him after the night of the party. She said he was very angry — although not at her — and she was afraid he would hit her.

"Do you think when you look back at this incident, that things like your fear that night may be even bigger because of the unspeakable things that happened to your child?" Gonzales's attorney Hugh Dangler asked.

"Yes," Martens replied.

The day of the homicide — Aug. 23, 2016 — was also Victoria's birthday and Martens and Gonzales were in and out of the apartment for most of the day. At one point Martens texted Kelley asking her to get Victoria from the bus stop after school and then, when she didn't hear from her, asked her mother to get the girl instead.

Then, still not hearing from Kelley, Martens told her mother "nevermind," reportedly because she didn't want her to go to the home and see Kelley. Instead, Victoria walked around the apartment complex parking lot by herself until she was found by a neighbor who texted Martens.

Martens agreed with the prosecutor that her boyfriend was not in a hurry to leave his uncle's house — where she was waiting in the car outside for him — but also agreed with Gonzales' attorney that he drove home too fast, and "like a crazy man." She said they had both been drinking.

When she got home her daughter was doing homework on the balcony, and when she confronted Kelley about it she "blew me off."

"Was that another red flag?" Dangler asked.

"Yes," Martens replied.

But yes, she agreed, she decided to leave with Gonzales again, leaving her daughter with Kelley.

"Did Fabian ever make decisions about Victoria?" Dangler asked.

"He made them when he talked me into leaving her with her," Martens replied.

"In hindsight it was the worst decision of your life," Dangler said.

"Yes," she replied.

Martens told the court about how she was awoken early the next morning by Kelley standing over her and then hitting her with an iron. She said Kelley continued to attack her as she ran out of the bedroom and across the hall to Victoria's room. The plan? Lock the door to the room, jump out the window and have Victoria jump down into her arms.

But Victoria wasn't there. She was already dead.

Closing statements

Before a lunch break, the defense rested its case.

In closing statements, prosecutor Greer Staley said point blank: "We are not here to determine who murdered Victoria."

"The bottom line is either the defendant knew Jessica was dangerous or he knew something might happen after he made threats and he left her in that apartment," Staley said. "You do not have to agree on who killed her. It's either Jessica or John Doe, either of them. It doesn't matter."

She said that before Gonzales came along the family's "situation was pretty normal" with emergency contacts and drawings on display and food in the fridge. Then, she said, Gonzales and Martens meet, he moves in and Victoria started to look disheveled, tired and "hung over."

"This was Victoria's 10th birthday," Staley said. "She didn't get a present that day. She didn't get dinner. No one sang happy birthday to her. And none of that happened because she was dead by 8:48. The defendant knew about it, Michelle knew about it and the defendant is a cause for that."

However Stephen Aarons, another one of Gonzales' defense attorneys, said in closings that even after the prosecution found out that Gonzales and Martens were not in the apartment when Victoria was killed, they still decided to prosecute him for something.

He contends that Kelley alone was guilty, and he fears that "the emotion all of us feel about what happened to Victoria can overwhelm our common sense, our reason."

"In part because they demonized him first. I mean, he was this horrible murderer who had done all these things...," Aarons said. "Now, the prosecutor said in her opening remarks, you are not here to decide who murdered Victoria. Why? Well, they made a plea agreement with Jessica, they dropped her murder charge to get her to testify about Fabian."

Both Aarons and Staley referenced DNA evidence — much had been cleaned off Victoria's body and was too small to determine more than whether it was from a male or female — to prove whether or not he was guilty of tampering with evidence. The tampering charges stem from the dismemberment of Victoria's body and attempts to conceal the crime.

Aarons said there was no way Gonzales could have known that by letting his cousin stay with them, things would have ended up the way they did.

"We knew she was just out of prison, so you might think she might be dishonest, slip into her old ways. Maybe there is violence if you confront her about what she was doing," Aarons said. "But what is not foreseeable is murder or dismembering limbs or removing organs or getting attacked with an iron or burning Victoria's body or being blamed by Jessica. Those things were not at all foreseeable."