Victoria Martens's Mother Said She Watched Her Die. She Was Not There.

Victoria Martens did gymnastics on her grandparents' lawn, and purple was her favorite color - the one everyone wore to her memorial. On the afternoon of August 23, 2016, the adult who was supposed to meet the ten-year-old at her school bus stop never came, and Victoria made her own way home to an apartment in Albuquerque. Within two years, the state would publicly take apart almost everything it had first told the world about what happened there.

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Victoria Martens, 10, a student at Petroglyph Elementary School in Albuquerque, New Mexico, was killed on August 23, 2016, around the celebration of her tenth birthday. Police found her in the bathtub of Unit 808 in the early hours of August 24. The medical examiner determined she had been strangled before her remains were mutilated and burned.

Her mother, Michelle Martens, her mother's boyfriend, Fabian Gonzales, and his cousin, Jessica Kelley, were arrested and initially accused of murder. Michelle had told detectives she watched the killing, but cell phone data and witness accounts placed her and Gonzales outside the home when Victoria died, and a forensic psychiatrist retained by the prosecution concluded she had made false admissions. On June 29, 2018, Bernalillo County District Attorney Raul Torrez announced that the murder allegations against Michelle and Gonzales were being abandoned.

Michelle and Kelley took plea agreements. Gonzales went to trial in 2022 and a jury convicted him of reckless child abuse resulting in death and evidence tampering; Judge Cindy Leos sentenced him to 37.5 years. Kelley received 44 years. Michelle received 12 years with credit for time served and, according to local reporting citing the New Mexico Department of Corrections, was released on October 14, 2025. Gonzales maintains the state did not prove its case against him; the New Mexico Court of Appeals affirmed his convictions on November 13, 2024. Unidentified male DNA was recovered from Victoria's body, and the proceedings never identified the person who strangled her.

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This account is drawn from trial testimony, the 2024 opinion of the New Mexico Court of Appeals, the district attorney's 2018 announcement, statements by Victoria's family, and local reporting on the case.

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Victoria's surviving younger sibling is a minor and is not named here.