Background: The home in Perryton, Texas, where the crimes occurred (Google Maps). Inset top: Humberto Martinez (Ochiltree County Sheriff”s Office). Inset bottom: Hope Elizabeth Raley (Boxwell Brothers Funeral Home).
When Texas firefighters responded to a house fire, they found a 4-year-old girl dead inside and a man under the home’s crawl space.
Now, the man has admitted to killing the child and setting the home ablaze.
Humberto Martinez, 43, has pleaded guilty to capital murder of a person under 10 years of age, and he will spend the rest of his life in prison without the possibility of parole, according to Ochiltree County court records shared by local CBS affiliate KFDA. They identified the child victim as Hope Raley.
The defendant had also been charged with arson and two counts of obstruction or retaliation, jail records reviewed by Law&Crime show.
On July 20, 2022, The Perryton Fire Department was called to a home on the 800 block of South Drake Street in Perryton, which is located in the northwest Panhandle of the state, less than 10 miles from Oklahoma. When firefighters arrived at the home around 10 a.m., they reportedly found that the fire was mostly isolated to one room.
As firefighters worked to put out the fire, they are said to have found Hope dead in her bed. She had been strangled.
A homeowner was present at the time and told authorities that there was a man inside the house, KFDA reported. As firefighters searched the property, they found Martinez inside a crawl space beneath the house.
Investigators accused the now-convicted defendant of strangling the child and then setting fire to her room.
How Martinez ended up at the home is unclear. Law&Crime reached out to the Ochiltree County District Attorney’s Office for more information.
Former Perryton Police Assistant Chief Nick Yara told the local outlet on Wednesday that “We’ve seen a lot of things, I’ve seen a lot of things in my career and this is by far the worst case that I ever had to deal with.” He added, “It’s a very tragic thing for the family and for the community and today we were lucky to see justice.”
