Clues in the Ceiling (Linda & Esteban Martinez)
48:01 Share

Hi, I'm Ashley Flowers, creator and host of the number one true crime podcast, Crime Junkie. Every Monday, me and my best friend Britt break down a new case, but not in the way you've heard before and not the cases you've heard before. You'll hear stories on Crime Junkie that haven't been told anywhere else. I'll tell you what you can do to help victims and their families get justice.

Join us for new episodes of Crime Junkie every Monday. Already waiting for you by searching for Crime Junkie wherever you listen to podcasts. We want our listeners to know that this episode contains profane language and graphic depictions of violence. How long were you a member of NYPD? 38 years, 8 months, and 22 days. ♪

They were just soaked in blood from head to toe. And she's begging, please don't hurt my children. Please don't hurt my children. Bam, they hit her.

Then I heard shot. People who are destined to do something like that are destined to do it again. And you just can't allow them to walk around on the earth with everybody else. I'm Scott Weinberger, investigative journalist and former deputy sheriff. I'm Anasika Nikolazi, former New York City homicide prosecutor and host of Investigation Discovery's True Conviction. And this is Anatomy of Murder.

There are all types of victims in these tragic homicide cases. The ones directly met with violence, and then there's the victims who are left behind. For today's case, we've gathered a lot of materials. It's an incredible look inside one of the most gruesome cases we've ever covered here on AOM. And it begins with a 911 call. And just even before we play it,

I have to tell you that we really sat and thought about whether we would even use any of this call at all, because just like it was very tough for us here at AOM to listen to it, it will be for you too. And sometimes it takes that discomfort and almost wanting to just turn away to remind us how very real all of this is.

It's December 15th, 1996, and it's right before Christmas. A 911 operator receives a call they will likely never forget. We received the audio in its original form, which was a cassette tape. We had it digitized. Here are portions of that dramatic call. Hello? You know, my father died. What? My father died.

On the other end of the line, a six-year-old child calling to report his parents were dead. Yep.

You can hear in the background that there are other children crying, but it was difficult for the operator to find out who was actually in the house.

When did he die? Huh? When did he die? Today.

I want to take you inside the mindset of that 911 operator at the very moment she was handling the call. The first responsibility is to assess the situation, gain and ask specific information to determine what the response should be. And obviously, we wouldn't be doing the story if it was a prank call. But that's part of the assessment process.

As you hear the operator speaking to the child and getting the address...

Ultimately, she did something surprising. The operator disconnected the call. Do I think that that 911 operator just hung up the phone to be difficult or uncaring? I don't.

But it's not protocol. And here's why. Is that when you have a child or anyone on the phone who is talking about such a serious crime, is there someone still in the home? If these children are alone, are they in danger? When you send out the police to the residence, will the child even answer the door? And can you help that child with some comfort through that process who maybe just experienced something horrific?

And that's exactly why you also hear a supervisor call that child back only moments later. Hello? This is the police department. What happened? Let me speak to your mother. My mother died. And my father died. I don't got nobody here. All right, don't cry. What happened to your parents? Um...

All right.

You know, as you hear the operator going back and forth with the child, it is sometimes things that we see all the time when working with children. You know, this child had the wherewithal to pick up the phone. He can give his address and just rattle it off. He can give the basic facts. But there are things that his age really makes much more difficult for the 911 operator to understand and to put various things together. Where are your brothers going? They're crying. They're crying? Yep. Okay.

While the operator was trying to ascertain things, you know, there was a lot going on in the background. You were in the house when somebody shot your mommy? No, nobody's in here. Okay, well, where's your mommy at? Die, and my father's died, too. They're coming now, okay? Don't cry, all right? They're there already, okay? Okay. All right, just stay on the phone with me, and when you hear them knock on the door, you open the door, but don't hang up the phone. You understand? Okay? Okay.

The police are sent out to the location, but the supervisor is staying with that little six-year-old on the line. But where are they? In the bedroom? Huh? Where are they at? In the bedroom? No. Can I have one, please? I don't know where. Okay, are they in the house with you? Oh, everybody give me a second. I've got this foul on the phone. Let me know when you get to the door so that I can tell her to go to the door, please. All right, hold on. You hear your door knocking? Okay.

Her responsibility is to get units there ASAP along with an ambulance, which in NYPD slang is called a bus. First units on the scene would have to assume that the threat is gone and their primary mission is to get those kids and preserve whatever crime scene that await them. But when Esteban opened the door, they were shocked. Oh shit, it's confirmed. You have PDU response. All right, oh shit. Oh shit.

The children, they were just soaked in blood from head to toe. This is retired cold case investigator Wendell Stratford. Even the cops that responded were so distraught by what they were looking at because they couldn't tell that the children hadn't been stabbed themselves because the amount of blood

When you walk into a scene like this, try to maintain your composure the best you can. There's no doubt you'll have a lump in your throat. There's no doubt you're aware of what just occurred. And even on top of that, what was just witnessed by children. And you think about it for days, months, and perhaps years.

It's one of the most heart-wrenching 911 calls I've ever heard. Everybody gets there and they remove the children from the apartment and they give them to a neighbor just to keep them there while everybody's responding and the ambulance to the apartment.

With Esteban and his two brothers safely removed from this bloody crime scene, the work begins, which reveals why the young six-year-old knew his parents were dead. His name was Esteban Martinez Sr. His wife, Linda, lied next to him. Esteban and Linda were bound hand and foot. Esteban had handcuffs on. Both of them, hands and feet, were bound with duct tape.

Linda and Esteban were not only shot, but they had also been tortured.

They had also used sheetrock saws, the small handheld sheetrock saw, to torture them. They had shoved it through their ears and then in nostrils. And you knew that the sheetrock saws, because they were recovered, were used on the victims because there was skin matter on the ends of the saws. You know, Scott, there is this savagery in this particular murder that you just can't

get away from. And you know, this one has these elements that I'm not so sure that we have actually covered here in AOM before. Yeah, we've obviously covered cases including decapitation, disembowelment, but this is another level of evil. These are long, thin saw blades that were placed into the ear cavity

of both Esteban and his wife while they were alive, inflicting an incredible amount of pain. As police are assessing the damage, they're also starting to work in their minds, why? You know, what would have been the motive for this crime? Could it have been some sort of robbery gone wrong? Was it a purposeful home invasion with perpetrators who knew their victims? Or was it some sort of personal vendetta?

Detectives and crime scene investigators would spend hours going through each room of this apartment, and it became pretty clear quickly that the killer or killers were looking for something.

TVs were pulled from the wall. The cabinets were pulled open. Things from inside the kitchen cabinets were on the floor. You know, 60 inch projection TVs. And they were pulled against the wall and the backs were taken off. The mattresses were flipped over and the closets were emptied out.

so clear that they were looking for something specific, which really led me to think that whoever this was certainly knew who their victims were. How about you? Yeah, just on the surface, if you take two things into consideration, number one, these two victims were tortured, likely asked to tell them where something they were looking for was, because clearly the second part is...

That apartment was ransacked. And likely, I would believe that a ransacked apartment was part of the motive. But for investigators that they're trying to piece all that together, they decided to look more carefully at the home where this occurred. The Martinez's home was a very well, quite lavishly decorated co-op, and it was filled with marble and tiled walls.

fancy tiles. Everything in the apartment was not like somebody who only made $60,000 or $70,000 a year. It was somebody who made like $200,000 a year, you know, 60-inch TVs. The bathroom was done over with marble tub and fancy faucets. Totally different than any other apartment in that entire complex.

And the police later went back and spoke with the children to see if they could get any more information. And they were able to get one additional piece. The only thing that they could relate was T.O. Robb. The name, Uncle Robb. And that's all they could really say. As police were talking to the children, a relative showed up and stopped the questioning immediately.

People may say, well, wait a second, why would you ever do that? But, you know, we see it all the time and it's not necessarily for a bad or nefarious reason. Like it might be, it might just be that they don't like the police or, you know, maybe they even had something to do with it. We just don't know yet. But it's also when it comes to children that adults and those that care for them, their loved ones, worry about the traumatic effect of what they had just been through or their

any potential repercussions or retaliation against the child if they give information that ultimately leads to some sort of arrest. You know, it's a push and pull here. You have the immediacy of the event which just occurred and you want to get the most immediate information as possible from these children, but you don't want to re-victimize them and their well-being is most important here.

The children were placed in the custody of a family member, and the family decided that what was best for the children was to be nowhere near these horrific events had occurred. She sent them to South America to live with the family, you know, after the funeral. Detectives then went on to speak with family members to see if anyone could identify or knew of this Uncle Rob. As far as the family was concerned, they had no Robert.

Investigators began the tedious work of going through every inch of the apartment to determine any clues that could give them an indication of why these murders occurred. What were they looking for? Is the person or persons responsible for this crime? Is there any evidence that can be determined from this search that could lead to anybody? And the police eventually find hidden in the apartment some items they had never expected to uncover.

Is your child asking questions on their homework you don't feel equipped to answer? Maybe your child is too shy to ask questions in front of the entire class, but they can get extra help and positive feedback with IXL Learning. IXL Learning is an online learning program for kids. It covers math, language arts, science, and social studies. IXL is designed to help them really understand and master topics in a fun way with positive feedback.

This program will improve your kids' grades. Backed by research, kids using IXL are scoring higher on tests. From studies done in almost every state in the country, the kids who had IXL are consistently doing better. And one subscription gets you everything for all the kids in your home, pre-K to 12th grade.

If your child is struggling, this is the smartest investment you can make. And a month of IXL costs less than an hour of tutoring. Additionally, IXL is used in 95 of the top 100 school districts in the U.S.

Make an impact on your child's learning. Get IXL now. And Anatomy of Murder listeners can get an exclusive 20% off IXL membership when they sign up today at ixl.com slash anatomy. Visit ixl.com slash anatomy to get the most effective learning program out there at the best price.

Do you share with your friends when you discover a new binge-worthy show? Or a song that you bump on repeat so they can experience just how awesome it is? That's kind of the same idea when you discover that Mint Mobile offers premium wireless for $15 a month when you purchase a three-month plan. With such a great deal, there's no way you'd want to keep that to yourself. All plans come with high-speed data and unlimited talk and text delivered on the nation's largest 5G network.

Use your own phone with any Mint Mobile plan and bring your phone number along with all your existing contacts. To get this new customer offer and your new three-month premium wireless plan for just $15 a month, go to mintmobile.com slash anatomy. That's mintmobile.com slash anatomy. Cut your wireless bill to $15 a month at mintmobile.com slash anatomy.

$45 upfront payment required, equivalent to $15 a month. New customers on first three-month plan only. Speed slower above 40 gigabytes on unlimited plan. Additional taxes, fees, and restrictions apply. See Mint Mobile for details.

You've heard us use this word victimology before and why it's so important to a case. The perpetrators probably knew something about the victims that no one else knew. Who are Esteban Martinez and his wife Linda Leon? And at first glance, the couple seemed like a very typical husband and wife. You know, Esteban was a businessman who owned this bodega and a liquor store. A regular business.

Investigators would soon discover there's a lot more to Esteban Martinez than they initially thought.

We get a phone call from the DEA task force, and it doesn't happen right away. It happens maybe a week or two weeks later that Esteban was the subject of one of our wires in a drug dealing case. But they didn't share everything with the police department. It was a long-term investigation that they didn't want the NYPD involved.

to scare everybody away that was involved with it. They would not tell us targets they had that were involved with him.

You know, there definitely is this age-old adage that the feds and local law enforcement just don't really get along. And while I have not found that to be the case, it is for sure true sometimes. But, you know, certainly for detectives on this case, the local detectives believe that the DEA thought at least that what they were working on was more important to them than these two people that were murdered inside their own home.

They just felt that their million-dollar case was worth a lot more than these two murdered people. So with the lack of sharing that was going on, I mean, still, we're not going to stop. So without any cooperation from the DEA, they opened an inquiry as part of this double homicide investigation. Because of what they found, they just said, you know what, we need to go back and do another crime scene run and research that apartment.

Detectives decided they really wanted to go back through the crime scene, in this case their apartment, very carefully. And when they did, they noticed something suspicious. It was just like an epiphany. They have a drop ceiling. Find out from management if anybody else in this complex has a drop ceiling. And management said, no, there are no drop ceilings because of fire coats. You can't have them because they're sprinklers. And this is honestly one of my favorite pieces of evidence in this case.

They got a ladder and they went up and they pushed up the tiles in the drop ceiling and they found cocaine and money. I mean, just think about it, Scott. It is one of those things that you walk back to the office and you're like, you are never going to believe to the other guys and girls in the office, like what it is that they found. But really, it's how they even determined a drop ceiling existed. They went to the super in the building and they said, hey, any of these apartments have drop ceilings? And they said, yeah, just one, the one you're in.

Now that investigators completed their victimology on the two victims, they began to develop a timeline. Speak to the people who worked with them and worked for them to try to determine where they were last seen alive and who some of their associates may have been. One guy came forward and it might have been because he was so pissed off about what happened.

And he sat down with the detectives, told them about some of the drug dealers that Esteban was involved with. The DEA eventually reveals to the detectives that Esteban was involved with a South American cartel that was bringing drugs up from Florida all the way to the Bronx.

The detectives from the 4-3 squad and Bronx Homicide, they followed up on as much as they could. And you find some people who are friends of theirs, but if they knew about the drug dealing, they did not come clean about it.

It is frustrating when you're able to locate somebody who knows the victim and who probably can provide some information, who just don't want to be involved. So you say to them, we're trying to solve a brutal crime here. I would pull out the children card. Do you realize what these kids went through? We need to get these killers off the street. You need to help us.

The sheer horror of a case can sometimes be the thing that you can exactly use, like Scott's saying, to try to get those answers. But for a long time in this case, that wasn't coming. You just have to keep working and working on what you have. And hopefully maybe, you know, somebody will come forward and say, hey, you know what? He was a good guy. I can tell you this. I can tell you that. But that never happened. It never happened.

With no one else talking and minimal cooperation from the DEA, homicide detectives have no choice but to categorize the Martinez murder as a cold case. Four years after the homicide of Esteban Martinez and Linda Leon, in the year 2000 now, Wendell Stratford was transferred to the Special Projects Unit within the NYPD and was assigned this homicide as a cold case.

Before Cold Case started, it was actually the Police Commissioner's Investigation Squad. Then they broke us up and decided to make the Cold Case Squad official, and they renamed it. It was typical for the members of the Cold Case Squad to serve eight, nine, even 12 years in the squad and then move on. But Wendell stayed longer because he truly loved the work.

It was rewarding. You can lock somebody up for a robbery or a grand larceny and you'll never see that victim again. But when you're involved in, you know, homicides and sex crimes and stuff, you tend to form a relationship with the victims of those, especially with the families of murder victims. You become friends with them. You do feel a sense of accomplishment when you are able to get closure for them.

Because of Wendell's connections from being part of the cold case squad in multiple boroughs, he was moved to the Special Projects Division, which had the ability to take and work on cases in all five of New York City's boroughs. As a detective being able to work the entire city, all five boroughs, pick your cases, you know, that's an amazing opportunity for a veteran cop.

And when they got inside his apartment, they quickly realized they weren't dealing with the typical informant.

He didn't have any outward signs of income, but he was living like a millionaire. He had a boat, I mean a real boat, big boat, like some 30-foot-something cabin cruiser. He was living in a high-rise condominium off the waterway in Miami. And that interview did reveal an important question. The witness told Wendell that Esteban was doing great things for them and had been laundering money, allegedly, for many years on behalf of the cartel.

And there would be no reason for anybody in the organization to kill him because we were all making money. So why would we do that? And if I knew who was involved in killing him, he goes, we would have taken care of it ourselves. Or if we couldn't, we would have told you guys.

On the surface, the point that he raises makes so much sense. Here it is. Esteban is allegedly making them so much money, so why take him out? But you also have to think about the flip side. Is he deflecting this homicide away from himself and his associates? He was a major player in the drug sales. We believe that he and Esteban, you know, did business together.

If you have no new information on a potential drug hit, and the cartel doesn't appear to be involved, the obvious next move would be to determine other potential theories.

This is really where a fresh perspective can mean all the difference. So what did he do? Wendell went back to where it all started, and that was the files and the phone records. What were the incoming calls? What were the outgoing calls? What were the emails that were exchanged? And Wendell's approach was about to pay off because he went and looked at what the original assigned officers did in the case. And here is where Wendell got his first big break. ♪

When it comes to bras, stop compromising, because now you can have it all: beauty and comfort, support and breathability. At last, Bally Breathe has arrived, a breathable and breathtaking collection of bras, underwear and shapewear that feel as good as they look. You're probably familiar with Bally, the leading national bra brand, but Breathe is their new collection that you need to know.

Breathe is an unforgettable collection made with soft cotton modal and beautifully soft lace with styles that offer comfort, smoothing, and support. Get matching sets for when you want to feel put together with no added effort. Plus, there are wireless and underwire bra styles, all with the same light as air feel. And they come in so many gorgeous colors. Bally Breathe revolves around you, as the whole world should, but we'll deal with them later.

Visit BallyBras.com and use code AOMBB20 for 20% off your purchase. That's B-A-L-L-I-B-R-A-S.com with code A-O-M-B-B-2-0 for 20% off your first order. Part of the canvas, the original canvas, was to take down the license plates of all the cars that were parked on the block in front of their building and down the street.

Now, it's an investigative technique known basically because of the fact that when home invasions occur somewhere, investigators realize that the perpetrators usually stake out the home prior to the crime to see the victim or victim's movements. Once you do those two blocks or three blocks for whatever parking tickets might have been issued within a certain amount of time, within a week, within a few days, and that's only so you can see if...

This is grueling police work.

There are hundreds, if not thousands of tickets that can be issued in an area within a week. You have tickets being issued by sanitation, police. You have tickets being issued by the parking traffic and then by the NYPD.

Picture someone sitting at a desk and whether they're doing it from computer printouts or the actual duplicate of the tickets themselves, it is just paper after paper and then cross-referencing and seeing if something stands out. And we're not talking about days. We are talking about weeks, months, and sometimes even years. Two years, because back then, it's not like it is now. We had to do it by hand.

It's time consuming, but when you hit a match on some intel that you may have to match that vehicle, it could be gold. We're also looking at summonses that might be issued for loitering, you know, just to get something to sink your teeth into. Just, you know, you're looking for a needle in a haystack.

he found two summonses that were issued to the very same car that came from Baltimore. While it wasn't a big red flag at the time, it became one when he cross-referenced them with Esteban's phone records.

I find an inordinate amount of phone calls and pager messages and then phone calls to Baltimore. But it was like within the time of the homicide, within a week of the homicide and a day of the homicide to the night of. And more than that, the calls were made up to an hour before this homicide.

A little more investigation, I was able to locate one of the pager calls to the owner of the car that received the summons from Baltimore. The man who had been texting Esteban on the night of the murder was Robert Mitchell Sr. He was a mid-level drug dealer who was also known to investigators at the Baltimore Police Department. And the other was a nurse from John Hopkins.

And we could not figure out what the story was between them. But some more correlating, we realized that the nurse at John Hopkins was also texting the criminal that Esteban was texting. And then it just started to fall in together. The nurse was Keisha Washington, who worked as an aide at John Hopkins in Baltimore. She had no criminal record and seemingly had been living a normal life.

Wendell, who now, along with a detective from Baltimore, went to go speak with Keisha at John Hopkins, and they didn't want to give away their true intent, so he used a ruse to speak with her.

We were sitting in the lobby of John Hopkins and her supervisor had her come out. She had already been dealing with the detective in regards to child support. That's what the ruse was. It was child support. Wendell just couldn't make the connection between Keisha and Mitchell until Keisha said something that stopped him dead in his tracks.

Her son's name was Robert Mitchell Jr.

Yes, now police know that Mitchell and Washington are connected, but I don't even think that that necessarily means that Keisha's involved in this crime. I mean, even Robert Mitchell, they have these coincidences, but that's certainly nothing that I'm ready to write any sort of arrest paperwork on. Well, I think you've got a good witness at least, but she's a threat in this investigation. And with a case that's gone cold for so long, you know, you got to get excited when you have something to go on.

We looked at each other and we had to try and keep, you know, a straight face. The detective from Baltimore, he just kind of gave us a look. What do you want to do now? We're like, you know what? Let's let her go.

For Wendell, it's back to New York City and back to scrubbing through phone records and pager records. He pages Martinez. Martinez pages him back. Then two days later, he pages Martinez again. Martinez pages him back. And then a phone call comes in to Martinez from a 212 area code. And for those of you that don't know, that's an area code for Manhattan.

Martinez calls that number back. We find out through investigation that Martinez meets Robert Mitchell at a hotel and they do a drug deal. And as more connections are being made and starting to line up between Mitchell and Esteban Martinez, Wendell learns from the Baltimore police that there is a car that is getting summonses in the Bronx, that that same car is also getting summonses in Baltimore.

in front of the residence that Robert Mitchell calls home. And it's registered to Keisha Washington. And we're like, this is too much of a coincidence. This is the part of the story I always refer to as knocking on Anastasia's door as the detective walking in and saying, look what I have here. I've got some great information. Can you get me some warrants? Can you issue an arrest warrant?

I spoke to the DA. She said, I need more. I need more. I'm like, OK, no problem. And she says, if you get what we need, we'll send you what you need. Go back down to Baltimore. Go back to the hospital. We have Keisha come out again and sit with us. And we tell her who we are. And she looks at us. She goes, oh, this has nothing to do with my child support.

And we go, no, but we think you have an idea of what it has to do with. And she goes, no, I don't have anything in New York. I don't know anything about New York at all. And we go, OK, well, you know what? Do us a favor. We're going to go back to the Baltimore headquarters and we want you to come there with us.

At first, Keisha was hesitant about going to the station, but once Wendell showed her a picture of the Martinez family, that's the moment she realized exactly why she was being questioned. And this time, Detective Stratford's tact was very different. There was no ruse. He basically put Keisha Washington into an interview room, and it didn't take long before he basically laid out all his cards on the table.

She's fidgeting and you know, she's all over the place. And she says, "I just want you to know, you know, that I'm a woman of God. I'm a born again Christian. I'm saved. My sins have been forgiven by God." And I said, "I want you to look at a couple more pictures." And I showed her individual photos of the boys. And she goes, "Well, who are those kids?" I said, "Those are the same kids from the other photo I showed you." I go, "Do you remember them?" And she goes, "Oh, they might look familiar." I go, "Well, how can they look familiar to you? You just told us before you've never been to the Bronx."

So she just sat there and looked at it. And, you know, I told her, I said, listen, you know, don't bulls**t, okay? I already know that you were in the Bronx. And I already know why. And I'm just going to give you a hint. Robert Mitchell and you, your car, you got tickets on. And she just looked at me. She goes, uh, Robert's supposed to take care of all those things. I go, see, see how easy that is?

We're so fortunate here at AOM to be able to get important assets to help tell these important stories. And it's rare to get a copy of taped interviews, especially in cases involving the NYPD. It's always been that way. And for this case, you're going to have an opportunity to hear from Keisha yourself.

Wendell sat her down. My name is Detective Wendell Stratford from the New York City Cold Case Squad. Hit record on the tape recorder. Present here is Miss Keisha Washington. And began his questioning. Today, Keisha wants to relate to us an incident that occurred in Bronx, New York. Want to connect with more family and friends and their native language is in English?

then Rosetta Stone, the most trusted language learning program, is for you. Rosetta Stone teaches through immersion, like matching audio from native speakers to visuals, reading stories, participating in dialogues, and more. The True Accent feature even provides feedback on your pronunciation. Learn on the go with convenient, flexible, and customizable lessons as short as 10 minutes. From my own personal experience,

I could see the benefits of Rosetta Stone becoming more familiar with the local language when I'm traveling. Something as simple as understanding direction from the locals, but it also can help you stay safe, becoming even more aware of your surroundings. On my recent trip to Italy, I found Rosetta Stone so helpful. For a very limited time, our listeners can get Rosetta Stone's lifetime membership for 50% off.

That's 50% off unlimited access to 25 language courses for the rest of your life. Redeem your 50% off at rosettastone.com slash anatomy. That's rosettastone.com slash N-A-T-O-M-Y. Well, it was December 96, months before time.

And Keisha surprised detectives by volunteering not only some of the what, but the names of two other people who she said were also inside the apartment that night, with her and Robert Mitchell. Kevin and Robert talked about it. Then they discussed it with myself and Neeson.

Denise was Keisha's twin brother, Kevin's girlfriend. Keisha then described how Mitchell would get the drugs from Martinez to sell down in Baltimore, but he didn't like to travel up to New York alone. He would go to New York and he would buy drugs from this guy to come back home and sell them. That's how he made his money. And I go, well, how did you know that? She said, because he never liked to make the trip by himself. So one day he told me to come with him. And we drove up to New York.

And the first time we went to the Martinez's apartment, she goes, I don't remember where it was. I just know it was some big apartment complex. And we went upstairs. And when we came back, the car had a ticket on it and we left. And then she said the next time I remember going with them and we went to a hotel on the side of the highway. She said we did that twice and we would meet him at hotels and one time in a diner and one time in the hotel.

Now remember that when speaking to police, young Esteban Jr., the six-year-old, kept saying T.O. Robb or Uncle Robb to the police. Well, in speaking to Keisha, she said that on one of the occasions they met with Esteban Martinez, he had his son. And he introduced Esteban to Robert as, oh, this is my friend. You can call him T.O. Robb.

You know, it's two words. It is the Spanish word for uncle and then the name Rob. It is two words that each have three letters each that are the thing that breaks this case wide open and starts to put all the pieces together to show that they will fit as police diligently amass their case. Now, in speaking to this woman years later, it's all starting to come together.

But it was the next bit of information that Keisha told detectives that may have revealed a possible motive for this brutal double murder. Keisha told detectives about another time they went up to the Martinez apartment, recalling how jealous and angry Mitchell was about the lavish lifestyle that Martinez and his family were living.

Robert just kept saying on their way back to Baltimore, you see all that money? You see how they're living? You see the furniture, the walls, the floor? You know, you see the TV and the way they're dressed, you know, the watches and the rings. Look at how this guy's living. He says, I'm going back to Baltimore. I'm going to hustle to make ends meet to feed you and my son. And she said he just went crazy. He couldn't get it out of his head. He couldn't get it out of his head. He said, that guy is giving me peanuts.

Robert Mitchell kept complaining about how Tone kept burning a part of the drugs. The weight wasn't right. Tones is a nickname for Esteban. And he was starting to lose money, so he got frustrated. That's when Robert Mitchell began to hatch his plan. So Robert and Kevin had a discussion about going to New York, seeing if he can get more money, seeing if he can talk to Tone as far as what he lost, as far as the money.

They called Kevin and Denise, and now the four of them got together at Keisha's house to work out the details. What was your role in this discussion? My duty was to maintain the children, but the killer. So over the next few days, they went shopping for supplies. You know, they went out and got duct tape, handcuffs. They already had a gun. They got a backpack and something else to carry the supposed loot that they were going to get when they went to his apartment.

After repeatedly paging Esteban Martinez and getting no response, the four decided that they couldn't wait anymore, and they went up to New York. Knowing that Esteban Martinez knew Keisha's car, he didn't want to take any chances about getting spotted. So they packed up the car, packed up their gear, and left the car at a travel plaza off of I-95 in Baltimore, then jumped on a bus to Times Square. Okay, we got to New York. We got off the Peter Payne bus.

We called a cab to the parking complex. This time when Mitchell paged Esteban Martinez, he called him back. But Esteban said he wasn't available to meet. However, what this did tell Robert Mitchell was that Esteban was home. They bussed us in. He led us upstairs.

He looked kind of shocked to see all of us, so many of us. Robert asked Tone if they could talk for a minute, so they went to the side and talked. Then it was like a little, it was a little pushing. Kevin Washington handcuffs Esteban while Keisha and Denise are duct taping Linda around her wrists and her feet and her mouth. And then they duct tape Esteban's mouth as well. Tone's wife asked for me so that she could tell me where the money was.

where the drugs and stuff was. She told me one place the money wasn't there. Nothing was there where she told me. She told me to look in the closet. Nothing was there. So I came back and told them there was nothing there. That's when they said, "Okay, we're gonna tie them up." Myself, Denise, Kevin, and Robert tied them up. Then Mitchell tells Denise to move the kids to a bedroom while Mitchell forcibly questioned Esteban. And then he told me and Denise

to go to the room with the kid. While it's all going on, Linda is begging Mitchell not to hurt her children. And she's begging, please don't hurt my children. Please don't hurt my children. What are you doing this for? What are you doing this for? And in return, she's assaulted for her words. Bam, they hit her. And then Kevin takes her and drags her into the children's bedroom.

We said this earlier, while it is clear that Esteban was working with a cartel, all the information that we've been able to gain was that Linda was never a target of any investigation. And of course, her children are innocent victims of this horrific massacre.

After the assault, Linda is dragged back out and her life is threatened once again in front of her husband.

He assaults her and, you know, he's beating up on her and stuff and he drags her back out. And this is with his girlfriend in the next room, drags her back out, lays her in front of Esteban and says, we're going to kill her. They take the sheet saw, but they had two sheet saw knives. They take them out of the bags and he starts pushing it through her ear and she's screaming and they put the duct tape back on her mouth. He pulls it out and they start doing the same thing to him.

But Keisha says that he still won't tell them, you know, where the money and drugs are. And you have to remember, their three children are inside this apartment. So Keisha and Denise are tasked with keeping the children quiet. And they basically go and get them soda to try to give them something that they will want to try to calm their nerves while all the rest of them, while the men are doing all this grisly work in just the next room.

And the final horrific act is they shoot both Linda and Esteban in the head before leaving the children in tears and screaming.

But during all of this, they are opening up the Christmas presents that are under the tree. And they take several of the Christmas presents for their own children and stuff them in the bag with the backpack, you know, in the other bags they have with the money and the drugs. You know, there are people on this earth who are capable of doing things like this in front of three small children. And you're hearing from them right here.

This is their perspective. This is what they're telling us that they did. I think I'll just leave it there. - Then after we got the bag, we got the money and everything. They put all the drugs, the money in the bag. I had $3,000 that I found in my pocketbook. Then I turned around before we left out and the children ran out the room. They saw their parents. They screamed. We ran down the steps. We ran to the bus station. We got on the first New York bus.

And we came back to Baltimore. Once back in Baltimore, the crew tosses the weapon in a junkyard. They go to Baltimore Harbor. They get a hotel room, split up the money and drugs and begin to party. You know, they snort the coke and, you know, they have liquor and beer and they just have a good time.

Denise is Denise Henderson, and police were able to track her down at her home and bring her to that same Baltimore Police Department. And as you might expect, she was not eager to own up to anything.

You know, I asked her, did you know that your boyfriend, Kevin, assaulted Linda? She said, kind of. I go, what do you mean, kind of? She said, because when I heard her screaming, I went back to the room where he dragged it to and I looked in the room and I said, what are you doing? You shouldn't be doing that. Stop.

Denise essentially tells the same story as Keisha, but says Kevin had sexually assaulted Linda.

After getting all these various statements, Wendell Stratford now goes back to the local Bronx district attorney. And this time, the DA's office says he certainly has enough to get warrants and make arrests of all four. When detectives went back to look for Kevin Washington and Robert Mitchell, they discovered that Kevin was already in jail on an unrelated charge. Fortunately for us, Kevin got locked up for a gunpoint robbery. So he was sitting in the Baltimore City Jail.

To find Robert Mitchell, Wendell Stratford requested the help of Baltimore's Marshall Task Force. It ended up being a manhunt and Mitchell was found in an East Baltimore apartment. He was hiding out with some girlfriends and we went there and boomed the door and found him hiding under a bed in his boxes. Wendell would have his big opportunity to question Robert Mitchell and it didn't disappoint.

I'm Detective Wendell Straff in New York City Police Department. Also in this room with us is Robert A. Mitchell. Okay, could you please tell us in your own words what occurred on that day? Me, Keisha, Kevin, and Denise, we rode up there on a Peter Pan and go up in the house and knock on the door.

His story was a mix between Keisha and Denise's, except for one big detail. Mitchell shifted the blame to Kevin and said he had nothing to do with the murders. He was like, y'all get the f*** on the ground now. And they got down. And he pulled some f***ing handcuffs and some tape or some f***.

Put that on him. I'm like, yo, what the fuck, yo? I'm like, yo, don't do this shit, yo. So I'm sitting there like, man, he robbing these people. First thing I thought is all they know is me. So whatever going on is going to come on me. I'm like, yo, fuck, yo, I'm gone. I took the bag and I'm like, I'm gone. When I'm running out the door, I just hear something. I just heard a bunch of shots and I start running and then they run behind the steps behind me.

It's still amazing to me when you sit during these interviews and you hear somebody knowing that they've been caught, knowing that you have the juice, you have the details that can put them away for the rest of their lives. They're still trying to point fingers and misdirect. Okay. Thank you very much. This interview is concluded.

In the end, Mitchell didn't want to go to trial, so he agreed to testify against Kevin Washington. But he wasn't the only one. The DA also put Esteban's two older children on the stand. They were older. They were like 12 and 13. The boys were able to recall events vividly, in part thanks to that 911 call.

when she played that 911 tape. She directed his attention to it, Esteban, and he definitely remembered the tape. And people in the jury were brought to tears listening to that tape. And then him testifying and looking at them, he pointed out Mitchell and he pointed out Kevin. - Keisha and Denise pleaded guilty to first-degree robbery and were given eight to 15 years. Robert Mitchell was given 50 years to life and Kevin Washington was convicted of trial and given 75 years.

The satisfaction you get of arresting them and then, you know, when the DA convicts them, then we can get the celebration. You know what? They can rest in peace now.

You know, if we're talking about cold cases, we have to talk about the cold case detective in this case, Wendell Stratford. You know, I asked a friend of mine how she would describe him, and she was one that worked with him a lot. And she used three words, diligent, determined, and tireless. And it is all those character traits about Wendell Stratford that helped him achieve justice for the Martinez-Leon family.

Intentionally taking the life of another is murder, no matter what the victim may have been doing in their life and no matter what their status in society may be. And this case is a prime example of the very many victims of homicide. There is the actual victims, but then there's all those left behind, often with such incredible grief. I have to go back to the first time I listened to that 911 call. A six-year-old with his two younger brothers trying to get help.

Esteban Jr. should be around 26 years old today. My hope is for his sake and the sake of his brothers, they have found a life full of healing and peace. Tune in next week for another new episode of Anatomy of Murder.

Anatomy of Murder is an AudioChuck original. Produced and created by Weinberger Media and Frasetti Media. Ashley Flowers and Sumit David are executive producers. This episode was produced by Philjean Grande. So, what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve?

Hi, I'm Ashley Flowers, creator and host of the number one true crime podcast, Crime Junkie. Every Monday, me and my best friend Britt break down a new case, but not in the way you've heard before and not the cases you've heard before. You'll hear stories on Crime Junkie that haven't been told anywhere else. I'll tell you what you can do to help victims and their families get justice.

Join us for new episodes of Crime Junkie every Monday. Already waiting for you by searching for Crime Junkie wherever you listen to podcasts.