Crime Immemorial

Nothing in the public picture of Emilio’s life suggested that he intended to disappear.

December 15th, 2010, was a Wednesday. Kacee Martinez was pregnant and suffering from a headache that evening. She had a craving for Chinese food and root beer. Emilio agreed to go out and get them. Before leaving, he kissed his wife. He apparently expected to be gone only a short time and inadvertently left his cell phone behind.

The errand took him to the China Moon restaurant and to a Sweetbay supermarket near Tampa Bay Boulevard and Armenia Avenue. Crime Stoppers later stated that investigators believed Emilio completed both stops before returning to the neighborhood around his home at 2125 West Dallas Avenue. A neighbor’s security camera also reportedly captured his vehicle approaching the area of his home.

Everything suggested that Emilio had returned. But he never went inside his home.

The first major clue was waiting outside the house. Items Emilio had just purchased were discovered in the driveway. Contemporary accounts described a Sweetbay bag containing items including root beer and a guava pastry, along with a receipt.

But Emilio himself was nowhere to be found, and neither was his Toyota Camry. The circumstances immediately suggested that something had interrupted him between arriving home and entering the house.

Emilio had a job, friends, a wife he loved and a child on the way. He had recently been promoted at work, he was active in his church, and was looking forward to fatherhood. There was no obvious reason for him to voluntarily leave.
Investigators eventually concluded that Emilio had been abducted from his driveway along with his vehicle.

There was another clue, and it was potentially much more significant. At approximately seven p.m. on December 15th, an unidentified man was seen around Emilio’s property. According to Crime Stoppers of Tampa Bay, the man was wearing a black leather jacket with a white T-shirt underneath and was observed walking in Emilio’s yard from a ditch area behind the residence.

Contemporary news reporting also described a neighbor seeing someone in the ditch or yard. A surveillance camera reportedly recorded a man running in the direction of Emilio’s house. Whether that individual was responsible for Emilio’s disappearance has never been publicly established. But the timing was difficult to ignore.

One neighbor told a local television station that the suspicious person had looked directly at him after being noticed near the property. The reports added a chilling possibility to the mystery: perhaps someone had been waiting close to Emilio’s home before he arrived.

Police did not publicly identify the man. Nor has any public announcement ever established who he was.

Friends and relatives mobilized quickly after Emilio vanished. One friend spent much of the night driving through Tampa searching for Emilio and his car. Family members distributed information, spoke publicly and pleaded for anyone who knew anything to come forward.

As the days passed without Emilio or the Camry being located, the sense of urgency grew. By December 18th, the family was offering a substantial reward for his safe return.

Then, at about one thirty p.m. on December 23rd, 2010, workers associated with property near the Islamic Center of Tampa Bay close to Orient Road and Sligh Avenue discovered a vehicle in a wooded or vacant area. It matched the description of Emilio’s missing Toyota. A body was also found, lying some distance from the vehicle.

Police immediately believed the remains were likely those of thirty-four-year-old Emilio Martinez-Rodriguez. The following day, the medical examiner confirmed the identification. Publicly available official records do not provide a detailed description of his fatal injuries, but his cause of death was given as upper-body trauma. The exact point during the eight days between his disappearance and discovery at which Emilio was killed has also not been publicly established.

One of the strangest reported details concerned Emilio’s Toyota. Accounts stated that the interior of the vehicle appeared to have been treated or doused with bleach, which suggested an attempt to destroy evidence such as fingerprints, biological material, or other forensic traces.

It also complicated the idea of a spontaneous crime. A person who impulsively stole a vehicle might simply abandon it. Cleaning or contaminating the interior could suggest that whoever had possession of the Toyota was concerned about evidence being recovered from it. Still, police have never publicly explained exactly what forensic evidence was recovered from the car, or what may have been destroyed.

The vehicle and Emilio’s body being left in roughly the same area also raised questions about the purpose of the abduction. If the only motive had been stealing the Toyota, why abduct and kill Emilio? And why apparently attempt to clean the vehicle before abandoning it?

Investigators were soon indicating that the answer was probably more complicated than an unlucky encounter with a stranger. Five days after Emilio’s body was discovered, Tampa Police provided one of the most important public statements ever made about the investigation.

Police spokeswoman Laura McElroy told the Tampa Tribune that detectives did not believe Emilio had simply become the random victim of violence. He had been “targeted,” she said, though it was also noted that Emilio himself had no criminal record.

After Emilio’s murder, reporters discovered that police had previously responded to unusual incidents at the Dallas Avenue residence. In September 2007, for example, someone reportedly threw a roughly softball-sized piece of concrete through a window of the house. The couple told police they did not know who had done it.

Only a few days later, the family reported a suspicious person in the area. Then, in July 2009, police were called when a man appeared at the house and claimed to be Kacee’s former husband. Kacee had never previously been married and reportedly told officers that the man was actually a friend.

The incidents sounded strange in light of what later occurred. However, investigators reportedly said they did not believe those earlier events were connected to Emilio’s murder.

Years after the homicide, investigators made another public appeal. In 2014, Tampa detectives released information about personal belongings that had apparently been missing since Emilio’s disappearance.

Among them were a Tag Heuer watch he had been wearing, Walter Hagen T3 golf clubs that had been inside his vehicle, and his wallet. The items had never been recovered, according to the police appeal preserved in contemporary case discussions. The missing property could have been stolen as part of the crime, removed to conceal evidence, discarded elsewhere, or taken for reasons investigators have never revealed.

Today, the City of Tampa continues to list Emilio Martinez’s case among the Tampa Police Department’s unsolved homicides. Neither the motive nor the perpetrator in the mysterious crime is known.