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Editor’s Note: This story contains discussions of rape or sexual assault that may be disturbing. Reader discretion is advised. If you or someone you know has been sexually assaulted, you can find help and discreet resources on the National Sexual Assault Hotline website or by calling 1-800-656-4673.
(NewsNation) — The man convicted of killing Maryland mother Rachel Morin will be sentenced Monday, nearly two years after her death.
Victor Martinez-Hernandez was found guilty in April of raping and murdering Morin, a 37-year-old single mother of five who was attacked while jogging on a path in suburban Baltimore.
Martinez-Hernandez is originally from El Salvador and was in the United States illegally. He faces life in prison without the possibility of parole, since Maryland does not have the death penalty.
A memorial for Rachel Morin is displayed on a tree on the Ma & Pa Trail in Bel Air, Maryland. (Dillon Mullan/Baltimore Sun/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)
Victor Martinez-Hernandez was arrested in the killing of Rachel Morin, a Maryland mother whose body was found near a popular hiking trail in August 2023. Hernandez, 23, had illegally crossed the border into the U.S. in February 2023, after murdering another young woman in El Salvador a month earlier, according to authorities. 
(Photo: Harford County Sheriff's Office)
Rachel Morin's killer had criminal history in US, El Salvador
Martinez-Hernandez is accused of killing a woman in El Salvador in 2022. In early 2023, he crossed the U.S. southern border three times and was expelled each time by the Border Patrol.
Martinez-Hernandez succeeded on his fourth attempt and later surfaced in Los Angeles, where he was linked to the assault of a woman and a 9-year-old girl. He then traveled to Maryland, where Morin was found dead Aug. 6, 2023.
In June 2024, Martinez-Hernandez was arrested in Tulsa, Oklahoma. While the search took nearly a year, a decision on his guilt came in less than an hour. A jury found him guilty on all counts in just 46 minutes in April.
'All cried out': Rachel Morin's daughter, mother to deliver statements
Morin's mother, Patty Morin, told NewsNation that writing her victim-impact statement was draining but bittersweet.
“You also are reliving all the memories that you’ve shared with Rachel — like when I found out I became pregnant, when I was carrying her, the dreams and hopes I had for her … what she was like as a child,” she said. “All those things come rushing into your mind.”
Her goal, she said, was to “convey it so the judge sees how precious and valuable Rachel was.”
In addition to her own statement, she said some of Morin's children, including the teenage daughter who was the last person to speak with her, will make statements at Monday's hearing.
NewsNation's Michael Ramsey and Anna Kutz contributed to this report.
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