Las Vegas man gets life sentence in 2015 strangling of woman
Inside a Las Vegas courtroom, Marissa Gonzales’ family watched as her killer walked into the room, arms chained behind his back.
“It ain’t right,” Gonzales’ mother, Lasha Phillips, whispered. “Murderer.”
District Judge Douglas Herndon sentenced Nathanael Martinez, 24, to life in prison Wednesday for strangling, partially dismembering and burning Gonzales in 2015.
Martinez entered a type of guilty plea that required him to admit only that prosecutors could prove their second-degree murder case. He will be eligible for parole after 10 years.
The sentence came two days before what would have been Gonzales’ 29th birthday.
“If there is absolutely any way that I can ever right a mistake, I would go above and beyond to do that,” Martinez told the judge before his sentencing.
There was no perfect way to say what he wanted to, he declared as he read from a note. He thanked his family and asked for forgiveness.
“I will only use this time to become the best version of myself,” he said.
Martinez told police after the murder that he picked Gonzales up on the Strip and inadvertently strangled her early on May 21, 2015, when she pulled a knife, demanding payment from him after they had sex.
Her body was found in a bathtub at the Sunwood Village apartment complex on Arville Street. Her left arm was nearly severed, and there were cuts on her lower back and left leg. Burns covered her neck and head.
Martinez’s attorney, Michael Becker, said Wednesday that his client had a young son and daughter. He asked Herndon for a 25-year sentence, with parole eligibility after 10 years.
“You don’t do nobody like that and get out. To me, that’s just not right,” Gonzales’ friend Daleth Cooper told the judge. “I know this situation may seem like she was ‘that person.’ But she wasn’t.”
Her mother, Phillips, told the judge that Martinez’s version of events shamed her daughter and her character.
“You can’t forget that he cut my daughter up and strangled her to death. He burned her up,” she wailed. “She would never have any grandkids for me. I can never celebrate anything else without her.”
Gonzales was the third of six children from Beaumont, California. Her father, who raised them, took the loss the hardest, her sister Myisha Gonzales said.
She described her sister’s soft skin and long, curly hair. What she missed most was her laugh.
“She was my little gem. She kept it real, raw. She was my personal hype man,” Myisha Gonzales said. “She’d be in the audience now, telling me, ‘You got this.’”
Then, she addressed Martinez.
“How do you have a daughter and kill my father’s daughter?” she asked. “For someone that uses their bare hands to take a precious life and witness life leave that body, to me that seems, like, very psychotic.”
Herndon told Martinez that he was given the “biggest benefit” in this case by the state reducing the charge to second-degree murder.
“Asphyxiating someone to death is a very intimate and up-close and deliberate act that takes minutes,” the judge said before sentencing Martinez. “I don’t know exactly what precipitated this type of aggression and rage … But that’s a scary thing to me.”
Contact Briana Erickson at berickson@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-5244. Follow @brianarerick on Twitter.
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