Trial opens in claw hammer murder of Las Vegas woman, girl
Opening statements are slated to start Tuesday afternoon in the death penalty trial of a man charged with raping and killing a 10-year-old Las Vegas girl and her mother in 2012.
“I’ve been doing this 24 years, and this is the case you hope you never see,” then-homicide Lt. Ray Steiber said after the bodies were discovered. “This is the kind of case that goes on that they write movies about. And I don’t say that as to be an entertainment factor. I’m saying this was a savage, heinous crime.”
After repeated trial delays since his arrest in late April 2012, Bryan Clay, 27, faces a jury on two counts of murder.
Prosecutors are expected to describe how 38-year-old Ignacia “Yadira” Martinez and her daughter, Karla, were raped and beaten to death with a claw hammer inside their northern Las Vegas home more than five years ago.
Arturo Martinez, the woman’s husband, fought off the attacker but suffered severe head wounds. The couple’s two sons were left alive inside the house at 1016 Robin St.
When 9-year-old Christopher Martinez awoke on Sunday, April 15, 2012, he saw blood everywhere. He hugged his father and tried to care for his 5-year-old brother, doing his best to shelter the boy from the grisly scene.
The following morning, he went to school, where a teacher noticed him crying.
“Because he’s just not a crier, I automatically said ‘Christopher, what happened?’” Candace Wagner, the fourth-grade teacher at Hoggard Elementary School, told a grand jury a month after the killings. “And he said, ‘My mom and my sister are dead.’”
Christopher was quickly taken home, where he watched as his father was rushed away in an ambulance. The younger boy, Alejandro, was still inside the home, crying.
Neither prosecutors nor Clay’s attorneys, veteran death penalty trial lawyers Tony Sgro and Chris Oram, would comment on the trial, which is expected to last a month.
If convicted, Clay could be sentenced to death.
Clay told investigators at the time of his arrest that he blacked out and has no memory of what happened the night of the killings.
He remains at the Clark County Detention Center without bail on the murder charges.
According to court documents, the Martinezes’ attacker left a jacket wrapped in a black T-shirt, discarded in the street and found by a neighbor early on the morning of April 15, 2012.
Clay, who police said did not know any of the victims, was arrested after police raided his mother’s house.
At the time, Clay told detectives that police should have killed him instead of arresting him.
Contact David Ferrara at dferrara@reviewjournal.com or 702-380-1039. Follow @randompoker on Twitter.
