Former Strip hotel worker accused of raping guest dies before trial
A former Circus Circus maintenance worker accused of raping a hotel guest in 2019 died this year while awaiting trial, bringing to an end a case that had seen major delays because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Arthur Joseph Martinez, a 56-year-old Laughlin resident at the time of his death, had been free on bail since July 17, 2019, the day after his arrest by Las Vegas police.
According to the Clark County coroner’s office, Martinez killed himself during the midnight hour of March 26. The coroner’s office said Thursday that he died in “a bedroom” but did not release further details about the location.
Martinez, who was charged with one count of sexual assault, faced the possibility of life in prison. Records show that the case was dismissed on Tuesday in District Court.
Police previously said the alleged rape occurred on July 14, 2019, while Martinez was completing work orders on the 26th floor of Circus Circus. There, according to an arrest report for the suspect, he encountered an intoxicated woman who was fumbling to insert money into a vending machine.
The woman, whose blood alcohol content was 0.142 percent four hours after the alleged assault, later told Las Vegas police that she believed the suspect was “trustworthy” because he was wearing a Circus Circus work uniform.
“The intoxicated state that (she) would have been in that moment would inhibit her ability to give consent for a sexual encounter,” detectives wrote in the arrest report.
On the morning after the crime was reported, the detectives interviewed a Circus Circus security manager who confirmed that the master hotel key used on the 26th floor for the work orders, around the time of the alleged rape, was registered to Martinez. He was confronted by the detectives with the allegations a few hours later, according to the report, after he arrived at the hotel for a shift.
“Man, I’ve been married for 35 years. I’m a grandpa. I’ve got grandkids,” he said. “Man, I never sexually assaulted her.”
But after initially consenting to a DNA sample, the report stated, his “demeanor changed.”
“I didn’t really do anything wrong,” he said as an officer prepared the DNA collection kit, according to the report. “I’ll come clean. We did something, but it was consensual.”
The suspect took a polygraph test the following day at the Metropolitan Police Department’s headquarters. He failed, records show.
At the time, a spokesman for MGM Resorts International, which owns Circus Circus, told the Las Vegas Review-Journal that Martinez had been terminated following his arrest.
Contact Rio Lacanlale at rlacanlale@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0381. Follow @riolacanlale on Twitter.