Las Vegas Strip hotel worker accused of raping guest

A Circus Circus maintenance worker was arrested in July after a hotel guest accused him of raping her while he was on the clock, the Las Vegas Review-Journal has learned.

Arthur Joseph Martinez, 54, has been charged with one count each of sexual assault and battery to commit sexual assault. He was taken into custody July 16, two days after the alleged rape at the resort, 2880 Las Vegas Blvd. South, according to his arrest report.

MGM Resorts International, which owns Circus Circus, said in statement Friday, “We are working closely with police as they conduct the investigation.”

Martinez was suspended immediately, pending the outcome of the investigation, and was terminated following his arrest, according to MGM Resorts spokesman Brian Ahern.

The suspect first encountered the woman while completing a few work orders on the 26th floor of the hotel, where the woman had been fumbling with a few dollar bills that a vending machine wouldn’t take.

The suspect offered to buy her a soda from a different vending machine and asked if he could leave his toolbox in her hotel room. Because Martinez was wearing a Circus Circus work uniform, the woman would later tell Las Vegas police, she believed he was “trustworthy,” the report states.

Martinez soon returned with a can of Pepsi and left, and the woman began drinking mixed drinks. A blood draw at the hospital about four hours after the alleged assault would reveal that the woman’s blood alcohol content was 0.142 percent, according to the report.

“The intoxicated state that (she) would have been in that moment would inhibit her ability to give consent for a sexual encounter,” a detective wrote in Martinez’s report.

Shortly after Martinez left the woman’s room the first time, according to the report, the woman heard a knock at her door. When she opened it, Martinez was there with another can of soda, asking if he could come in.

“Yeah, come on in,” the woman said, according to the report, at which point she claims she was raped. The document states that she reported the crime within 15 minutes.

The morning after, police spoke to 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, the report states.

A few hours later, detectives spoke to Martinez at the hotel after he had clocked in for work. When confronted with the allegations, according to the report, he told police, “Oh my god, are you serious?”

“Man, I’ve been married for 35 years. I’m a grandpa. I’ve got grandkids,” he told police, according to the report. “Man, I never sexually assaulted her.”

He then consented to a DNA sample collection, but his “demeanor changed,” police said.

“I didn’t really do anything wrong,” he said as an officer was preparing the DNA collection, according to the report. “I’ll come clean. We did something, but it was consensual.”

On July 16, before his arrest, he spoke to detectives again at the Metropolitan Police Department’s headquarters, where he took a polygraph test. He failed, the report shows.

“He could not explain the outcome of the examination and insisted that the machine was wrong,” police wrote in the arrest report.

Martinez’s preliminary hearing is set for Sept. 24 in Las Vegas Justice Court.

Contact Rio Lacanlale at rlacanlale@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0381. Follow @riolacanlale on Twitter.