Fort Worth murder trial begins for man who was almost deported to Mexico in 2017
A man who was just days away from being deported to Mexico in 2017 was in a Fort Worth courtroom Tuesday at the start of his murder trial.
Jury selection was underway in Criminal District Court No. 4 in the trial of 48-year-old Raul Salazar Martinez, who is accused of shooting Ben Williams to death in 2013.
Williams, 25, who lived down the street from Martinez, had gone to help Martinez with a job clearing brush and limbs near an apartment building in the 1800 block of NW 20th Street on Sept. 6, 2013, according to Fort Worth police Detective Tom O’Brien in a 2017 interview with the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
Surveillance cameras in the area captured video of Martinez shooting Williams in the head, O’Brien said. He said the motive behind the shooting was unclear.
Martinez became a suspect in the 2013 homicide, but he fled to Mexico shortly after the shooting, Fort Worth police said.
He returned to the U.S., and was arrested on an unrelated charge in February 2017, and was serving a six-month sentence at a Houston federal prison under a different name — Raul Salar — and date of birth.
Martinez was due to be released Aug. 13, 2017, from the Houston Federal Detention Center for deportation, Fort Worth police have said.
Just days before that, Fort Worth police were notified that the CODIS (Combined DNA Index System) database had linked the federal inmate known as Raul Salar to physical evidence found at the scene of Williams’ fatal shooting.
Fort Worth police had no fingerprints on file to compare between the federal inmate and Martinez, but did have a copy of Martinez’s passport he’d been given from a woman who had previously sold Martinez insurance.
On Aug. 8, 2017, O’Brien and Detective Jerry Cedillo visited the Houston federal detention center to interview Martinez. He confessed to killing Williams, O’Brien told the Star-Telegram.
Martinez was extradited back to Fort Worth.
Martinez has been in the Tarrant County Jail in lieu of $250,000 bail.
This report contains information from Star-Telegram archives.
