A murder suspect was about to be deported. Then Fort Worth police found him

A 46-year-old man, who was a week away from being deported to Mexico, will instead be headed to Tarrant County Jail after he was linked through a DNA database to a 2013 Fort Worth homicide.

Raul Salazar Martinez had been wanted on a murder warrant since shortly after the fatal shooting of Ben Williams, 25, on Sept. 6, 2013, but had eluded capture after reportedly fleeing to Mexico, according to homicide Detective Tom O’Brien.

Turns out, he had returned to the U.S. this year, was arrested on an unrelated charge in February, and was serving a six-month sentence at a Houston federal prison under a different name — Raul Salar — and date of birth.

“When you run that name, it does not show a warrant,” O’Brien said. “That’s why they never made the connection.”

Martinez was due to be released Aug. 13 from the Houston Federal Detention Center for deportation, O’Brien said.

But on Aug. 4, 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.

O’Brien 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.

“I had them send me a picture. It looked like him,” O’Brien said.

On Aug. 8, O’Brien and Detective Jerry Cedillo visited the Houston federal detention center to interview Martinez. He confessed to killing Williams, O’Brien said.

Williams, 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 N.W. 20th Street, O’Brien said.

Surveillance cameras in the area captured video of Martinez shooting Williams in the head, O’Brien said. He said the motive behind the shooting is still unclear.

Martinez, who federal records show had a 1990 conviction for burglary, had previously been deported in 1999.

After being arrested in February, he pleaded guilty in March for reentering the country without permission after a previous deportation and felony conviction. In June, he was sentenced to six months in federal prison and ordered to provide a DNA sample and not to reenter the U.S. illegal again, court records show.

Martinez has since been transferred to the Harris County Jail.

He was charged Friday with murder in connection with Williams’ fatal shooting and will be transferred to the Tarrant County Jail. Bail in the murder case set at $250,000.

This story was originally published August 18, 2017 at 2:46 PM with the headline "A murder suspect was about to be deported. Then Fort Worth police found him."