[SOUTHAFRICATODAY.NET] Michelle Martens kept her new relationship with a man convicted of child endangerment a secret from friends and family for weeks -- as she helped plan her daughter’s 10th birthday party, sent the girl off daily to the school bus and held down her job at a local grocery store.Now relatives and friends of the 35-year-old single mother are trying to figure out why they never knew about her involvement with the boyfriend and her invitation for his cousin who is a convicted felon to live in her apartment.
Court records show all three face charges in the death of Victoria Martens, who was expected to celebrate her 10th birthday the day her body was found last week after police say she was drugged, raped and killed in the apartment as her mother watched.
"Whatever demons she had we don’t know because she didn’t share them with us," said Laura Bobbs, who lived in Martens’ apartment complex for five years and now serves as a spokeswoman for Victoria’s relatives. "I should have been the one to see all this and I didn’t."
An officer responding to a report of a pre-dawn Aug. 24 disturbance at the apartment found Victoria’s remains in a bathtub, partially wrapped in a blanket that had been set on fire.
Bobbs, a local minister who lived until recently in an apartment below Martens, said she and the girl’s grandmother spoke to Martens almost daily. She recalled the mother was planning to order a cake for her daughter days before Victoria died.
The girl’s grandparents, who moved from New York to New Mexico to be closer to their grandchildren, were also in on the party planning, Bobbs said.
All are mystified over how Martens got involved with Fabian Gonzales and his cousin Jessica Kelley, Bobbs said. The three face charges of child abuse resulting in death, kidnapping and tampering with evidence and are placed in durance vile
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for lack of $1 million bail each.
At a news conference Monday held at Victoria’s favorite park, Bobbs thanked Albuquerque residents on behalf of the girl’s family for an outpouring of support and prayers.
The grandparents and other relatives did not speak but clutched each other, and some cried while wearing buttons showing a smiling Victoria adorned in purple, her favorite color.
Police said Martens and Gonzales met on a dating site online about a month before the killing, and that Martens allowed Kelley to move into her apartment after her release from prison about four days before the killing.