Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Popular New York Street Astronomer Charged in 22-Year-Old Murder

Episode Date: January 28, 2022

The body of 13-year-old Minnie Soriano is found by a homeless man in a dumpster. The girl has been sex abused and strangled. Now after 22 years, 49-year-old Joseph Martinez has been arrested. Officials allege that Martinez, who teaches astronomy on the street, knew Soriano because he lived in her building. The teen also had an interest in astronomy and wanted to be an astronaut. Police say familial DNA technology pointed to Martinez. This is the first time the technology has been used in New York City.Joining Nancy Grace today: Phil Vetrano - Father of Murdered Jogger Karina Vetrano Wendy Patrick - California prosecutor, author “Red Flags” www.wendypatrickphd.com 'Today with Dr. Wendy' on KCBQ in San Diego, Twitter: @WendyPatrickPHD Dr. Angela Arnold - Psychiatrist, (Atlanta GA) www.angelaarnoldmd.com, Expert in the Treatment of Pregnant/Postpartum Women, Former Assistant Professor of Psychiatry, Obstetrics and Gynecology: Emory University, Former Medical Director of The Psychiatric Ob-Gyn Clinic at Grady Memorial Hospital Joe Scott Morgan - Professor of Forensics: Jacksonville State University, Author, "Blood Beneath My Feet", Host: "Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan" Tony DeStefano - Special Writer, Newsday, Author: "The Deadly Don: Vito Genovese" and "Mafia Boss", www.tonydestefano.com, Twitter: @TonyNewsDay, Instagram: @Tony.Destefano.Newsday Dr. Monte Miller- director, Forensic DNA Experts LLC Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. A gorgeous young girl, Minnie Soriano, disappears, later found dead. 13 years old. A beautiful little girl, straight A's, loved astronomy, looking at the stars. In the last hours, a bombshell in a case that has lain dormant over 20 years. I'm Nancy Grace. This is Crime Stories.

Thank you for being with us here at Fox Nation and Sirius XM 111. Take a listen to our friends at CrimeOnline.com, our cut one. Minner Lee Soriano was known to friends and family as Minnie. At 13, Minnie was in seventh grade and was a straight-A student who wrote poetry in her journal about love and rainbows. She liked to read romance novels, and she dreamed of one day becoming an astronaut. She was a fixture in her neighborhood, riding her bike or zooming by on roller skates. Her friends described her as being mature for her age. Minnie's aunt, Maritza Soriano,

said people used to call Minnie the Cinderella of the building. Minnie usually stayed close to home. She sold candy door to door and was often seen sitting in the lobby of her apartment building doing her homework. She helped out with family chores, household responsibilities, like doing her family's laundry or walking three blocks to a 24-hour deli, sometimes late at night to buy groceries. Oh, gosh, I'm having red bells of alarm going off in my head immediately. Hanging out in the lobby. Who would have seen her there? Mature for her age. Quiet and hardworking is what they meant by that.

Going to the 24-hour deli for groceries or whatever the family needed sometimes late at night at age 13. Going door to door selling candy. You know, all of that may be normal, but in my world, those are huge causes of concern. Maybe I'm wrong or maybe I'm not. Take a listen to our cut to Crime Online. 13-year-old Minnie Soriano followed a daily routine after school each day. She would take a city bus home from Intermediate School 135 in Bronxdale, then wait outside her apartment for her younger sister Nadia's bus to arrive so she could walk the seven-year-old upstairs to their apartment.

Classmate and friend Kimberly Ortiz said Minnie was, quote, so bubbly, just a sweet person in general. She always wanted to help, especially with poetry. She was so natural at it. She and Minnie bonded in an after school program as they were leaving school on February 24th. Minnie wanted to go to the library, but Ortiz needed to get home. Ortiz said that Minnie made a comment about being upset about something, but didn't divulge more. And Ortiz said she didn't press the issue.

So when the bell rang at the end of the school day, Minnie left wearing her red jacket, carrying her black book bag and boarded a city bus. She was supposed to meet her younger sister on the stairs in front of their apartment building like every other school day. But on this day, Minnie wasn't there. Later that evening, her mother called 911 to report her daughter never came home from school that day. Can I tell you how many cases I have either investigated, prosecuted, or covered where a child goes missing in or around in relation to going to or coming home from school? And that's just on a regular school bus, much less a public transportation bus. A school bus is full of other kids your age. A public transportation bus is full of adults,

including adult males, just who you don't want around your seventh grader all by herself. But before we are too harsh, I was a latchkey kid myself. I walked home from school. The shortest and the skinniest in the whole class would walk home alone from school over a mile. So before you blame the parents, a lot of parents have to work, both of them, during the day, and there's no other alternative or no other alternative that they can afford. Again, I'm Nancy Grace. This is Crime Stories. Thanks for being with us. Take a listen now to Our Cut 3, Sandra Bookman, ABC7.

Thirteen-year-old Minnerlee Suriano was last seen in class at IS-135 last Wednesday, February 24th. But when she didn't show up at home in Pelham Park by 7.30 that evening, her family reported her missing to police. Then, Sunday night, a homeless person going through dumpsters behind a video store just off Bartow Avenue discovered the body of a young girl. Police recall the next day that body was positively identified as that of Minner Lee Soriano. She'd apparently been strangled. While her family refused comment today, some neighbors in their Pelham Park building remember the last time they saw Minner Lee. I saw her a

couple of days later at the bus stop waiting for her bus. then I find out like a week later that she was missing. Now, this afternoon, a spokesman for the family of Miralee Soriano told us that the parents at this time are simply too upset to talk about what has happened to their daughter. So far, police are saying very little about when, where, and why this 13-year-old girl was killed. An all-star panel with me to make sense of what we know right now. Wendy Patrick, California prosecutor, author of Red Flags.

You can find her at WendyPatrickPhD.com. She's a host of Today with Dr. Wendy on KCBQ San Diego. Dr. Angela Arnold, renowned psychiatrist, joining us from the Atlanta jurisdiction at AngelaArnoldMD.com. Professor of Forensics, Jacksonville State University, author of Blood Beneath My Feet on Amazon, and star of a new hit series, Body Bags, with Joe Scott Morgan on iHeart. A very special guest joining me today.

You know him well. I consider him not just a colleague, but a friend. Phil Vetrano, the father of Murder Jogger, the beautiful Karina Vetrano, who has made it his life's mission to seek justice. First to Tony DiStefano, special writer, newsday and author of The Deadly Dawn, Vito Genovese. Find him at Tony DiStefano.com. Tony, it's great to have you with us. And I wish for once we could talk when we don't have a murder in the backdrop. Let's just start at the beginning.

I want to talk about Minnie Soriano, just 13 years old, just a beautiful little girl. First of all, tell me about Minnie. Well, Minnie was, as you noted in your openings, was a very precocious, active, young intermediate school girl in the Bronx. And, you know, she was full of life. She had interest in astronomy. You know, what kid has interest in astronomy? I did at that age, but not Minnie, which was full of life. She had interest in astronomy. You know, what kid has interest in astronomy? I did at that age, but not many, which was good for her. My daughter loves astronomy.

Well, that's good. She just turned 14. And I loved astronomy at that age. I love the stars, finding all of the pictures, the constellations up in the sky. She has taken it in scouts. She loves it. Now, what do you mean by precocious? Well, precocious in the sense of her intellectual interests in astronomy,

going to school, and, you know, intellectually, I think, curious. Okay. Now, I find that interesting that you would refer to her as precocious. The fact that she makes all A's, loves to study, wants to be an astronaut, and loves astronomy. How is that precocious? I'm just curious. I think, you know, in an intellectual way, not in any other way. Okay, got it. So tell me about her living arrangement. She had her little sister that she would wait on every single day at the bus stop

so the little sister wouldn't have to walk upstairs by herself. Tell me where they lived. She lived with her mom, correct? She did in the Bronx. She was caring for her younger sister. You know who I think she looks like? If any of you know this star, she's incredible.

Unless you've been living under a rock or in a cave or you haven't seen Spidey, No Way Home, Zendaya. Know who Zendaya is? She's beautiful. I've loved her since day one. Wasn't she in The Greatest Showman on Earth? Yeah. With Hugh Jackman? Yes.

She's a teen girl. How old is she now? She's an adult now. She's an adult now. She started as a teen girl. And this little girl, from the moment I saw Minnie Soriano, there's something about her that reminds me of Zendaya. And I don't know why. It just, maybe it's their eyes.

Do you see that comparison? I mean, just absolutely beautiful. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. Tony DiStefano joining me, author and special writer with Newsday. Tony, she lives at home with mom, very studious, all A's. You know what's interesting? Hold on, Tony. Phil Vetrano, I remember when your daughter, Karina Vetrano, and I just want to remind you, you know, I found a special star in the sky that reminds me of Karina. Yeah, I was funny that I was looking at that star this very morning at about 5 a.m. when I was packing the car to take the children to school. That star was out.

I thought about you. Do you remember at the very beginning, everybody attacked Karina? Karina was murdered. She was attacked and murdered. But there were, why was she out running by herself? Why was she wearing a sports bra? Why did she have earbuds in? Did she know this guy?

Do you remember all that? Did she work at a bar? Do you remember all that, how Karina was attacked in the media? Nancy liked it was yesterday. First they attacked her, and then they attacked me. Yeah, that's right. Because you found Karina, you know, it's hard for a lot of people to get this, but you had a feeling that something was wrong. Well, you tell me, you tell me what happened. Well, like I explained, I told you many times, but I'm going to tell your audience once more.

I was I picked her up at the train station, came home. She went upstairs to eat and I sat on the couch. She came down a little while later and said, daddy, I'm going to go for a run. Do you want to come? And I says, no, Reange. I called her Reange. My back hurts. So I'm not going to make it today. She says, where are you going? She says, I'm going on the trail. I said, I don't think it's a good idea. And I left it at that. She said, don't worry, Daddy, I'll be okay. That's what she told me. And about 20 minutes later, I'm sitting there, I'm watching the news,

and I get this bad feeling. So I called her three times. But the third time, I screamed. Now, my wife had just gotten home from the hospital. She's upstairs. And she said, what's the matter? Karina went out, and she's not answering her phone. I immediately went looking for her.

Couldn't find her. I called a friend of mine who was the deputy chief on the NYPD. And, you know, four hours later, 300 cops later, two helicopters, two bloodhounds later, I just stopped on the trail in the middle of the night and something told me to walk in. Just like that. You saw that one blight of grass. It was one leaf on a weed that was bent out of place.

But it was 1030 at night. It was pitch black. And something just made me stop right there and take a look. 30 foot off the trail. That's when my, my life ended. Yeah. You know what, Phil, but right now you're giving me feels all over my whole body again. And you're hearing Karina's father describing a feeling that made him go look for his daughter and a feeling that led him a certain way after

searching and searching and searching he found Karina Vetrano his daughter's body and let me tell you he suddenly became suspect number one and at Karina's funeral, as I recall, you were asked to give a DNA comparison, weren't you? Yes, I was. Of all places. The media went berserk. So, Tony DiStefano,

you poor thing, I apologize. I'm here. When you said Minnie was precocious, that rubbed me the wrong way and you were absolutely right. Now it's absolutely wrong because I'm so used to victims

somehow being accused of wrongdoing that somehow it's their fault that I was just already, you know, I was loaded for beer, but sadly I caught you being good again. So you're right. She was educationally and intellectually precocious I was loaded for beer, but sadly, I caught you being good again. So you're right. She was educationally and intellectually precocious, far beyond her years as a 13-year-old little girl.

So that day, Tony DiStefano, joining us from Newsday, that day that she's last seen, she gets on the public bus and, oh, do you remember the case we just did jackie where up i remember the little girl's last name was defries ariana defries who took a public bus home from school and video actually shows her being led away by her killer from the bus public buses with minors. It's a horrible combination, but a lot of parents don't have a choice. And I really hate Wendy Patrick when parents of latchkey kids are vilified because a lot of times there's not a darn thing they could do about it. I mean, I had my mom working crazy hours,

my dad working on the railroad and we were latchkey kids. We walked home or got home on our own. That's so true, Nancy. And there are so many parents that are in that exact same circumstance. They both have to work to put food on the table. They do everything they can to strategize the way their precious young ones walk to and from school or wherever else they need to go. And you're right.

You know, everybody is outraged when a child goes missing. But it's also true that they need to consider these circumstances and certainly not start pointing the finger, especially in those initial days once a child is missing. You can only imagine what the parents are feeling. They also don't need to be blamed for it. So what we know is she's last seen then Tony DiStefano getting on the bus right down to her red jacket. What happened then, Tony? Do we know if she ever made it home?

Well, she never made it home. And the only thing that we know for sure is after she got on the bus, she was found in the dumpster in a garbage bag. I think the date was February 24th. It was actually found on the 28th, but got on the bus on February 24th. So four days later, right? Four days later. And did you say her body was in a garbage bag? It was wrapped in a trash bag. I don't know if she was in it or if it was wrapped up, you know, sort of exterior.

But the garbage bag was part of it. Okay. Jackie is, I wish you could see this, is acting out that she was in a garbage bag. So, Joe Scott Morgan, I know that that perked your ear straight up when you hear garbage bag explained. Yeah, because you begin to think that whoever did this, whoever did this and perpetrated this crime was prepared, Nancy. At least they had an awareness of what was going on.

They wanted to conceal the body. So, that tells us a lot about the perpetrator, that they didn't just leave her out resting somewhere. They took time to wrap her body, or I like to refer to it as cocooning, and then take the body and deposit the body in a dumpster. And that goes to a whole other level of the activity that this criminal was involved in, Nancy. Joining me right now is a very special guest joining us, Dr. Monty Miller, Director of Forensic DNA, Experts, LLC, and the former forensic scientist for the Texas Department of Public Safety State Crime Lab. There is no shortage of cases. I told you that every week I'd get about 150 new felonies. The grand jury would would just churn them out in a high crime area like inner city Atlanta. Same way at crime labs. Man, you learn it on the job.

In addition to all those degrees you've got up on your wall, Dr. Miller. You are literally under the gun at the crime lab and see thousands of cases. Let me ask you a very narrow question. First of all, welcome, Dr. Monty Miller. But a garbage bag where the victim, the little victim is in or wrapped in a garbage bag, that should be a treasure trove of the defendant's DNA. Why? Well, first of all, you know, a garbage bag is an excellent way to just keep everything together. When you don't have it inside of something, it can get spread everywhere.

But, I mean, other than that, really, it's that it keeps everything together. When it's in a trash bag or any kind of a container. You know, everything is then there and it doesn't get spread out. The DNA doesn't degrade in the same way and it can be protected by that plastic bag. And wouldn't they possibly leave DNA, even if it's touched DNA, on the bag? Oh, certainly. I mean, if they touched it and it doesn't get into the soil or none of the dirt and it doesn't get any sunlight or moisture or anything like that, the DNA might last for quite some time, particularly in a cold environment. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. crime stories with nancy grace to dr angela arnold round psychiatrist joining us out of the atlanta jurisdiction at angela arnold md.com dr angie i want to circle back about why very often people blame the victim

here you got a 13 year old little girl getting off a public bus after school, and you've got the parents that allowed her to be a latchkey kid. You know why I think people do that? Why they blame the victim or the parents? Why? Because it makes us or the blamer, the finger pointer, feel better. In other words, they might say, oh, that's not going to happen to me. Exactly.

Because I would never fill in the blank. I don't hear it that way. I would never let my child take his public bus. I would never let my child walk home from school. BS. You know what? Because I see children walking home from school, every school you can think of, the public school,

the inner city school, the fancy private school, a lot of people are walking home from school, but it makes the finger pointer feel better in that it's not going to happen to me. It's not going to happen to my child because of fill in the blank X. I don't think there's any hatred toward Karina Vetrano or Phil Vetrano or this little girl, Minnie Siriano, or her mom. I think it makes the finger pointer feel more secure and safe because they can rationalize why it would never happen to them, but it could happen to them.

That's what they don't get. I think that people are so, first of all, people are so shocked when something like this happens. And there's so many crime shows on TV now, and people have become their own sleuths, almost. And so they think they're doing the right thing by saying, oh, it must have been the parents. It was the parents, Walter. Maybe the little girl was wearing the wrong thing that day and she attracted some attention like that. And these kinds of attitudes, Nancy, as far as I'm concerned, need to change.

And they need to be exposed, first of all. Yes. finger pointer, you know, blaming the parent, feel better, like it's never going to happen to them. That needs to be exposed because the faster you can get off the parent or the child, the quicker you can get on. Where's the perp? Who's the perp, Phil? Yeah, Nancy, unfortunately, it doesn't always work that way. You know, on Karina's case, they saw a beautiful young girl. Then you're right.

What was she doing running in a sports bra? She should have had a sweatshirt on. You know, like it was her fault and she asked for it and she brought it upon herself. And this is not true. You have a perpetrator. You have a criminal with a criminal mind that's going to do it no matter what the victim looks like. Sure. Words were never spoken, Phil Vetrano. And the case we're covering today has special meaning to Phil Vetrano and Tony DiStefano joining us.

So three days. And you. Yeah, you're right. It does. It does, Phil. To Joseph Scott Morgan, professor of forensics, death investigator, three days passed before the body of this 13-year-old little girl, Minnie Soriano, was found. How does that hurt the case?

Well, you know, one of the things that we deal in in medical legal death investigation, Nancy, is trying to determine the postmortem interval. And it can certainly harm the case because you'll get degrading of evidence. But the other, the upside, I guess, if you're looking for a silver lining, is that it can give us an opportunity to try to match up a timeline as to when she was last seen and at what level her body is degraded at that point in time. Now, keep in mind, this is in the wintertime, so it's going to be cooler. So to the doctor's point just a moment ago, that's going to preserve the body a little bit longer than, say, for instance, if we were in the heat of the summer. So anytime you have this opportunity for evidence to degrade, also these changes that are taking place postmortem, that's only going to hurt as opposed to help most of the time. Straight out to Tony DiStefano, special writer, Newsday, and author of The Deadly Dawn, Vito Genovese.

Tony, explain to me how Minnie was murdered and was she sex abused? To answer the latter question, yes, there was evidence of sexual abuse. It didn't apparently rise to the level of rape, but there was some physical contact. Was there sperm found on her clothing or her body? On her clothing. On her clothing. So it raises a bunch of other questions on what happened to the suspect. What was he doing at that time?

Was it a... Well, I think I know what he was doing. He was masturbating as he killed the girl. Either that or it was a premature ejaculation when he couldn't rape her. But she was abused in some way sexually, and

she died from neck compression, which is basically strangulation, basically. To Joe Scott, how do you determine that COD cause of death was neck compression? Well, one of the articles that I'd seen, Nancy, actually mentioned the term throttling. And, of course, we've heard a lot about that relative to the Petito case. And when you have this throttling event where an individual is using their hands as opposed to a ligature, you're going to have diffuse hemorrhage, which means it is spread through the tissues. It's not going to be real specific. So you can have a contusion or a bruise that's going to be much broader.

And that gives you an indication. And in certain cases, not every case, but in certain cases, you can actually make out, say, the outline of a handprint or that matches up with a contused area that might give you the appearance that there has been hands applied to the external surface of the neck. So that's what they're looking at here, Nancy. Guys, take a listen to our cut for this is Sifan Kim, ABC7. This beautiful little girl was treated less than human. It has been 22 years since her life was cruelly taken, but detectives never gave up on finding justice for her and her family. 13-year-old Minner Lisa Oriano, who went by Minnie in 1999, was on her way home in Co-op City when she was sexually abused and strangled.

Three days after she went missing, her body was discovered in a dumpster in the Bronx, dumped like trash. Iowa News reporter Sandra Bookman in 1999. Police spent much of yesterday looking through the trash at this video store here at the Bay Plaza Shopping Complex in the Baychester section. Guys, this is what we know about the discovery of her body, the condition it was in. She was shoved in a garbage bags inside a dumpster behind what used to be a Hollywood video rental store. She was found by a homeless man that was digging through the trash. She had been tied with green gaffer tape and placed in a fetal position inside the black garbage bag.

She was fully clothed. The book bag and the parka were not with her. The medical examiner determined that there was semen on her sweatshirt. And as you just heard, Joe Scott Morgan explained, she died of throttling, which is basically manual strangulation. I'm especially interested in the sperm, the semen and DNA. Years go by and there is no DNA match. Straight out to Dr. Monty Miller, Director of Forensic DNA Experts, LLC. Dr. Monty Miller, again, thank you for being with us. You would expect the killer of this little girl, Minnie

Soriano, to have committed a crime before because you rarely go zero to 120 MPH overnight, whether it was a child molestation or a rape of somebody else, peeping Tom, something that would get his DNA into the DNA data bank. But that did not happen. Tell us, if you could, Dr. Miller, what is familial DNA? Well, familial DNA is the fact that we all share a certain amount of our DNA with other members of our family. The Golden State Killer was caught by a familial search, although they did that through the databases that are commonly available. The CODIS database that has all of our criminals in it, they can also do a familial DNA search of it. But they're looking for somebody that's just a close match.

And then they're trying to say, is that match similar to what we would get from a brother or from a cousin? And so they try to match it that way, though that's not a very good match because we just don't have enough DNA markers to do a good match. When they do the ancestral DNA, which ancestry.com, mother and me, 23andme, whatever you have, those databases are using like 700,000 DNA matches. And so it's much easier to do a familial search that way. But basically, they're looking for DNA that has a very similar profile to the one that they found or one that has a profile that matches, you know, this could be your brother. This could be, you know, matches 50% or 25%. But they have so many markers, they're able to do much better comparisons with the ancestral DNA sites than they can with the criminal database. So bottom line, the actual killer, a 13-year-old mini, couldn't find them through a DNA match. You have your known DNA, which is the sperm, the semen on her clothing,

but you don't know the match. You got to have somebody to match it to. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. Familial DNA, you run the known DNA, the killer's DNA through the system. And with familial DNA, you might get a great, great, great, great uncle or a distant cousin or nephew far away from the initial family tree. That's how familial DNA works. And then like in the case of the Golden State Killer, DeAngelo, Joseph DeAngelo, you look at people connected to the victim's DNA, the perp's DNA in the area. Are there any brothers, uncles, cousins, nephews in the area? And you start bit by bit narrowing it down who it could be. So Phil Vetrano, you led the campaign for familial DNA to be allowed in evidence. Why?

Well, you basically called me the father of New York familial DNA. Why? It's because we had a great sample, a DNA sample, you know, from Karina's killer, but it didn't match anything. Nothing in CODIS, nothing in the state, nothing in federal. So Tony, Tony DeFano, our guest right now, told me about familial searching and he told me what it was. And I I said how come they're not doing this because it's not allowed and I said okay and I started my campaign and between me you and Tony because you we met on Dr. Oz and we pushed for us so you were the celebrity that went nationwide Tony was the local news guy and I was the tenacious father and between us that combination we got it passed and we are celebrating the second case in New York State you know Minnie

was the first in New York City but even after we found Karina's killer I still pushed for it because it is so disheartening and so horrible to have a loved one that is killed and knowing someone is walking the streets you you just want justice you know you just you just want this person to be caught so i wouldn't stop i wouldn't stop until they listened to me. And frankly, you know, it was a miracle that it and fought so hard, the family of Minnie Soriano to this day would not have justice. No question about it. There's no question about it. The answer to that is no, they would not have justice. No. Take a listen to our cut five. This is Saffron Kim, ABC 7. Approved about four years ago by the state, it's called familial DNA, and this is the first time this technology has been used to solve a cold case in New York City.

Detectives found the father of the suspect, which then led to Martinez. It's like building a family tree by searching for specific familial DNA. The DNA evidence recovered from Mineralese was initially searched through the CODIS databases, which are the government databases, for a direct match. Those results were negative in 2000. And more in our Cut 6. Listen. Nobody from her family and none of Minnie's friends remember Martinez, but police say he lived in Coab City in 1999.

Police say he was living all these years in New Rochelle, in plain sight, living a public life, calling himself Jupiter Joe. A YouTube video shows him in public places teaching astronomy to children. If I told you my name was Joe Martinez, would you remember it? His defense attorney says police have the wrong man. He denies these allegations. The case is pretty unusual in that Mr. Martinez is 49 years old. He has no criminal history.

To you, Dr. Monty Miller, Director of Forensics, DNA Experts, LLC, it's the wrong guy. So you want to tell me that the DNA match, which is very often like one in three trillion possibility, you got the wrong guy, one in three trillion. He's saying they've got the wrong guy when it's his sperm on the 13 year old little girl's clothing. Really? DNA doesn't lie. No, they didn't get the wrong guy. I mean, the idea that you have DNA that matches perfectly, the chances of you having somebody else that has that same DNA is just astronomical. I mean, if you had the same amount of people as you have on Earth, if you had a billion planets like that,

and then you had a billion universes with a billion planets like that, it could still single you out. So unless he has an identical twin, the answer is no. The ship has sailed. The DNA is his. And speaking of, as he calls himself Jupiter Joe, take a listen to our cut nine in the Meteor Minute with Jupiter Joe. Welcome back, everyone, to Meteor Minute on The Local Live.

I'm Jupiter Joe. This has been an exciting month for local astronomers, so let's jump right into a cosmic rundown. On December 9th, the Liberty Science Center in New Jersey unveiled its new Jennifer Chalice Planetarium, which is the largest, most advanced planetarium in the Western Hemisphere. Okay, stop. I can't take it anymore. He goes on to talk about the Orion Nebula, blah, blah, blah, blah. The reality is Tony DiStefano joining us from Newsday.

This little girl loved astronomy. She wanted to be an astronaut. And he got that knowledge and he used it to lure this girl, sex abuse her, and murder her. Well, this is what the full facts, we're still sort of treading through and trying to get to the bottom of what he used and what he did with her to try to get her into his orbit. And no pun intended, is, you know, still the subject of the investigation. Okay, I'm sorry. Tony DiStefano, could you just clarify something for me? Does two and two still equal four? Because I'm pretty sure it does, right? It still does.

Okay, so do you want to tell me, Wendy Patrick, that Jupiter Joe, Jupiter Joe, that it's just a coinkydink? That this little girl who wanted to be an astronaut and studied astronomy and loved the stars is just happenstance that he ends up sex abusing her, his sperm on her jacket. Of course, that was the connection. Nancy, that's a huge, that's a huge connection.

And part of the reason that's going to be a very important connection as we move forward is it's an exploitation of this this beautiful curiosity that he lived in her building and that's how he knew that's how he knew that she was fascinated with astronomy and study right yeah that's right and and you know that connection in and of itself would be very significant but then you add on everything else let's say we didn't even have the DNA. We're learning that it can't possibly be a coincidence because yes, this is something that many young people are interested in. And I was one of them too, but it's just too specific.

It's too narrow. And that is one of the main reasons this is so significant moving forward. Bottom line, Tony DiStefano, we hear the defense attorney, blah, blah, blah, blah. You've got the wrong man. It just happens to be his semen on her clothing. Go ahead. Yeah, what does that tell you? I mean, semen just doesn't fly around the universe and land in any which way, right? It's like that is a pretty good indicator.

That sounds familiar, Tony. That sounds familiar. which were right. It's like, uh, that is a pretty good indicator. It's like, uh, it just doesn't, you know, it just doesn't compute. Well, they were, they were, the defense was, uh, insinuating that, uh, his DNA, the killer's DNA made its way on Karina by, uh, flying through the air. So it was like magic DNA. And if's DNA, made its way on Karina by flying through the air. So it was like magic DNA. And if I may make a statement that the police believe that Minnie was killed in his apartment. You're absolutely right. What more do we know, Tony DiStefano?

The thing that, you know, the DNA on the sweatshirt, and it was on her sweatshirt, you know, it's such a strong indication of a crime that I don't know how the defense is going to try to wiggle around that. They may try to get some sort of lesser offense, but I don't see it. I don't see it. It's just it's just too too strong in my mind. I agree with you, Tony. Just take a listen to our cut. 10 Jim Dolan, ABC 7. Joseph Martinez was in handcuffs tonight, charged with the murder of a 13 year old girl 22 years ago for her family. The years have not closed the wounds. The pain has not ebbed even a bit. We never forget what happened.

Because this is today, I would have, she would like to read, she would like to write for me. She was a very good girl. Minnerly Soriano, Minnie, would be 35 years old now, but the photographs of her bright, joyful face stop here. Police sources tell Eyewitness News the man they say killed her was so sure he'd gotten away with it. He has a public life and calls himself Jupiter Joe. A YouTube video of him shows him in public places teaching children astronomy.

If I told you my name was Joe Martinez, would you remember it? Well, I can tell you this. That's a name I'll never forget, and I will not be happy until he gets the maximum penalty in that jurisdiction, which is life behind bars. A 13-year-old little girl getting off the bus. In addition to all of the investigators, the police, the scientists that worked this case, never gave up. I want to thank Phil Vetrano, Victim's Rights Advocate, who pushed for familial DNA in that jurisdiction.

And Tony DiStefano, joining us from Newsday, who also joined the fight for familial DNA to be allowed as evidence. And my message for Joseph Martinez, rot in hell. Nancy Grace, Crime Story, signing off. Goodbye, friend. This is an iHeart Podcast.