NY - Minerliz Soriano, 13, assaulted & murdered leaving school, Bronx, Feb 1999 *Arrest in 2021*

This case is personal to me, as Minerliz was found two blocks from where I grew up in Co-op City and we were close in age. This was a high-profile case at the time, but it seems that the investigation fizzled out quickly due to suspicion of the family.

https://nypost.com/1999/03/03/girls-body-found-in-dumpster-bx-school-mourns-13-yr-old-great-kid/
https://nypost.com/1999/03/04/tragic-dumpster-girls-dad-demands-answers/
https://www.nytimes.com/1999/03/03/...g-for-days-is-found-slain-in-garbage-bin.html

She was found strangled in a garbage bin behind what was then a Hollywood Video (now T-Mobile) in Bay Plaza. Of note were the facts that she was found fully clothed and there were no indications of sexual assault. However, a red ski jacket and Jansport backpack she was last seen with were not found.

There is very little information now available publicly on this case, but my own memory was jogged when I came across this profile of a retired NYPD detective based in that part of the Bronx who mentioned the case as a source of regret:
http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york...wartz-retires-38-years-force-article-1.425072

Here's hoping that this helps jog someone's memory.

The first NY Post story sheds some light on the basics of the story, as well as the way in which suspicions of the family--well-founded or otherwise--began:

A 13-year-old Bronx girl described by neighbors as sweet and studious was strangled and tossed into a Co-op City Dumpster, police said yesterday.

Minerliz Soriano disappeared last Wednesday after leaving IS 135 on Wallace Avenue at 2:20 p.m., police said.

She didn’t pick up her younger sister, Nadia, as usual and never returned home to the apartment on Pelham Parkway South in the Morris Park section, where she lived with her mom and stepfather, police said.

That night, the seventh-grader’s mother, Minerva Cepeda, called police, who put up posters and searched the neighborhood without success.

Then, on Sunday, a homeless man found the girl’s body wrapped inside plastic garbage bags in a Dumpster behind the Hollywood Video Store on Bartow Avenue in Co-op City.

The 5-foot-4, 100-pound teen was fully clothed, but her red Jantsen ski jacket and black Jantsen knapsack were missing, cops said.

Police said yesterday they had identified the girl as Minerliz and that an autopsy showed she was strangled.

“She did a lot of work at home for her parents, a lot of chores, it was a lot of responsibility for a little girl,” said neighbor Judy Vincenty.

“She went shopping, she did the laundry, she took care of her little sister.

“I felt sorry for her because she was always doing so much work.

“At 9 in the morning, she was always on her bicycle, going on an errand to the store. Late at night, she was going off to the 24-hour store. You don’t send a kid out late at night like that.”

Neighbor Roger Colon said, “She was very mature for a 13-year-old. She did a lot of things,” such as folding laundry and caring for her sister.

Colon said the stepdad, a religious man he knows only as Ray, told him after the girl disappeared that “She’s in God’s hands.”

After her body was found, the stepdad told Colon: “Something bad happened.”

At IS 135, principal Carol Valentino said Soriano got top grades in all her classes – although she often missed school.

“She was a great kid, she was popular, she was a very good student. Everybody loved her. The entire school is devastated,” Valentino said.

I'm curious if a Newspapers.com subscription will help dig up more public information on this case, but this happened at a time when the transition from print to online was occurring and archives for this period aren't quite as well-developed yet as archives from a few years before and after. This is an article regarding the funeral and the absence of her mother & stepfather from the service. Other articles at the time noted their devastation at the loss of their daughter, which could be a totally plausible explanation here. Again, it'd be really helpful to get this case some more visibility, if for no other reason than to bring new information to light & prompt NYPD to re-examine the evidence on hand.


MOM SKIPS SLAIN TEEN'S BURIAL - 5 March 1999 - by Adam Miller

Mourners filled the pews of a Brooklyn church yesterday to bid farewell to Minerliz Soriano, the 13-year-old girl who was savagely strangled and tossed in a Bronx Dumpster.

”I’m in such a state of shock. My heart is in so much pain. The person who killed my daughter must be caught and brought to justice,” said Luis Soriano, 36, wiping back tears.

”I want answers to who killed my Minerliz. I am devastated beyond words. She was such a beautiful girl,” a distraught Soriano said of the bright-eyed, bookish teen who vanished without a trace Feb. 24 after she left school at IS 135 in The Bronx.

The seventh-grader’s body was found last Sunday wrapped in plastic garbage bags behind a Hollywood Video store in Co-Op City.

Absent from the funeral at Our Lady of Good Counsel in Bedford-Stuyvesant was Minerva Cepeda, Minerliz’s mother.

”There’s something very wrong with her mother not being at the funeral. We just don’t understand. It’s just so horrible, and she didn’t make the wake either,” Soriano said as his slain daughter’s coffin was placed into a hearse.

The teen’s aunt, Amelia Soriano, said she was ”deeply upset” by Cepeda’s failure to attend.

”It just makes our pain that much worse. We don’t know why she didn’t show up.

”I’m going to miss Minerliz so much. She was very special, a really great kid. She was always a joy to be around. This is so hard to take,” added the 49-year-old woman, who clutched a cross.

Another no-show was Minerliz’s stepfather, Ray Robles.

The teen, a bubbly, straight-A student who loved playing hopscotch and volleyball with her friends, was buried at Forest Green Park cemetery in Marlboro, N.J.

For those of you with a Newspaper.com subscription, this is the original Daily News story of her discovery with a photo: Daily News from New York, New York on March 3, 1999 · 117

Attached below is a clipping via Newspapers.com of a March 16, 1999 column in the Daily News from Bob Kappstatter. This clipping contains a photo of Minerliz--the only one I've been able to find online. I will continue to scour for any other information available in archives. If anyone has any suggestions as to the best means of getting this case into the hands of a cold case site that could get more eyeballs on this awful tragedy, please feel free to reply or submit it yourself. Thanks!

An edited clip is below:

Yesterday was the 20th anniversary of Minerliz's disappearance. She is not forgotten, but for such a tragic & disturbing case, there is very little indication that there's a push afoot to take a second look at this. Here's hoping that NYPD continues to look at this and find a way to bring her killer to justice.

Her case sounds eerily similar to that of Chanel Petro-Nixon, murdered in 2006 suffered an almost identical fate.

I know at one point they investigated her killer as a possible serial killer, however if my math is correct (and its not uncommon for it not to be) her killer wouldve been 12 at the time of Minerliz's murder.

Kell1 said:

Her case sounds eerily similar to that of Chanel Petro-Nixon, murdered in 2006 suffered an almost identical fate.

I know at one point they investigated her killer as a possible serial killer, however if my math is correct (and its not uncommon for it not to be) her killer wouldve been 12 at the time of Minerliz's murder.

Click to expand...

The avenue that was pursued by NYPD was that this was a family-related killing due to a lack of evidence of sexual assault found at the time & questions about the family dynamic. The longer this goes on without resolution, the more it seems to me that perhaps other avenues of inquiry may be worth looking at here. Forensics are considerably more advanced than they were 20 years ago, but who knows if there's anything even worth testing 20 years down the line. Given how thinly stretched NYPD is w/r/t investigating cold cases, it seems that there'd have to be a serious push from the public or elsewhere to make something happen.

Tatsachen said:

The avenue that was pursued by NYPD was that this was a family-related killing due to a lack of evidence of sexual assault found at the time & questions about the family dynamic. The longer this goes on without resolution, the more it seems to me that perhaps other avenues of inquiry may be worth looking at here. Forensics are considerably more advanced than they were 20 years ago, but who knows if there's anything even worth testing 20 years down the line. Given how thinly stretched NYPD is w/r/t investigating cold cases, it seems that there'd have to be a serious push from the public or elsewhere to make something happen.

Click to expand...

The articles are very vague, but I can tell you 1st hand in many cases, the killer has already been interviewed by police, theres just not enough to tie the specific individual to the crime at that specific time

You are correct, with advances in forensic science, there may be a new discovery down the road, weve already witnessed what can be done with DNA /geneology sites, who knows what is just around the corner .

Public influence has power, but there has to be enough of it

Minerliz was found 20 years ago today--may she rest in peace, and may her killer(s) be brought to account.

Thinking out loud.....

Why take the jacket, and the backpack? Fear of DNA evidence? And what version of DNA? Touch? Semen? And I realize there was no evidence (reported) about any possible direct sexual assault, but why else take the jacket?

What other theories did LE possibly come up with? And were they able to follow up on all of them? Most of them?

If the perpetrator killed this child with a choke-hold, would there possibly be trace DNA from the clothing that was worn?

May this family someday find peace. And may the universe remember Minerliz was here. However brief her time.

Minny was my best friend and classmate we walked Home from school together I lived couple blocks from the school but she had 2 take public transportation to go home .... I’m 34 now and this still haunts me how someone could do such a thing to my friend even as a kid I have strong beliefs that is was a family member who did this to my friend week or so before disappearing she was having issue with being sexually assaulted by a family member but me being 13 year at the time weren’t giving 2 much details ..... neither the mother or step father showed up for the wake and the funeral I was told that they lawyered up and move outta the state .... if there is anyway to get hands on the case files etc this needs to be giving a second and 3rd look and be bought to the light .... desmondjchislom@gmail.com

can i please provide some insight on this matter. i don't know how much I believe in this site or any site.
BUT i know that her disappearance and case has bugged me for years.
Minerlize and I went to school together. Our last class was gym just the day before she went missing. Gym was our last class because she was excused early. she was excused early because she was extremely upset with a letter she found in her book bag. a Letter stating that "shed be sorry". Im sure there was more to it but that is all she read aloud.
She quietly mentioned it was from her step dad!!
the rest of us being children at the time didnt know how to react. but after her dissapearance, i will state that a number of us from her gym class mentioned this same information to the school board and cops.

seems everything was forgotten because a year, in the same school, my friend ishmeal santos also was murdered. his murder became more of a focus because it was a family slain.

i want minerliz case reopened

besides myself there may be one teacher that can provide insight that i am still in touch with since that "era". mrs eickler. she was both minerliz and i teachers during that year she was murdered.

if you are certain about persuing this please email me at mdc019860 @aol.com , again this is a situation that has bugged me for years.

.... i know that a gentleman was apparently arrested for minerlize murder but that was because he was guilty for other sexual assults in the area. so minerliz dealth was also pinned on him.

not knowing then what i know now and thinking it through as an adult, i really do think that the murder is still out there and i have my suspision on who.

please contact me at mdc019860@aol.com

Please call the precinct our family needs this case to be solved, flood the precinct with calls to reopen the case. Call the 45 precinct until they give us closure.

Westchester County man charged in 1999 murder of 13-year-old girl

Joseph Martinez, 69, of New Rochelle, was charged Monday with two counts of second-degree murder in the February 1999 slaying of 13-year-old Minerliz Soriano...Police said a press conference on the case will be held on Tuesday.

<snip> The girl’s vicious slaying remained a cold case until detectives used DNA evidence to link her disappearance to Martinez, who lived in the same building as her family, sources said.

Westchester County man charged in 1999 murder of 13-year-old girl

Hope his DNA is compared to a whole number of crimes, imo, speculation.
https://nypost.com/2021/11/29/westchester-county-man-charged-in-1999-murder-of-13-year-old-girl/
Joseph Martinez is walked from the 49th Precinct in the Bronx, Monday, Nov. 29, 2021.
Ellis Kaplan

Exclusive: A 13-year-old girl's murder over two decades ago haunted NYPD detectives. Here's how they finally cracked open the cold case - KTVZ


Joseph Martinez, now 49, was arraigned Tuesday on two charges of second-degree murder after a grand jury returned an indictment in the case. Martinez pleaded not guilty and is being held without bail until his next court date in March.

“He has no criminal history in his entire 49 years,” his court-appointed attorney Troy Smith told CNN. “This is shocking to say the least and he maintains his innocence

dotr said:

Hope his DNA is compared to a whole number of crimes, imo, speculation.
https://nypost.com/2021/11/29/westchester-county-man-charged-in-1999-murder-of-13-year-old-girl/
Joseph Martinez is walked from the 49th Precinct in the Bronx, Monday, Nov. 29, 2021.
Ellis Kaplan

Click to expand...

The detail I caught in a CNN piece where he gave tours to people interested in astronomy...and mentioned Minerliz shared the same interest...chilling. He had access to so many people who obviously saw him as a friendly and benign person.