Detective daughter finds father’s suspected killer 27 years later

A daughter who refused to give up on finding her father’s killer finally is finding justice, 27 years later.

Justo Santos, 43, made a first appearance in a Miami-Dade County court in Florida this week for the 1986 killing of Jose “George” Martinez. He was brought to justice after Martinez’s daughter, Joselyn Martinez, helped track down his whereabouts using Internet searches. She was only 9 years old when her father was gunned down outside the family’s New York restaurant in 1986, and she has spent more than two decades trying to locate the suspect, who was hiding in Florida.

“The idea of being able to look up a person with Facebook and Myspace — Myspace way back when it started — that kind of gave me an idea like, ’Well, I can actually look up someone with this background check stuff,’” Ms. Martinez said after discovering the suspect was living in Miami, NBC reported.

She turned the information over to detectives in the Bronx borough of New York, where the crime occurred, and they pursued Mr. Santos’ apprehension, NBC reported.

Mr. Santos is expected to be sent back to New York within the next couple weeks to face murder charges.

New York Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly applauded Ms. Martinez’s efforts and credited her largely for solving the case, which detectives had closed, NBC reported.