A killer is finally behind bars after being on the run for twenty years. Martin Isaac Tellez, 45, shot and killed a convince store owner, after robbing him. Tellez took off with $160,000 and remained at large for two decades.
Back in 2002, detective Kent Hubbard responded to a possible homicide at a gas station. The victim was Subir Chatterjee, who was pronounced dead from a gun-shot wound.
Hubbard worked the case, tracking leads, witnesses until the case turned cold. For fifteen years, the detective never gave up believing he can solve the murder. Then Hubbard heard California cops solved a cold case using genealogy DNA. He contacted Parabon Nanolabs, the genealogy lab specializing in advance forensic tools. The lab was able to connect three distant relatives of Tellez to the murder.
In 2019, Hubbard used ‘throw away DNA’ from a fork and a coffee cup left behind by Tellez to tie him directly to Chatterjee’s murder.
“Martin Tellez lived more than 20 years of his life with his family and his loved ones around him. Meanwhile, members of the Chatterjee family were left with an empty chair and aching hearts, believing they might never know who was responsible,” Assistant District Attorney Donna Hansen said. “Detective Kent Hubbard never gave up on this case, and it was my privilege to be able to assist him in bringing justice and closure to Subir’s family.”
After the arrest, Tellez made bond and skipped town. He fled to Mexico, after cutting his GPS court ordered monitor. A join task force between U.S. Marshalls and Homeland Security eventually tracked down Tellez and convinced him to return to the U.S. to stand trial.
Tellez was sentenced to sixty years in prison after he pleaded guilty to murdering Chatterjee.
