The body of 13-year-old Minerlys Soriano was found dumped in a trash bin behind a Bronx video store in March 1999, her best friend’s ring still clutched in her hand, a silent testament to a bond that would outlast her killer’s 20-year evasion of justice. For decades, the case of the middle school girl who vanished from her own apartment lobby remained a haunting cold file, a ghost in the archives of New York City’s unsolved homicides. But on a frigid February afternoon in 2026, a jury delivered a verdict that shattered the silence: Joseph Martinez, the amateur astronomer known as “Jupiter Joe,” was found guilty of murdering Minerlys, a crime solved not by a witness or a confession, but by a single strand of DNA that had waited a quarter of a century to speak.
The nightmare began on February 24, 1999, a day that started with the ordinary rhythms of friendship. Kimberly Ortiz and Minerlys Soriano, both 13, were inseparable. They shared dreams of poetry, futures as bridesmaids, and matching best friend rings bought from a corner store.
That afternoon, Minerlys made a small decision that would prove fatal. She skipped the after-school reading program, telling Kimberly she was heading home. “I gave her a hug and she left,” Kimberly recalled, her voice breaking.
“That was the last time I seen her.”
Minerlys never made it inside her apartment. A latchkey kid, she often waited in the lobby for her sister to arrive with the key. That day, she vanished.
Her mother reported her missing that night. Police canvassed the Pelham Parkway neighborhood, retracing her mile-and-a-half walk home, but found no witnesses. “We could not find one person who would put her in front of that building that day,” a detective later said.
For four days, hope flickered. Then, a phone call shattered it. “They found Mini,” Kimberly’s mother said.
“She’s dead.”
Minerlys’s body was discovered in a dumpster behind a video store in Baychester Plaza, nearly two miles from her home. The cause of death was asphyxiation by strangulation. At the crime scene, investigators found a crucial piece of evidence: semen on the girl’s clothing.
But the DNA profile yielded no matches in any criminal database. The killer had no prior record, and the case went cold.
For 12 years, the file gathered dust. Then, in 2011, Detective Malcolm Reiman took over. He focused on the building where Minerlys lived, theorizing she was abducted from the lobby.
She had been selling candy door-to-door, knocking on every door. Reiman compiled a list of 43 men in the building capable of the crime. He pushed for a new tool: familial DNA testing, which searches for partial matches in criminal databases to identify relatives of an unknown suspect.
It had never been used in New York City. “Every 30 days, I sent the request,” Reiman said. After six months of persistence, the NYPD approved it.
In 2020, the technique paid off. A partial match led to a man with five sons. One of them, Joseph Martinez, had lived in Minerlys’s building in 1999.
Martinez, then 49, was a beloved figure in the Bronx. Known as “Jupiter Joe,” he set up telescopes on sidewalks and subway platforms, sharing his passion for astronomy with children. He had even appeared on local news.
But detectives needed his DNA to confirm the match.
They set up a sting. An undercover FBI agent posed as a mother wanting to book an astronomy event. Martinez agreed to meet at a diner.
He drank a soda and a water through straws, then left. The straws were recovered. The DNA was a perfect match.
“We knew we had our guy,” Reiman said. Martinez was arrested in 2021, charged with murder and sexual 𝓪𝓫𝓾𝓼𝓮.
At trial, Martinez’s attorney argued that the DNA could have come from saliva, not semen, and that the state failed to confirm it under a microscope. “It is 100% impossible to give an opinion today to determine whether the stain was semen or any other bodily fluid,” the defense claimed. But prosecutors countered with a devastating question: “Give me a valid reason why a 27-year-old man’s semen is on the sweatshirt of a 13-year-old girl.”
The jury deliberated for days. In the fall of 2025, they returned a verdict: guilty on all counts.
In March 2026, Kimberly Ortiz stood before the court to speak for her friend. “Minnie was more than just a victim,” she said. “She was a daughter, a friend, and a beautiful soul who deserved a full life.”
The judge sentenced Martinez to 25 years to life on each count, to be served concurrently. “The people spoke,” Reiman said after the sentencing. “This is a day for Minerlys.”
The case marked the first successful use of familial DNA in New York City history. “This little girl will help to create future resolutions for nightmare homicides that otherwise would not have been solved,” Reiman said. But for Kimberly, the victory is bittersweet.
“My friend has been in the ground for 27 years,” she said. “He got to live life for 21 years. He got married.
He had kids. And my friend was buried in the ground.”
Minerlys Soriano is remembered not as a victim, but as a girl who dreamed of being a poet, who loved reading, who wanted to be an astronaut. Her best friend’s ring, found in her hand at the dumpster, remains a symbol of a bond that justice finally honored. The DNA has spoken.
But it cannot bring back a young girl who was loved by so many.
