For more than two decades, the murder of 13-year-old
Minerliz Soriano remained one of the Bronx’s most painful cold cases. Her
killer had left behind a crucial piece of evidence, but the technology available
in 1999 could not identify him. Years passed. Leads faded. Her family and
closest friend were left with questions that seemed destined to remain
unanswered.
Then investigators tried something different.
A groundbreaking familial DNA investigation
eventually led detectives to a man whose public image appeared almost
impossible to reconcile with the crime: an amateur astronomer known around the
Bronx as “Jupiter Joe,” who regularly invited children and curious passersby to
look through his telescope.
The case would become a landmark in forensic DNA
testing and criminal investigations in New York City. But behind the scientific
breakthrough was a much more personal story: a friendship between two
13-year-old girls, a final goodbye that one survivor would replay for years,
and a young life remembered for its humor, poetry and dreams of the stars.
A Friendship That Ended With One
Final Goodbye
February 24, 1999, began like an ordinary school day
for Minerliz Soriano and her best friend, Kimberly Ortiz. Both girls were 13,
lived in the Bronx and shared the kind of friendship that made even routine
afternoons memorable.
They loved books and poetry, joked constantly and
imagined what their adult lives might look like. They even bought matching
best-friend rings at a neighborhood corner store, a small symbol of a bond they
believed would last for years.
“She was very funny, very goofy,” Ortiz later
remembered.
The girls attended an after-school reading program,
where their conversations sometimes became so lively that staff members had to
remind them to settle down. When the program ended, they usually walked home
together along Pelham Parkway.
Ortiz always walked Minerliz to her apartment first.
Her friend disliked being alone on the journey, so making sure she reached home
safely had become part of their routine.
But that afternoon, something changed.
Minerliz decided not to attend the reading program.
Ortiz encouraged her to stay, but eventually accepted her decision. The two
friends hugged goodbye, apparently expecting to see each other again the next
day.
Instead, it became their final farewell.
Years later, Ortiz would describe the memory with
heartbreaking simplicity: she continued to replay that moment, wondering
whether anything she said or did could have changed what happened.
The Discovery That Turned a
Missing-Person Search Into a Murder Investigation
When Minerliz failed to return home, her family
became increasingly worried. Her mother and stepfather reported her missing,
and police began searching the neighborhood.
Detectives retraced the route she normally walked,
questioned residents and visited apartment buildings along the way. Yet
investigators struggled to establish exactly where she had gone after
separating from Ortiz.
The neighborhood did not provide the answers they
needed. There were few surveillance cameras, and no reliable witness emerged
who could explain what had happened to the missing teenager.
Then came the devastating discovery.
Minerliz's body was found in a dumpster behind a
video store at Baychester Plaza, near Co-op City, almost two miles from her
home. The 13-year-old had been strangled.
For her family and friends, the news was almost
impossible to comprehend. A girl who had been laughing with her best friend
only days earlier was now the victim of a homicide investigation.
Ortiz's mother received the call informing the family
that Minerliz had been found. She then had to deliver the news to her daughter.
Investigators later showed Ortiz photographs to help
confirm the clothing Minerliz had been wearing. One detail remained especially
painful: her friend's hand was clutching the matching ring Ortiz had given her.
Minerliz had died still holding a reminder of their
friendship.
The ring became a devastating symbol of the life that
had been interrupted and the questions that would follow.
The DNA Evidence That Could Not
Identify a Killer
Although detectives had recovered important physical
evidence, the investigation faced a major obstacle.
Biological material was found on Minerliz's clothing.
Investigators developed a DNA
profile and compared it with available criminal databases,
hoping to identify a match.
But there was no hit.
In 1999, forensic DNA technology was already helping
investigators solve serious crimes, but the databases were much smaller than
they are today. They largely contained profiles from people whose genetic
information had entered the criminal justice system.
If the person responsible had never been arrested or
had no profile in the system, a database search might produce nothing.
That was the problem confronting detectives.
The evidence had not disappeared. The DNA profile had
not become useless. But the available technology could not connect it to a
named individual.
Police continued with traditional investigative work.
Detectives revisited neighborhoods, distributed flyers and appealed for
information. They tried to keep Minerliz's disappearance and murder in the
public eye.
Eventually, however, the number of new leads
diminished.
The investigation became a cold case, leaving
Minerliz's loved ones waiting for an answer that seemed increasingly difficult
to find.
A New Detective Reopens the
Investigation
In 2011, Detective Malcolm Ryman, who worked on
sexual predator and serial-killer investigations for Bronx homicide, took a
fresh look at the case.
Rather than treating the old evidence as a dead end,
he wanted to understand whether modern laboratory methods could reveal
something that investigators in 1999 had been unable to discover.
He arranged for the evidence to be relocated and the
DNA examined again.
The results still did not identify a suspect.
But Ryman did not abandon the investigation.
He returned to the details of Minerliz's everyday
life, studying her home environment, school connections and routines. His
approach was to reconstruct the circumstances in which she might have
encountered the person responsible.
Minerliz had been a latchkey child who sometimes
waited in her apartment building's lobby for someone to let her inside. She
also sold candy door to door within the building.
That meant investigators needed to look beyond
strangers who might have encountered her on the street. Someone living in or
regularly visiting the building could have known her routines.
Ryman compiled a list of 43 males who had lived in
the building in 1999 and were considered possible candidates for further
investigation.
The list gave detectives a more focused starting
point, but they still needed a way to connect the unidentified DNA to a
particular person.
That was when an advanced forensic technique became
central to the case.
The Familial DNA Technique That
Changed Everything
Ryman wanted investigators to consider familial DNA searching,
a method that looks for a partial genetic relationship between an unknown DNA
profile and someone already represented in a database.
Unlike a conventional DNA match, which seeks to
identify the person whose DNA was recovered, a familial search can point
investigators toward a close biological relative.
The distinction is important.
A partial genetic relationship does not establish
that a relative committed a crime. Instead, it can provide a new investigative
lead. Detectives must then use other evidence and further testing to determine
whether a particular family member could be responsible.
For a case like Minerliz's, that possibility was
significant.
If the unknown DNA belonged to someone whose profile
was not in a criminal database, a close relative might still be represented
there. A partial match could help investigators narrow the search to a family
and begin examining its members.
According to the account of the investigation, Ryman
repeatedly pressed the laboratory to consider the technique. He continued
submitting requests over several months before the necessary approval was
obtained.
The process required patience, cooperation and
careful interpretation. Familial DNA searching was not a shortcut that
automatically named a killer. It was a tool that could help investigators find
a direction they had not previously been able to pursue.
In 2020, that direction finally emerged.
The DNA Search Leads Investigators
to a Family With Five Sons
The familial search identified a man whose DNA
profile was already in the system because of an unrelated criminal matter.
Investigators determined that he was related to the person whose DNA had been
recovered during the Minerliz investigation.
That discovery gave detectives a new family to
examine.
The relative had five sons. Two were too young to
have been responsible for the 1999 crime. Of the remaining three, one had lived
in Minerliz's apartment building at the time.
His name was Joseph Martinez.
For investigators, the connection was significant.
Martinez was now a person they needed to investigate, but a familial DNA lead
alone was not enough to establish guilt.
They needed a direct DNA comparison.
They also needed to obtain that sample without
alerting him prematurely to the direction of the investigation.
The Man Known as “Jupiter Joe”
To many people in the Bronx, Joseph Martinez was not
primarily known as a potential suspect in a decades-old murder investigation.
He was known as “Jupiter Joe.”
Martinez had developed a public identity as an
amateur astronomer who brought telescopes into public spaces. He set up
equipment on sidewalks and in subway stations, inviting passersby to look at
planets, stars and other celestial objects.
Children and families were among the people he
attracted.
He shared videos online, appeared in television
coverage and reportedly secured a sponsorship through his astronomy-related
activities.
The contrast between that public image and the
allegations now being investigated was striking.
But detectives were not interested in judging a
person by his reputation. They needed evidence that could establish whether
Martinez's DNA matched the material recovered from Minerliz's clothing.
There was also an unexpected connection between the
case and astronomy itself.
Investigators reviewing Minerliz's old notebooks
found that she had written about astronomy, astrology and rockets. She had
dreamed of becoming an astronaut.
Her best friend remembered that Minerliz's interests
had begun shifting from poetry toward science.
That shared subject matter raised questions about
whether the teenager might have encountered Martinez through his public
astronomy activities. However, the available account does not establish that
the two ever met.
The important investigative link was not a confirmed
meeting or a shared hobby. It was the DNA evidence and the fact that Martinez
had lived in her building.
The Diner Meeting That Produced
the Crucial DNA Sample
Investigators needed a direct sample from Martinez,
but they did not want to reveal that he was under investigation.
According to the account of the case, an undercover
FBI agent posed as a mother interested in arranging an astronomy-related
appearance for her daughter.
Martinez agreed to meet the supposed client at a
diner.
After the meeting, he drank a soda and water through
straws before leaving. Investigators recovered the discarded straws and
arranged for the material to be examined.
The resulting DNA comparison provided the direct
evidence detectives had been seeking.
The profile from the sample matched the DNA recovered
during the investigation into Minerliz's murder.
For Ryman, who had retired three years earlier, the
development was deeply significant. He returned to the precinct when Martinez
was interviewed.
The investigation that had begun more than two
decades earlier now had a named suspect supported by a direct forensic
comparison.
In 2021, Martinez, then 49, was charged in connection
with Minerliz's sexual abuse and murder.
He requested a lawyer when arrested. The case would
now move from the investigative stage into the courtroom, where prosecutors
would have to prove the charges and the defense would have an opportunity to
challenge the evidence.
The Courtroom Battle Over What the
DNA Actually Proved
The DNA match was central to the prosecution's case,
but the defense challenged how the biological evidence should be interpreted.
Martinez's attorney, Troy Smith, did not dispute that
the DNA profile belonged to his client. Instead, the defense focused on what
could and could not be established about the material found on the clothing.
Smith questioned whether investigators had
conclusively demonstrated that the stain was semen.
He argued that a marker used to indicate the possible
presence of semen could also appear in other bodily fluids, including saliva.
He also questioned the absence of a microscopic examination that, in his view,
would have provided additional confirmation.
The defense's broader argument was that identifying a
person's DNA on an item of clothing did not, by itself, establish every element
of the crime.
That distinction mattered because a criminal trial
requires more than a compelling investigative theory. Prosecutors must
establish guilt beyond a reasonable doubt using evidence that can withstand
scrutiny.
The prosecution, meanwhile, argued that the DNA
evidence was powerful and that the circumstances surrounding the discovery of
the biological material supported its case.
The courtroom dispute placed forensic DNA evidence,
laboratory interpretation and the limits of scientific conclusions at the
center of a deeply emotional murder trial.
For Minerliz's loved ones, however, the legal
arguments could not erase the most important fact: a 13-year-old girl had been
killed, and her family had waited decades for a verdict.
A Trial More Than 26 Years After
the Murder
The trial opened in the fall of 2025.
By then, more than a quarter-century had passed since
Minerliz disappeared. Her classmates had grown older, her neighborhood had
changed and the people who once searched for her had spent years living with
the absence of an answer.
But the emotional impact remained.
Kimberly Ortiz carried the memory of their final
goodbye into the courtroom. She had spent years thinking about the afternoon
when Minerliz decided to skip the reading program.
She also remembered the way investigators had shown
her the photographs and the ring her friend had been holding.
For Ortiz, the question was not simply who had
committed the crime. It was how anyone could have treated a young girl with
such cruelty.
“I still don't know why my friend was thrown in a
dumpster like she was trash,” she said.
The jury heard the evidence and considered the competing
arguments.
After several days of deliberation, jurors found
Martinez guilty on all counts.
The verdict brought a legal conclusion to a case that
had remained unresolved for decades. It also represented a major development in
the use of familial
DNA technology in New York City criminal investigations.
But a guilty verdict could not return Minerliz to the
people who loved her.
The Sentence and the Words Her
Best Friend Had Waited to Say
In March 2026, Ortiz had the opportunity to address
the court during sentencing.
Her statement was about more than the crime scene,
the investigation or the defendant. It was about restoring the dignity of a
girl whose life had been reduced to a headline for far too long.
“She was not a piece of trash,” Ortiz told the court.
“Her life mattered.”
The judge imposed sentences of 25 years to life on
each count, to be served concurrently.
For investigators who had spent years pursuing the
case, the outcome represented the culmination of a long effort involving
traditional detective work, modern laboratory analysis and a controversial but
potentially powerful investigative method.
Ryman viewed the verdict as a vindication of the
decision to keep searching for new ways to examine old evidence.
He also saw the case as an important example of how familial DNA searching
could help investigators identify leads when conventional database searches
produced no match.
According to the account of the case, it marked the
first time New York City used the technique to identify and convict a suspect
in this way.
That does not mean familial DNA searching will solve
every cold case. Its use depends on the quality of the available evidence, the
presence of a suitable relative's profile in a database, legal safeguards and
the investigative work required to confirm a lead.
But Minerliz's case demonstrated how a technique that
was once unavailable to investigators could create a new path toward an answer.
The Legacy of a Girl Who Dreamed
About the Stars
The story of Minerliz Soriano is ultimately about
much more than a forensic breakthrough.
It is about a 13-year-old who loved reading, wrote
about her future and shared private jokes with her closest friend. It is about
matching rings, after-school afternoons and conversations about the lives they
imagined they would one day lead.
She was not simply a name in a police file or the
subject of a decades-old unsolved
murder case.
She was a daughter, a friend and a young person with
ambitions that had barely begun to take shape.
Her interest in astronomy makes the contrast
especially painful. The girl who dreamed of exploring the universe never got
the chance to grow up and pursue those ambitions.
The investigation eventually reached a conclusion
through DNA science, but Ortiz has explained that the verdict did not bring the
kind of peace people might expect. Minerliz had been gone for 27 years. The
years lost to her family and friends could never be restored.
For Ortiz, the most important thing is that people
remember the person behind the tragedy.
A funny, sometimes goofy teenager who loved books and
poetry. A girl who imagined her future with her best friend. A child whose life
mattered.
The nickname “Jupiter Joe” may have drawn public
attention to the unusual contrast at the center of the investigation. Yet the
lasting significance of the case belongs to Minerliz.
Her murder showed how DNA technology, when combined with
persistent detective work and careful legal scrutiny, can reopen investigations
that once seemed impossible to solve.
But the science is only one part of the story.
The reason the case mattered was a 13-year-old girl
who deserved to grow up—and a best friend who refused to let the world forget
her.
Editorial note: This article is based on the case details provided. For publication, verify the trial verdict, sentencing details, quotations, names and the claim about New York City's first use of familial DNA against original court records or reliable reporting. Allegations and evidence should be distinguished from the jury's findings.
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