Alleged California-based hit man pleads guilty to murder in Alabama

An alleged hit man charged in 11 killings in California and Florida pleaded guilty to murder in Alabama on Thursday.

Jose Manuel Martinez, a 52-year-old self-described enforcer for a Mexican drug cartel, pleaded guilty to shooting Jose Ruiz in Lawrence County, Ala., in March 2013. He was sentenced to 50 years in prison.

In a signed confession, Martinez said he killed Ruiz because Ruiz made statements in January 2013 about Martinez’s adult daughter that he took offense to, according to the Lawrence County district attorney’s office. He returned in March to kill Ruiz.

“I knew I wanted to kill him, but decided to wait because I knew my DNA was in the truck,” Martinez wrote in the confession.

He was arrested at a border crossing last year in Arizona in connection with the 2013 Alabama killing.

Martinez was charged in April with killing nine people in California, eight of them in the Central Valley and one in Santa Barbara County. The victims were found by ranchers in fields and alongside country roads, according to the Tulare County district attorney’s office.

He is also charged with murder in the death of two people in Florida, according to prosecutors.

Martinez was described as being “pretty forthright” after his arrest, allegedly telling investigators in Alabama that he had been working as an enforcer for a drug cartel since he was 16. Authorities said he told investigators he killed more than 30 people.

“In essence, he told them he had had a long life of it and now he was ready to fess up,” Errek Jett, the Lawrence County district attorney, told the Los Angeles Times.

Martinez had lived in Richgrove, Calif., at least part time, for years.

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