Killed in the Desert: The Murder of Carly Martinez
Her killers tried to blame each other, but the truth about what they did finally emerged.
It should have been the happiest time of Carly Martinez’s young life. Hailing from El Paso in Texas, the 18-year-old was a student at New Mexico State University and enjoying her first taste of independence at the campus in Las Cruces.
She had just returned to college after winter break in January 1998, and would undoubtedly have been getting back into the swing of student life following the holidays during those first few days of the semester.
However, little did she know that someone she knew as a casual acquaintance had set his sights on her — and that it would cost Carly her life.
An evening out
It was the evening of January 14th 1998, and Carly had agreed to go to the Las Cruces skating rink with a guy named Jesse Avalos Jr. He wasn’t a student at NMSU, but the two knew each other by sight from the college campus computer lab where they would both go online, the Albuquerque Tribune reported.
In fact, Avalos had asked Carly out a few times and joked that he wasn’t an axe murderer, resulting in her eventually being persuaded to an evening out with him. Avalos picked Carly…
