Deadly Deception: The Senseless Murder of Leticia Martinez
Chance Encounter with Evil
Single mother Leticia Martinez, known affectionately as “Leti,” was a hard worker who put everything she had into helping her twenty-four-year-old son Patrick live up to his full potential. Her only child, who did the best he could under a cloud of autism, Asperger’s and OCD, was the light of her life.
Though she never complained about the tremendous responsibilities she carried, Leticia sometimes longed to get away from it all, if only for a few hours. On a warm spring evening in 2023, the fifty-eight-year-old former model and current cafe owner, finally got her wish. Sadly, the special occasion she had anticipated would turn out to be a woman’s worst nightmare.
The horrifying events to come were set in motion a few days prior when Leticia and a friend decided to have lunch at a Costco in Seattle, Washington. While there, she spotted a man decked out head to toe in Seattle Mariners regalia. A diehard baseball fan who followed the home team religiously, she made a point of striking up a conversation with the patron who obviously shared her love of the game.
Upon learning that the man, who introduced himself as Brett Gitchel, didn’t have enough money to pay for his lunch, Leticia graciously offered to pick up the tab.
The two ended up hitting it off so well that Leticia, who had been gifted tickets to the upcoming home game on Friday, March 31, invited forty-six-year-old Gitchel to be her guest. Jumping at the chance, he had readily agreed. After confirming the date, the fast friends had said their goodbyes and gone their separate ways.
The Monster Behind the Mask
As far as anyone knows, the date night went smoothly — at least initially. At around 7:00 p.m., Leticia had texted a selfie of her and Gitchel to a friend. Anyone viewing the photo would have thought that the clearly happy couple were a match made in heaven. Unfortunately, it would soon become apparent that appearances can sometimes be deceiving.
After the game came to an end, stadium security cameras captured images of the pair walking toward the parking area. Since they had arrived in separate vehicles, it was presumed that they parted ways at the gate.
On Saturday morning, a friend checked her phone and saw that she had received a message from Leticia on the previous night letting her know that she was leaving with an old beau she had bumped into at the game. Curiously, no mention was made of Gitchel.
At 6:30 Saturday evening, the friend got another message from Leticia saying that she was fine and was babysitting for a mutual acquaintance. Moments later, the party she was supposedly sitting for received a text from Leticia’s phone cancelling the arrangement.
Throughout the day, Leticia’s brother Ricardo tried to reach her, but all of his attempts went straight to voicemail. Although he got several text messages from someone claiming to be her, he knew instinctively that something wasn’t right. The tone and content of the communications led him to believe that the sender was someone pretending to be his sister.
On April 2, at around 2:00 a.m., Leticia’s son Patrick was awakened by a knock on his bedroom door. When he opened his eyes, he saw a dark figure standing next to his bed. The stranger told him that his mother had been in an accident, and they needed to get to the hospital as soon as possible.
Without giving it a second thought, Patrick had followed the man outside and climbed into his car. After coming to a stop in a sparsely populated neighborhood some twenty minutes away, the driver had suddenly placed something over Patrick’s head in an attempt to cut off his air supply.
Standing over 6' tall and weighing in at well over 200 pounds, Patrick was no shrinking violet. Fighting back with all his might, he had managed to remove the object before he suffocated.
Determined to end the young man’s life, his attacker had then attempted to put him in a chokehold, but that too failed. Realizing that he was fighting for his life, Patrick had bitten, scratched and pummeled his assailant. At some point during the struggle, his head had been pressed against the steering wheel with enough force to engage the horn. Within a matter of seconds, lights were being switched on up and down the street as residence were jolted from sleep by the commotion.
Having momentarily bested his captor, Patrick jumped out of the car. As he stood at the side of the road in a daze, the man had sped away, tires squealing.
Unaware that 911 had already been notified about the disturbance, Patrick phoned for help. Although he couldn’t tell the dispatcher where he was, he recounted the harrowing events to the best of his ability.
When officers arrived around 4:00 a.m., they found a clearly shaken Patrick hiding behind some trees, fearful that his attacker would return at any minute. After being taken to the hospital to be treated for multiple cuts and abrasions, he was able to provide a vague description of the perpetrator. Though it had been dark, he recalled that the man was Caucasian, had facial hair and wore glasses.
At 6:39 a.m., the charred remains of a Honda CRV registered to Leticia Martinez were found in an area just off Seattle’s Beacon Hill. Investigators would determine that an accelerant had been used to set the car ablaze.
Six hours after the grim discovery was made, Ricardo reported his sister missing. Putting the burnt-out car, the mysterious text messages, and the attempt on Patrick’s life together, detectives went looking for Brett Gitchel, the last person known to have seen Leticia before she disappeared.
Oblivious to the fact that he was being sought by authorities, on April 4, Gitchel strolled into the same Costco where he met Leticia and helped himself to $10,000 worth of jewelry from an unattended showcase. Store security footage caught him in the act. True to form, he had been wearing his signature Mariners jacket during the commission of the robbery.
As he raced out of the parking lot, CCTV recorded the car’s license plate number. This information had helped detectives put a name to the culprit’s face.
The following day — brazen, stupid or both — Gitchel had returned to the store, perhaps to see what else he could pilfer. On this occasion, however, Costco security, tipped off by the Mariners jacket, recognized him as the jewel thief. An off-duty police officer who happened to be present at the time, sprang into action, placing Gitchel under arrest.
A Smile Hides the Truth
When Gitchel was brought in for processing on April 5, officers noted that his hands, arms, face and torso were covered in scratches, bruises and what appeared to be bite marks, all in varying degrees of healing. They also noticed that he was wearing an attendance bracelet from the baseball stadium on his wrist.
Even though he had been arrested on suspicion of theft, authorities knew that Gitchel was a person of interest in the disappearance of Leticia Martinez. When questioned as to her whereabouts, he denied everything. The way he told it, he had never even heard of her.
Letting that lie lay there for a bit, detectives asked if he had attended the Mariners game on the 31st. Gitchel replied that he had not. According to him, he hadn’t been to a game all season. As he looked his interrogators in the eye and told one whopper after another, he casually slipped the wristband into his pocket.
Tiring of his foolishness, detectives called him out on his fudging of the truth, telling him that they had seen the wristband. Rather than being rattled at having been found out, he shrugged it off, claiming that it belonged to a friend.
Circling back to a previous untruth, detectives showed Gitchel the selfie Leticia had sent her friend of the two of them together at the baseball game he said he didn’t attend.
Faced with irrefutable evidence, Gitchel relented. He admitted going to the game with Leticia but said that she left with another man. What happened to her after that was none of his concern.
At that point, realizing that he was in hot water, Gitchel lawyered up, effectively ending the interview.
Although Patrick couldn’t say positively that Gitchel was his attacker, security cameras placed him at the scene. Just before midnight, a man could be seen approaching Leticia’s front door. In the moments that followed, he enters the residence, where he remains for an extended period. The image left no doubt in anyone’s mind that Gitchel was the man who abducted Patrick with the intention of ending his young life.
After careful consideration, Gitchel was charged with first-degree attempted murder, first-degree kidnapping, second degree unlawful possession of a firearm, and arson.
On April 11, ten days after she was last seen alive, Leticia’s body was found in a wooded area of Renton, Washington, a mile from where Patrick had been picked up by patrol personnel after narrowly escaping the clutches of a kidnapper bent on murder.
In light of this new development, one count of murder in the second degree was added to the list of charges against Brett Gitchel. Robbery charges were also tacked on in relation to the jewelry theft.
The medical examiner would determine that Leticia had died as a result of manual strangulation. Judging by the state of decomposition, it was estimated that she had been killed on April 1.
When they looked into Gitchel’s background, detectives learned that he had been in trouble with the law on and off since 1994. At the time of his arrest in 2023, he had already been served with several orders of protection, including one from a former girlfriend and another from his own mother. Both women had asserted before a judge that he had threatened their lives. He had also previously been charged with seven unnamed felonies, nine gross misdemeanors and one lesser misdemeanor.
The evidence thus far collected in Leticia’s case includes surveillance footage taken in the early morning hours of April 2 showing Gitchel, or his exact double, purchasing a gas can, fuel and a lighter at a gas station located a half-mile from where the burnt remains of the victim’s car were discovered.
Chillingly, Gitchel had been captured on home security cameras prowling around a family’s backyard three days before Leticia was murdered. After trying the door to the main residence and finding it locked, he could be seen breaking into their storage shed and stealing a leaf blower and outdoor clock before fleeing into the night. What he would have done had he been able to gain access into the home, which was occupied at the time, is anyone’s guess.
Despite the mountain of evidence against him in Leticia’s case, as well as the kidnapping and attempted murder of her disabled son, Gitchel pleaded not guilty across the board. His tentative trial date has been set for June 12, 2024. In the meantime, he is refusing to cooperate with authorities, maintaining that there’s nothing to tell.
Picking up the Pieces
Patrick, who lost the mother he depended on above all others, now lives in Texas with his father. Having experienced one trauma after another over such a short period of time, including a violent attempt on his life, he is recovering in the loving arms of his remaining family.
Leticia’s beloved Cafe Rozella, in which she had poured her blood, sweat and tears, permanently shut its doors shortly after her death. With the woman whose vision had made the coffee shop a mainstay in the community no longer in the picture, the once joyful establishment became a sad reminder of what could have been.
Leticia was, by all accounts, a kind, generous soul who never met a stranger. Sadly, it was her innate goodness that had made her the perfect target for a habitual criminal who viewed nearly everyone he encountered as a potential victim.
After hearing his sob story of being down on his luck and unable to afford a hot dog, she had opened her heart — and her wallet — without hesitation. Thinking that he was simply a nice guy who needed a friend, she had even invited him to a major league baseball game. Instead of cementing the friendship she had envisioned, this charitable act had sealed her fate.
If there’s any lesson to be learned in this tragic story, it is that one can never know the true intentions of another. Behind Gitchel’s smile and easy-going manner, a killer with no regard for others was waiting to strike. Blinded by the misconception that people could be taken at face value, Leticia had been a sitting duck. A sad ending for one so kind.
Resources:
·kiro7.com
·people.com
·king5.com
·fox13seattle.com
·rentonreporter.com
·kcby.com
·strangeoutdoors.com
Images used under provisions of the Fair Use Act for purposes of reporting and education.