{"id":176618,"date":"2026-03-26T22:51:39","date_gmt":"2026-03-26T22:51:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/176618\/"},"modified":"2026-03-26T22:51:39","modified_gmt":"2026-03-26T22:51:39","slug":"man-convicted-in-murder-of-13-year-old-bronx-girl-finally-sentenced-nearly-3-decades-later","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/176618\/","title":{"rendered":"Man convicted in murder of 13-year-old Bronx girl finally sentenced nearly 3 decades later"},"content":{"rendered":"

The man convicted in the 1999 murder of a Bronx teenager was finally sentenced Thursday.<\/p>\n

A judge sentenced 54-year-old Joseph Martinez, also known as “Jupiter Joe,” to 25 years to life in prison for murdering 13-year-old Minerliz Soriano.<\/p>\n

“This was a girl who had a bright future, and it was stolen,” the judge said. \u00a0<\/p>\n

Arrest of “Jupiter Joe”<\/p>\n

In 1999, Soriano’s body was found in a dumpster behind a Bronx video store. Prosecutors said she had been sexually abused and strangled.<\/p>\n

Investigators spent two decades searching for the killer before arresting Martinez in 2021<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“A DNA sample from a semen stain on the victim’s sweatshirt was submitted, and it led to Martinez,” Bronx District Attorney Darcel Clark said.<\/p>\n

It became the first case in New York City solved using familial DNA<\/a>.<\/p>\n

A jury convicted Martinez in November 2025<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“I didn’t get enough time with her”<\/p>\n

In court Thursday, Martinez offered condolences while maintaining his innocence.<\/p>\n

“Even now facing sentencing, I still hold true to my convictions. That said, I wholeheartedly disagree with the jury’s verdict,” he said.<\/p>\n

Kimberly Ortiz, who testified, said she made a promise to never stop until she found the person who killed her best friend.<\/p>\n

“I just wanna say that today, we kept that promise,” Ortiz said. “My friend has been in the ground for 27 years. He got to live life.” <\/p>\n

She is choosing to remember Soriano not for how she died, but how she lived, saying she deserved so much more.<\/p>\n

“Minerliz was sweet. She was goofy … I didn’t get enough time with her, unfortunately,” she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Soriano’s emotional father expressed gratitude to the investigators and attorneys who never gave up in the fight for justice.<\/p>\n

“I am grateful from the bottom of my heart as a father,” he said in Spanish.<\/p>\n

In:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The man convicted in the 1999 murder of a Bronx teenager was finally sentenced Thursday. A judge sentenced…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":176619,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[128,5279,9,24,63,129,131,130],"class_list":["post-176618","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-the-bronx","tag-bronx","tag-cold-case","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-the-bronx","tag-the-bronx-headlines","tag-the-bronx-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176618","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=176618"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176618\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/176619"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=176618"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=176618"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=176618"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}