Actress Joselyn Martinez has tracked down her father's killer 26 years after he was shot

When the police did not deliver results on finding her father, aspiring actress Joselyn Martinez took matters into her own hands.

Joselyn Martinez father, Jose Martinez, was gunned down in front of his restaurant in the Bronx back in November of 1986, according toYahoo! Shine. Jose Martinez was killed by Justo Santos after he kicked him and two of Santo’s friends out of the restaurant for sexually harassing his wife, Idalia Martinez. Witnesses reported that once on the sidewalk, Santos pulled out his pistol and gunned down Martinez in front Idalia. She allegedly took her husband in a cab to New York Presyterian Hospital Columbia where he later died.

The police identified Santos, 16 at the time, as the shooter but he fled to the Dominican Republic. Now, 26 years later, Joselyn has found Santos when the police had almost given up.

Martinez has spent the last eight years of her life tracking down Santos.

She told The New York Post yesterday, "I always kept the name in mind. After so many years of not being caught, it wasn’t a reality to me anymore."

She gave police quite a bit of help tracking down her father’s killer, handing over Santos’s address and phone number that she had discovered on the Internet.

"In 2004, when I started using MySpace, that’s when I got into using social media to try and find him,” Martinez told the Post. Her first victory was in 2008 when she got a hit on Background.com, among all the sites she had been searching.

"They all had it. They had his address. They had his phone number," she said. "He must have thought it was all over, that he had gotten away with it."

With hopes to become a prosecutor eventually, Martinez decided to pick up her father's case herself about ten years ago and has completely committed the last eight of her life to it. She began by asking the New York police for the case information and took her search to the Internet. The death of her father had been haunting her and her mother since it happened, and Martinez was determined to find Santos and end the pain.

"I remember his [Santos'] picture on the wanted posters. He was smiling. It was all over Dyckman Street," she said. "My mom told me to never forget his name. She’d tell me, 'You have to know who did this to your family.'” She added, "Knowing the person my father was, I couldn’t live with myself if [Santos] stayed free. I need to see him in New York to know this has really happened."

"He ruined my life," Idalia told the Post. "He ruined the life of my daughter."

Utilizing the new information from Martinez, police found Santos, now 43, and arrested him last Thursday, where he confessed to the killing and waived extradition. Santos had been working as the manager of a Florida janitorial company, and upon his arrest, the New York Police Department is in the process of bringing him back to city to face charges.

An unnamed law enforcement source reported, “She was dynamite. She did a great job of finding this guy," referring to Joselyn Martinez. "She basically solved the case."

Martinez humbly responded, “I can’t take all the credit. The 34th Precinct and the cold case squad did all the work."
Now that Santos has been caught, a wife and daughter may finally rest after searching for their loved one’s killer.