Gage Park Murders: A Family of 6 Died at the Hands of Their Cousin

On the afternoon of February 4, 2016, Chicago police entered a family home in the Gage Park neighborhood to perform a well-being check after a coworker of one of the residents, Noe Martinez. Jr, reported that the man had not come to work for two days. What they found was one of the most grisly family homicides in recent Chicago history.

The bodies of four adults and two children were found scattered throughout the home. Maria Herminia Martinez, 32, had been shot four times in the head, her body discovered in an upstairs bedroom. Maria’s brother, 38-year-old Noe Jr., suffered from a combination of blunt force injury and stabbing. His body was next to hers.

Down in the basement, Maria's 13-year-old son, Leonardo Cruz, had suffered two dozen knife wounds, mostly to the head and neck. Her other son, 10-year-old Alexis Cruz, had been stabbed seven times in the chest. 

Maria and Noe Jr.'s father, 62-year-old Noe Martinez Sr., was dead in the front hallway, having suffered over 40 knife wounds, according to the Chicago Sun-Times. Their mother, 58-year-old Rosaura Martinez, had been repeatedly stabbed then discarded in an enclosed porch.

For the first several weeks after the murder, investigators were unable to make an arrest. But in March, they got a break. 

According to the Chicago Tribune, police received a report that 22-year-old Diego Uribe—Maria Herminia Martinez’s nephew by marriage— had show up to work the day after the massacre with noticeable injuries. Because there had been no signs of forced entry at the household, investigators believed it was likely that the perpetrator had known the family.

After questioning, Uribe allowed the police to collect a DNA sample from him. That DNA matched some of the blood that was found at the scene, including under Maria’s fingernails, according to the Chicago Sun-Times. Uribe was arrested and charged with the murders.

Mark Safarik, a retired FBI investigator with expertise in serial, mass and spree murder who spent over a dozen years in the bureau’s behavioral analysis unit, tells A&E Crime + Investigation that Uribe’s shocking brutality was simply “very poorly thought-out.” 

“This was a man who was thinking exactly one step ahead of the place he was currently standing,” Safarik says of Urbie’s mindset while committing these crimes. “He’s not a very smart guy. A smart guy wouldn’t have done this.”

After his arrest, Uribe allegedly confessed during interrogation. His girlfriend, 19-year-old Jafeth Ramos, testified against him in court, telling the jury that she was with Uribe when he tried to commit a robbery that went wrong.

According to Ramos’s testimony as detailed by NBC 5 Chicago, Uribe and Ramos went to the Martinez home on the evening of February 2, 2016, and were invited by the Martinez family for dinner.

Things quickly spiraled out of control when Uribe tried to hold up Maria at gunpoint and demanded money. When Maria refused to pay him, he shot her multiple times, setting off a cascade of violence in which he killed all the victims—save for Noe Martinez Sr., who was not home at the time.

After the first five were murdered, Uribe and Ramos waited for the eldest victim to return home from the store, at which point Uribe stabbed him to death before the couple fled. 

The jury found Uribe guilty on six counts of first-degree murder. He was sentenced to life imprisonment.

Uribe was represented at trial by the Cook County Public Defenders Office. At the time the verdict was reached in October 2022, Uribe's defense attorneys claimed a group of masked men looking for money committed the murders and threatened Uribe into staying quiet, though they acknowledged Uribe’s presence at the crime scene. A spokesman for the office declined to comment to A&E Crime + Investigation.

As part of a plea deal for testifying against Uribe in court, Ramos was sentenced to 25 years in prison for robbery.

The murders netted the couple a paltry $250, an Xbox and the contents of a piggy bank.

Safarik says that the poor lift speaks to how badly conceived the crime was from the start. 

“You don’t generally get homicides [committed] during a robbery,” he says, adding that of the hundreds of thousands of robberies committed in 2019 nationwide, only “about 500” involved a murder. 

He notes that perpetrators “interested in financial gain aren’t interested in committing homicide,” since the punishment for homicide is so severe that it typically isn’t worth the risk. Furthermore, Safarik says it doesn’t make sense to rob and kill people with whom a perpetrator has a personal relationship.

Uribe’s uncle had recently separated from his wife, Maria, a breakup which had angered Uribe, Uribe later told investigators.

That Uribe had no criminal record prior to the murders also probably partially explains his willingness to self-incriminate, Safarik says: first by willingly submitting to the DNA testing, and then by directly confessing to the crime when interrogated.

“He doesn’t understand that he shouldn’t talk to the police,” Safarik continues. “He doesn’t understand that he should get a lawyer. And there’s probably some guilt in there, too.”