Video: Lydia Martinez Recalls Night Son-In-Law Was Killed

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LOWNDES CO., Miss. (WCBI-TV) — Lydia Martinez says her daughter gunned her son-in-law down as he lay in his bed.

It’s a horrifying story of murder and cover up in Lowndes County.

“But I did not kill my son-in-law,” Martinez tells WCBI News about the night he was killed. “It was her. She’s the one who shot him.”

Lydia Martinez is charged with accessory after the fact in the brutal killing of Manuel Vasquez in his New Hope home.

Martinez says she helped cover it up to protect her grandchildren. But, it’s a homicide she tells us her own daughter committed in cold blood.

Just hours after Martinez posted bond, she shares the gruesome details from that night with WCBI’s Emily Cassulo  in an exclusive television interview.

Martinez asks, “Do you want me to tell you about the day she took my son-in-law’s life?”

Lydia Martinez says she woke up to a popping sound. It turned out to be the sound, she says, of her daughter shooting her son-in-law.  ” So I went downstairs and that’s when she told me she had shot my son-in-law in the head.”

Martinez says her daughter told her that she needed help with moving his body.  “I remember telling, I can’t do this and she grabbed his legs.”

“That’s when I saw the blood on the bed,” Martinez says.  “She just wrapped him up. She wanted me to help her but I was so scared, so nervous.”

First, Martinez says, they moved Vasquez to the closet, then down to the hall to the garage.

“And then at nighttime when it got dark and the kids got ready to go to bed, she goes, we’ve got to drag his body out. What are we going to do? She put it right where anybody could see it. There’s a basketball court where the boys would play.”

Martinez says, “She just laid his body there, put gasoline all over his body and flames his whole body and she just stood there.”

 The two women used brooms, Martinez says, to sweep up Vasquez’s blood.

“And it burned all night long. It burned all night long and nobody ever came over. I was hoping the neighbors. Nobody came over because there was a big old flame and he was right there where anyone could just see if they walked up the driveway. But nobody ever came.”

Martinez says it was her daughter who transferred Vasquez’s body to a large burn barrel.

“She put his body in there. I don’t know how she did it because his body was still hot. It was still burning a little bit. But she managed to just push it all in there and she told me just help me tilt the barrel back, you know, the right way.  She burned his body for three days. It was all just ashes.”

Martinez says her daughter told her to clean the barrel, so she used a shovel to distribute the ash and pieces of bone throughout the yard.

Martinez says she did all of this to protect her grandchildren.

In part two of the conversation with Lydia Martinez, she explains why she believes she and her grandchildren were in danger.

Christina Martinez Vasquez remains in the Lowndes County Jail, charged with one count of murder and one count of domestic violence aggravated assault.  Her bond is set at $500,000.

Her lawyers have requested a hearing to lower the bond.

A trial date is set for February.