How did a contract killer get away with murder for 35 years?

"I'm Going To Be Honest With You," The Grandfather Told Police. "I Killed A Lot."

In this excerpt adapted from The Devil's Harvest, Jessica Garrison reveals how a contract killer's 35-year run of murder and mayhem in California's Central Valley reflects a far more widespread injustice: The institutions that were supposed to protect a community failed it again and again. Check out our Q&A with Jessica below.

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"This book is a monster detective story": A Q&A with Jessica Garrison

Jessica Garrison; book cover: The Devil's Harvest

Credit: Rik Keller Photography; Hachette

In 2018, Jessica Garrison, an editor on the BuzzFeed News investigations team, published a story about Jose Martinez, a contract killer from California who got away with murder for decades. That story is the root of her new book, The Devil's Harvest, out this month from Hachette. We chatted with Garrison via email about what drew her to this story, what it was like to face a killer and his victims, and how current discussions about the role of police resonate after years of reporting on a criminal case.

BuzzFeed Books: How did this story get on your radar? What drew you to it?

Jessica Garrison: I first heard of this case back in 2014. I was working as an editor at the LA Times, and my job was to get up hideously early in the morning (OK, fine, it was only about 7 a.m.) and go into the office and make sure all the major stories of the day had reporters assigned to cover them. I was drinking a cup of coffee and sleepily staring at the AP wire, and I saw that a contract killer was being extradited from Alabama to California to face charges on nine murders. The story said he was suspected in many more, and that police believed they had caught a professional hitman. The story also mentioned that he lived in a tiny town in Tulare County, in California's Central Valley.

I had spent a fair amount of time in the valley as a reporter, and I was flabbergasted that a professional hit man could live quietly in one of those small towns and never get caught. I assigned reporters to the story, and then I went on with my day. After the story ran, I kept thinking about it. How had Jose Martinez gotten away with it?

In 2016, I remembered the case and decided to look and see if anyone had ever done a more in-depth look at the case. I couldn't find anything. In my spare time, I started phoning up detectives who had worked the cases. One detective told me Martinez was "the best I've ever seen" in three decades working homicide. Detectives also talked about how charming Martinez was. Several also spoke about how much he cared for his own family. I talked, too, with family members of his victims, who said they felt that few in power cared what had happened to their relatives. Then I wrote Jose Martinez a letter — and he called me up.

Eventually I realized this was an epic narrative of a criminal, and the people he killed, and the police who tried and failed to stop him. But beyond that, it was also a story about a place — the southern part of California's Central Valley, which few people think much about, but where much of America's food is grown — and the stark inequalities that have defined life in that place for decades. Finally, I realized that while the valley is like no place on earth, there are similar structures of inequality in lots of places in the US.

BFB: Jose Martinez spoke with pride about the murders he committed, almost to the point of relishing them. What was it like having those conversations, facing the incongruities of his being a family man and a killer head-on?

JG: I am somewhat surprised at myself having written a book about murder. In my own reading, I actually tend to skip violent scenes, and when they flash on my television screen, I cover my eyes until they're over. So this book doesn't have much, if any, graphic violence. But it does have grief. The hardest part of researching and writing this project was sitting with the grief of the victims' families. So many people haunted by the loss of their loved ones, all the more so because in many cases they had to wait decades for any kind of closure. The mystery of Jose Martinez being at once a loving father, brother, son, and uncle and at the same time a vicious killer was, to me, a less pressing one than the question of why he was allowed to get away with it.

I also love detective stories. And this book is a monster detective story, one stretching across three decades.

A crime scene in California's Central Valley.

(Credit: Marion County Sheriff's Office, via FOIA)

BFB: A big part of the reason Martinez was able to get away with these murders for decades is that he was killing mostly men the police weren't really invested in finding or protecting — namely, Mexican Americans and immigrants. Can you talk a bit about how this case differs from that of other serial killers, those whose victims were mostly of a different demographic?

JG: I guess technically Jose Martinez is a serial killer, in that he killed multiple people. But he is more properly understood, I think, as a contract killer, meaning he was killing for money. And almost to a person, the men he killed lacked power. Some were undocumented. Some were presumed to be drug dealers. There was very little outcry when they died, and very little pressure, at least publicly, to do anything about it.

Many serial killers that become famous, by contrast, tend to target women, particularly white women. The public goes predictably bonkers.

BFB: It's interesting to read this at a time when the police are facing nationwide scrutiny and criticism; when cities like Minneapolis, Chicago, LA, and New York are seeing calls for the defunding of law enforcement and even abolition. Having spent so much time really digging into the role of the police in this case and these communities, what's it like watching these movements gather momentum? Did working on this story influence your views on policing?

JG: One important aspect of the defund the police movement is that it has prompted a nationwide discussion of what police are supposed to be for — and an acknowledgement that police in many cities are doing a lot of things that aren't strictly speaking police work. Police are not social workers. They are not homeless services outreach workers. They are not the chaperones of loud parties, or animal control officers. And yet, in a lot of places, that is how officers spend a huge chunk of their time.

The LA Times had a story last month that found that fewer than 10 percent of the 18 million calls the LAPD got in the last decade were about violent crime. Meanwhile, in many cities and towns, when violent crimes do occur, the police do not have a great track record of solving the case. The Washington Post and BuzzFeed News have both done in-depth work on the failure to solve murders and apprehend shooting suspects. This was also true in many communities in Tulare and Kern counties, where Martinez committed many murders.

Add on to that the murder of George Floyd, and the many, many, many other police killings that came before and after it, and the upshot is that many people across America do not view the police as an institution that exists to keep them safe. Instead, they often view officers as a potential threat. In researching this book, I spent a lot of time talking to a lot of very dedicated detectives, who worked hard to solve their cases and to care for the victims left behind. But working on this book also allowed me to examine the institutions and the systems of policing that exist in many places. I'm watching these debates about abolition and defunding the police with huge interest. They are a long time coming.

BFB: Was it tough to walk away from this story? How were you able to kind of look at it as a whole and recognize, Okay, this story is finished?

JG: I mean, the very short answer to that question is that I signed a book contract, and Hachette gave me a deadline and I turned the book in (almost) on that deadline. The book closes with a courtroom showdown that took place in the summer of 2019, and that seemed like a natural end. But could I have spent many more months or years on this? Yes. Could I have written 500 or 1,000 pages, weaving in more people and more stories and more history? Yes. But if my editor is reading this, she may be shaking her head violently in the opposite direction. ●