Las Vegas police find burned, partially dismembered body in bathtub

A man who faces a murder charge after a woman’s burned and dismembered body was found in his apartment Thursday said he killed her after she tried to make him pay for sex, according to a Metro arrest report.

Nathanael Martinez, 21, was booked into the Clark County Detention Center Thursday after officers found the woman’s body in a bathtub in his apartment on the 4000 block of South Arville Road, near Flamingo Road.

The Clark County coroner’s office identified the woman as 25-year-old Marissa Shalesa Gonzalez. Her official cause of death has not been determined, according to the coroner’s office.

The suspect’s roommate and uncle, Juan Martinez, called 911 at 5:55 p.m. to report the body, then put his nephew on the phone. Nathanael Martinez told the operator he and the dead woman had met the night before and had sex, after which she demanded money. Martinez later told police the woman pulled a kitchen knife on him and attempted to lock his front door before he choked her unconscious from behind.

Martinez told police he met Gonzalez between 3 a.m. and 4 a.m. on the Strip and went home, where they had sex.

Afterward Gonzalez said she was a prostitute, Martinez told police, and that he had to pay. When he told her he didn’t have any money, he said she grabbed a knife off the kitchen counter and demanded he show her his wallet.

Martinez held up his empty wallet, the police report said, and the woman said he had to give her something valuable, such as a watch.

She turned, locked the deadbolt and began to put the chain on the door, the report said. Martinez told police he then grabbed Gonzales from behind and choked her until she passed out.

His uncle came home from work about 6:15 a.m., police said. The elder Martinez tried to open the front door to the apartment in the Sunwood Village Apartments complex, but the door was chained.

The uncle said he could see his nephew lying on the living room floor with a woman he did not recognize. Juan Martinez said his nephew let him in, and that he told Nathanael Martinez the visitor had to leave.

The uncle went to bed for a few hours, police said, then went to work at his second job.

Nathanael Martinez later told police he thought Gonzalez was asleep and moved her to a bedroom, where he went to sleep. But he woke up while his uncle was back at work, realized she was dead and panicked.

He moved the body to a bathtub, police said. He tried to cut off her arms and legs before stopping because he felt bad, according to the police report. Then he used lighter fluid to set her on fire, but “felt bad about that too,” so he turned on the shower and extinguished the flames.

He hid her clothes and phone, and threw away a hammer used to dismember the body in a dumpster.

When the uncle got home, he smelled smoke, and went to its source: the bathroom. He thought his nephew had been smoking weed.

But there, police said, he found the body.

Gonzalez’s arm was partially severed, according to a police report. She also had cuts to her lower back and the back of her left leg. She was burned around the head and neck area.

Martinez first told his uncle that the woman had overdosed on drugs, then changed his story and told him she was a prostitute and had pulled a knife on him after demanding money for sex.

Metropolitan Police Department Public Information Officer Michael Rodriguez said Nathanael Martinez’s claim that Gonzalez was a prostitute is “unconfirmed at this time.”

Martinez is scheduled to appear in Las Vegas Justice Court at 8:30 a.m. Wednesday morning, according to court records.

Neighbor Stephen Copice said people in the apartment complex mostly keep to themselves, and that he rarely spoke to the Martinezes, but “They seemed like nice people. Only thing they’d say is, ‘Hi’ and ‘Bye.’ That’s why this is so surprising.”

Contact Knowles Adkisson at kadkisson@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0264. Find him on Twitter: @knowlesadkisson.