Pay attention to this footage captured by a construction worker’s phone camera.

You’re looking at a backyard in what appears to be a quiet residential neighborhood.

Green grass, a wooden fence, workers in high visibility vests standing at the edge of a massive excavation pit.

But look closer at what’s been unearthed.

Those aren’t natural rock formations at the bottom of that hole.

Those are concrete slabs deliberately placed, deliberately hidden.

And when investigators arrived at this scene, what they found beneath those slabs would expose a family secret so dark, so twisted that it would haunt an entire community for years to come.

This is the story of the Riverside tomb.

And what you’re about to hear will show you that sometimes the most horrific crimes are buried right beneath our feet.

You know that feeling when you’re driving through a neighborhood and you see those perfect houses with the perfect lawns and you think to yourself, ‘I wonder what their life is like.’

For the residents of Elmwood Terrace in Burlington, Vermont, the Martinez family seemed to have it all figured out.

Miguel Martinez was the kind of neighbor everyone loved.

Always waving from his front porch.

Always offering to help jumpstart your car on cold winter mornings.

Always out there on Saturday afternoons meticulously maintaining his lawn.

His wife, Lauren Martinez, had been a beloved elementary school teacher before she disappeared in September 2005.

Miguel told everyone who asked that she’d left him, that their marriage had been falling apart for years, that she’d run off with someone she’d met online.

It was heartbreaking, sure, but these things happen, right?

Marriages crumble.

People leave.

Life goes on.

And Miguel’s life did go on.

He raised his two kids, Isabella and Marcus, as a single father.

Everyone in the neighborhood respected him for that.

Here was a man who’d been abandoned by his wife.

Yet, he still showed up to every parent teacher conference, still packed lunches every morning, still maintained that pristine yard that Lauren had loved so much.

For 17 years, Miguel Martinez was the definition of resilience.

But on April 8th, 2022, everything changed.

The call came into Burlington Public Works at 9:47 in the morning.

A sewage line break at 163 Elmwood Terrace.

Nothing unusual.

These old neighborhoods had aging infrastructure, and breaks happened all the time, especially after the winter freeze thaw cycle.

The city dispatched a crew led by foreman Danny Chen, a 15-year veteran who’d seen just about everything that could go wrong underground.

Dany and his team arrived at Miguel’s house around 10:30.

Miguel was at work.

He managed a local hardware store, so Dany called him to let him know they’d need to excavate part of his backyard to access the damaged line.

Miguel gave his permission without hesitation.

Why wouldn’t he?

Just a routine repair, right?

The crew got to work with their excavator, cutting through that perfect green lawn that Miguel had maintained so religiously.

1 ft down, 2t, 3 ft.

And then at about 4t deep, the excavator’s bucket hit something that made a sound that Danny Chen would later describe as wrong.

It wasn’t the usual thunk of hitting a rock or an old pipe.

Dany told police later, “It was this dull, hollow sound, like hitting something man-made.”

Dany stopped the excavator and jumped down into the pit.

What he saw made his blood run cold.

Concrete slabs.

Not random chunks of old foundation or forgotten construction debris, but deliberately placed concrete slabs arranged in a rectangular pattern.

Each slab was about 3 ft x 4 ft, and there were six of them in total, forming what looked like a crude roof over something below.

Here’s the thing about working in construction for 15 years.

You develop an instinct for when something’s off.

And Danny’s instincts were screaming at him.

He pulled out his phone and started recording.

The footage showed everything.

The neat arrangement of the slabs, the deliberate way they’d been placed, the obvious signs that this was human construction, not natural formation.

Dany filmed for about 90 seconds, narrating what he was seeing, documenting every angle.

“Call the police,” he told his crew.

“Don’t touch anything else.

Just call them now.”

Burlington police arrived within 20 minutes.

First on scene was officer Jessica Ramos, who took one look at the excavation and immediately radioed for detectives.

By noon, the backyard at 163 Elmwood Terrace was swarming with law enforcement.

Crime scene tape cordoned off the entire property.

Neighbors started gathering on the street, phones out, filming everything, whispering to each other about what could possibly be going on at Miguel Martinez’s house.

Detective Sarah Brennan, a 22-year veteran of the Burlington PD and head of the major crimes unit, took charge of the scene.

She’d worked hundreds of cases in her career, domestic violence, gang shootings, drug related homicides.

But something about this felt different.

The deliberate placement of those concrete slabs, the location in a residential backyard, the fact that they were buried exactly 4 feet down, just below the typical depth of a sewage line.

This wasn’t hidden by accident, Sarah told her partner, Detective Marcus Lou.

Someone knew exactly what they were doing.

The decision was made to carefully remove the concrete slabs.

It took hours.

Each slab weighed roughly 200 lb, requiring a combination of the excavator and manual lifting.

The construction workers had gone home.

This was now a potential crime scene, and only law enforcement and forensic specialists were allowed near the pit.

At 4:47 p.m., with news helicopters now circling overhead and every local news channel broadcasting live from Elmwood Terrace, the last concrete slab was lifted away.

What they found underneath would haunt everyone present for the rest of their lives.

A chamber, a deliberately constructed underground chamber roughly 12 ft long, 15 ft wide, and about 7 ft deep.

The walls were crude concrete, clearly hand poured with visible imperfections and air pockets.

The floor was dirt, compacted hard from years of pressure.

And there, in the far corner of this makeshift tomb, partially covered by debris and soil that had seeped in over the years, was a human skeleton.

Detective Brennan had seen dead bodies before.

She’d worked homicides where victims had been shot, stabbed, beaten.

But there was something uniquely horrific about seeing skeletal remains in this context.

Buried in someone’s backyard, sealed beneath concrete slabs, hidden under a lawn that was mowed every single weekend for nearly two decades.

The medical examiner was called to the scene.

Dr. Patricia Holden, Vermont’s chief medical examiner, arrived around 6:15 p.m.

She descended into the chamber with her team, carefully documenting everything with photographs and video.

The skeleton was largely intact, lying in what appeared to be a fetal position in the corner.

Fragments of clothing still clung to the bones.

Denim jeans, what might have been a cotton t-shirt, the metal underwire from a bra.

But it was what Dr. Holden noticed on the walls of the chamber that made even her, a woman who’d examined over 3,000 bodies in her career, feel physically sick.

Scratch marks.

Deep, desperate scratch marks.

Carved into the concrete walls.

Dozens of them, hundreds of them, some so deep that whoever made them had scraped away layers of concrete, leaving gouges nearly a/4 in deep.

And when Dr. Holden examined the skeleton’s hands, she found the explanation.

Several fingernails were broken, and bone fragments from the fingertips suggested they’d been used to claw at those walls.

“Oh, God,” Dr. Holden whispered to Detective Brennan.

She was alive when she was sealed in here.

Let me paint you a picture of what that means.

Imagine being trapped in a concrete box underground.

No light, no sound except your own screaming.

No one can hear you because you’re buried beneath 4 ft of earth and six concrete slabs.

You claw at the walls until your fingernails break and your fingertips bleed, but the concrete doesn’t give.

You scream until your voice is gone.

And slowly over hours or maybe days, you run out of air.

That’s how Lauren Martinez died.

By 800 PM, the media had identified the location.

Miguel Martinez’s name was everywhere.

Police had tried to reach him at work, but his manager at the hardware store said he’d left early around 300 p.m. saying there was an emergency at his house.

His cell phone went straight to voicemail.

His car wasn’t in the driveway.

Miguel Martinez was gone.

An APB was issued, all points bulletin.

Every law enforcement agency in Vermont, New York, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts was alerted to look for Miguel’s vehicle, a 2015 Silver Honda Accord.

His photo was distributed.

His bank accounts were flagged.

Police positioned units at the Canadian border, knowing Burlington was less than an hour from the international crossing.

Meanwhile, back at 163 Elmwood Terrace, the forensic team worked through the night.

Flood lights illuminated the backyard like a football stadium.

The entire contents of the underground chamber were carefully excavated and cataloged, soil samples, the concrete slabs themselves, every fragment of clothing, and most importantly, the skeletal remains which were transported to Dr. Holden’s facility for a complete autopsy.

Detective Brennan stood at the edge of that pit around midnight, staring down at the empty chamber.

17 years.

For 17 years, Lauren Martinez had been right here, buried in her own backyard, while her husband tended the garden above her grave.

While he barbecued with neighbors, while he played catch with his kids, while he pretended to be the grieving husband whose wife had abandoned him.

“We need to find Miguel before he runs,” Marcus Louu said, standing beside Sarah.

And we need to find those kids, Isabella and Marcus.

They need to know.

But here’s what made it even more horrific.

Isabella and Marcus Martinez weren’t kids anymore.

Isabella was 28 years old.

Marcus was 26.

They’d both grown up believing their mother had abandoned them.

They’d spent nearly two decades thinking she hadn’t loved them enough to stay.

And now they were about to learn the truth.

The next morning, April 9th, 2022, Burlington was a city in shock.

The story was national news, CNN, Fox News, MSNBC.

Everyone was covering the case of the woman found buried in her own backyard.

Social media exploded with speculation.

True Crime podcast started emergency episodes, and the Burlington Police Department was fielding hundreds of tips about Miguel Martinez’s whereabouts.

Detective Brennan’s team worked in shifts.

No one going home, everyone running on coffee and adrenaline.

The first priority was identifying the remains.

Even though everyone suspected it was Lauren Martinez, they needed definitive proof.

Dental records were pulled from Lauren’s dentist, Dr. Raymond Cho, who’d kept meticulous records for over 30 years.

Dr. Holden compared them to the skull’s teeth.

It was a match.

The skeleton in the backyard tomb was definitively Lauren Maria Martinez, aged 36 at the time of her death in September 2005.

But here’s where the investigation took its first unexpected turn.

Detective Brennan contacted Isabella and Marcus Martinez.

Isabella was living in Boston working as a graphic designer.

Marcus was in Portland, Maine, finishing his master’s degree in environmental science.

Both dropped everything and drove back to Burlington the moment they heard the news.

The interviews took place in separate rooms at police headquarters.

Brennan talked to Isabella first.

The young woman was devastated, oscillating between tears and shock, her whole reality crumbling around her.

For 28 years, she’d believed one story about her family.

And now that story was revealed to be a lie.

“I need to ask you some difficult questions,” Brennan said gently.

“About your childhood, about your mother, about what you remember from September 2005.”

Isabella took a shaky breath.

I was 11 when mom disappeared.

I remember dad sitting us down at the kitchen table and telling us she was gone.

He said she’d been unhappy for a long time, that she’d met someone else online and decided to leave.

“Did you believe him?”

“I was 11.

I believed everything my dad told me.”

Isabella’s voice cracked.

“He was my hero.

He raised us by himself.

He never dated anyone else.

He said he couldn’t because he was still in love with mom even though she’d left us.”

Brennan made notes.

“Tell me about your mother.

What was she like?”

“She was amazing.

She taught third grade at Riverside Elementary.

Every kid loved her.

She baked cookies on Sundays.

She read to us every night before bed.”

Isabella wiped her eyes.

“But Dad said she’d been pretending that she’d been planning to leave for months.

That everything we thought was real was just an act.”

“Did your mother ever seem unhappy to you?”

Isabella thought about this.

Really thought about it.

“No, she seemed happy.

But I was a kid.

What did I know?”

Here’s something that broke Detective Brennan’s heart during that interview.

Isabella pulled out her phone and showed her a photo she’d kept all these years.

It was from September 13th, 2005, just one day before Lauren disappeared.

The photo showed Lauren and Isabella at a local fair, both smiling, Lauren’s arm around her daughter’s shoulder.

They’d won a stuffed bear at one of the games.

Isabella had kept that bear on her bed until she went to college.

“That was the last photo I ever took with her,” Isabella said, staring at the image.

“The next day, she was gone.

Or at least that’s what I thought.

Now I know she was already planning to confront Dad about whatever she’d found.

She knew something was wrong, and she still took me to that fair, still smiled, still made sure I had a good time because that’s who she was.”

The interview with Marcus yielded similar information.

He’d been nine when his mother vanished.

His memories were even more fragmented than Isabella’s, but both siblings painted the same picture.

A loving mother who’d seemingly disappeared without a trace, and a devoted father who’d picked up the pieces and moved forward.

Marcus shared something during his interview that added another layer of darkness to the case.

“When I was in high school around 2012 or 2013, I started having these dreams, nightmares really.

I dreamed that mom was calling to me, that she was trapped somewhere and needed help, but I couldn’t find her.

I told my dad about the dreams and he got really upset.

Not angry upset, scared upset.

He took me to a therapist, said I needed to work through my abandonment issues.

The therapist prescribed medication for anxiety.

I took it for 2 years.”

Detective Brennan leaned forward.

“Do you still have those dreams?”

“Sometimes, but now they feel different.

Like maybe they weren’t just dreams.

Like maybe on some level I knew something was wrong.”

Neither of them had any idea where their father might have gone.

By day two of the investigation, Miguel Martinez was still missing.

Police had traced his movements from the hardware store.

Security footage showed him leaving at 3:07 p.m. on April 8th, getting into his Honda Accord, and driving away.

A TM record showed he’d withdrawn $500 from a bank machine at 3:34 p.m.

His cell phone had been turned off shortly after 400 p.m.

Detective Brennan coordinated with the FBI, who joined the investigation, given the possibility that Miguel had fled across state lines.

Agents began interviewing everyone who’d known the Martinez family in 2005.

Teachers from Riverside Elementary who’d worked with Lauren, neighbors who’d lived on Elmwood Terrace 17 years ago, friends and family members, and that’s when a name kept coming up.

Julie Hris, Lauren’s best friend.

Julie was now 51, a real estate agent in Burlington.

She agreed to meet with detectives at her office on April 10th.

Julie was clearly shaken by the news.

She’d known Lauren since college, had been made of honor at her wedding, had been one of the last people to see her alive.

“Lauren called me on September 14th, 2005.”

Julie told Detective Brennan.

“I remember the date because it was my birthday.

She wanted to meet for coffee.

She said she needed to talk to me about something important.”

“Did she say what it was?”

“No, but she sounded scared.

I asked her if everything was okay, and she said she couldn’t talk over the phone.

We agreed to meet the next morning at our usual coffee shop, Green Leaf Cafe on Main Street, but she never showed up.”

Brennan leaned forward.

“And then what happened?”

“I tried calling her multiple times.

No answer.

I drove to her house that evening.

Miguel answered the door.

He seemed off, distracted.

He said Lauren wasn’t home, that she’d gone to visit her sister in Connecticut.

I thought that was weird because Lauren would have told me if she was leaving town, especially since we just made plans, but Miguel seemed so normal, so I didn’t push it.”

“When did you realize she was missing?”

“2 days later, September 17th, Miguel called me.

He said Lauren had left him, that she’d cleaned out her bank account and disappeared.

He said she’d texted him, that she’d met someone online and wasn’t coming back.

He was crying on the phone, asking if I knew anything, if Lauren had mentioned anything to me.

I was shocked.

It didn’t make sense.

Lauren loved her kids.

She loved teaching.

She would never just abandon everything.”

“Did you go to the police?”

Julie’s expression darkened.

“I did.

On September 19th, I filed a missing person’s report.

But here’s the thing.

Miguel had her phone.

He showed police these text messages supposedly from Lauren saying she was fine, saying she wanted space, saying she’d be in touch with the kids eventually.

The police said there was no evidence of foul play.

Lauren was an adult who’d left her husband.

Case closed.”

Let me tell you what those text messages actually were.

They were sent from Lauren’s phone after she was already dead.

After Miguel had sealed her in that concrete tomb, after she’d clawed her fingernails off trying to escape, he’d kept her phone sending occasional messages to make it seem like she was alive, creating a digital trail that convinced police there was no crime to investigate.

Detective Brennan obtained Miguel’s phone records from 2005.

The subpoena took time, but when the records came through on April 12th, they told a damning story.

Lauren’s phone had been used to send text messages on September 15th, 16th, 17th, and 18th.

All of them sent from locations near Elmwood Terrace.

All of them during times when Miguel would have been home alone.

The content of those messages was chilling in retrospect.

“Need time to think?”

“Don’t contact me.”

“Tell the kids I’m sorry.”

“This is for the best.”

Each message carefully crafted to create the illusion of a woman choosing to leave.

While the reality was that Lauren was already dead, her body sealed in concrete just yards away from where Miguel sat typing on her phone.

Dr. Holden’s autopsy report came through on April 13th.

Cause of death was determined to be asphyxiation based on the evidence of the sealed chamber and the lack of any trauma to the skeleton that would indicate another cause.

Time of death was estimated at mid to late September 2005, consistent with when Lauren disappeared.

But here’s what haunted everyone.

How long had Lauren been alive in that tomb?

The scratch marks on the walls suggested she’d been conscious for some period of time.

Dr. Holden consulted with experts in confined space physiology and survival.

In a chamber that size with no ventilation, a person would have somewhere between 6 and 12 hours of breathable air depending on their level of activity in panic.

If Lauren had been unconscious initially, then woken up, she might have survived 8 to 10 hours before asphyxiation, 8 to 10 hours of clawing at concrete walls, 8 to 10 hours of screaming into darkness, 8 to 10 hours of knowing she was going to die.

The question everyone was asking was why?

What had driven Miguel Martinez to do this to his wife?

Detectives dug deeper into the couple’s history.

They interviewed Lauren’s family, her sister Catherine, who lived in Hartford, Connecticut, and her elderly parents.

They all said the same thing.

Lauren and Miguel’s marriage had seemed fine.

No reports of domestic violence, no restraining orders, no red flags that anyone had noticed.

But then Catherine mentioned something that made Detective Brennan’s instincts fire.

“About a month before Lauren disappeared, she called me.

She said she’d found something on Miguel’s computer, something that scared her.

I asked her what it was, but she said she needed to process it first, that she needed to figure out what to do.

I begged her to tell me, but she said she’d call me back in a few days.”

“Did she call back?”

“No. The next time I heard about Lauren was when Miguel called to say she’d left him.”

Police obtained a warrant for Miguel’s current computer and his cloud storage accounts.

What they found in his archived emails from 2005 made everything click into place.

Miguel had been embezzling money from his employer at the time, a construction company called Riverside Builders.

Over the course of two years, he’d siphoned off nearly $80,000 through fake invoices and falsified expense reports, and Lauren had discovered evidence of the embezzlement on his computer.

The email trail showed Lauren had confronted him on September 14th, 2005, the same day she’d called Julie Hendris, the same day she’d sounded scared.

Miguel had sent frantic emails to himself trying to delete the evidence, trying to cover his tracks, and then all communication stopped.

But there was more.

Investigators found search history from Miguel’s computer that painted an even more disturbing picture.

In the weeks leading up to Lauren’s disappearance, Miguel had been researching topics that would later prove grimly relevant.

“How to build underground shelter,” “concrete mixing ratios,” “how long does concrete take to dry,” “decomposition rates,” “missing person’s cases that were never solved.”

He’d been planning this, not for weeks, but possibly for months.

By April 15th, 2022, Miguel Martinez had been missing for a week.

The FBI had expanded the search nationwide.

His photo was everywhere, on the news, on social media, on wanted posters at every bus station and airport in the Northeast.

A $50,000 reward was offered for information leading to his capture.

But Miguel was smart.

He’d had 17 years to think about what he would do if this day ever came.

He’d probably always known that eventually someone would dig in that backyard.

Maybe he’d made peace with it.

Maybe he’d planned for it.

Police traced his cash withdrawal to a bank in Montpelier about 45 minutes from Burlington.

Security cameras captured him getting cash from the ATM at 3:34 p.m. on April 8th.

He was alone.

He looked calm, almost resigned.

Forensic psychologist Dr. Elliot Nash, working with the FBI, analyzed the footage frame by frame.

“Look at his body language.”

Dr. Nash told the investigative team.

“He’s not frantic.

He’s not looking over his shoulder.

He moves with purpose, but not panic.

This is a man who’s executing a plan he’s had in his mind for a long time.

He knew this day would come, and he’s prepared for it.”

From the ATM, the trail went cold.

His car was found on April 16th in a long-term parking lot at Logan International Airport in Boston.

But flight records showed no Miguel Martinez had boarded any flights.

It was a decoy.

He’d driven to Boston to make it seem like he’d fled the country, but he’d never gotten on a plane.

Detective Brennan worked with FBI profilers to try to anticipate Miguel’s next move.

He had limited cash, no credit cards that he could use without being tracked, no family he could turn to for help.

His parents were deceased, and his only sibling, a brother named Carlos, who lived in Texas, was cooperating with authorities.

“He’s going to make contact with Isabella or Marcus.”

Dr. Nash predicted.

“He’s going to want to explain himself to justify what he did.

Men like Miguel don’t see themselves as monsters.

They see themselves as people who were forced into impossible situations.

He’ll want his children to understand, even if they can’t forgive.”

Dr. Nash was right.

On April 18th, Isabella’s phone rang at 11:47 p.m.

She was staying at a hotel in Burlington trying to deal with the media circus and the reality of her mother’s death.

The number was unknown.

She almost didn’t answer, but something made her pick up.

“Bella.”

It was her father’s voice.

Small, weak, nothing like the strong, confident father she’d known her whole life.

Isabella had been briefed by Detective Brennan.

Her phone was set up to record.

FBI agents were in the next room tracing the call.

“Dad.”

Isabella’s voice shook.

“Where are you?”

“I’m sorry, baby.

I’m so sorry.

I never wanted you to find out this way.”

“Find out what, Dad? That you killed Mom? That you buried her in the backyard?”

A long silence and then “I had no choice.”

“You had no choice.”

Isabella’s grief turned to anger.

“Mom was alive, Dad.

She was alive when you sealed her in there.

Do you understand that?

She clawed at the walls.

She tried to get out.

She suffocated to death in the dark.”

Miguel was crying now.

“She was going to destroy our family.

She found out about the money.

She was going to turn me in.

We would have lost everything.

The house, my job, my freedom.

You and Marcus would have grown up with a father in prison.”

“So, you decided to murder her instead.”

“I didn’t mean for her to suffer.

I swear to God, Bella, I hit her once in the garage.

Just once.

I thought I’d killed her instantly.

I thought she was already dead when I put her in there.

I didn’t know she was still alive.

I didn’t know.”

Isabella closed her eyes.

The FBI agents in the next room were frantically working to trace the call.

They needed to keep him on the line for at least 90 seconds.

“Where are you, Dad?”

“It doesn’t matter.

I just wanted to tell you that I love you, that I’m sorry, that everything I did, I did to protect you and Marcus.”

“Protect us?

You took our mother away from us.”

“I gave you a life.

I raised you.

I was there for every birthday, every graduation, every moment.

Your mother would have sent me to prison.

She would have destroyed our family.”

“She didn’t destroy our family, Dad.

You did.”

Another silence.

Then “I know.

I know that now.

I’ve had 17 years to think about what I did.

17 years of living with her grave right outside my window.

Do you know what that’s like?

Do you know what it’s like to know that the person you loved, the mother of your children, is buried in your backyard?”

“Then why didn’t you confess?

Why did you let us grow up thinking she’d abandoned us?”

“Because I’m a coward.

Because I was afraid.

Because once I’d made that choice, there was no going back.

Every day I wanted to tell someone.

Every time I looked at you and Marcus, I wanted to confess.

But I’d already gone so far down that path.

How do you come back from something like that?”

Isabella was crying now, too.

“You were supposed to protect her, Dad. You were supposed to love her. Instead, you buried her alive.”

“I did love her.

That’s what makes it so terrible.

I loved her and I killed her and I’ve had to live with that every single day.

Do you think I haven’t suffered?

Do you think I haven’t paid for what I did?”

“You haven’t paid anything.

Mom paid with her life.

Marcus and I paid with our childhood.

You just got to go on living like nothing happened.”

The FBI agents gave Isabella a signal.

They had a location.

A pay phone in Brattleboro, Vermont, about 2 hours south of Burlington.

Units were already being dispatched.

“Dad, where are you right now?”

“Goodbye, Bella.

Tell Marcus I love him.

Tell him I’m sorry.

And tell him… tell him his dreams were right.

Tell him I’m sorry for making him think he was crazy.

He knew on some level.

Kids always know when something’s wrong.”

“Dad, wait.”

The line went dead.

Police and FBI descended on Brattleboro within minutes, but Miguel was already gone.

Security footage from a nearby gas station showed him using the pay phone, then walking to a bus stop.

He’d gotten on a Greyhound bus heading to New York City at 11:39 p.m., 8 minutes before he’d called Isabella.

The bus was pulled over by New York State Police near Albany at 1:23 a.m. on April 19th.

Passengers were evacuated and searched.

Miguel Martinez wasn’t among them.

He’d gotten off at an earlier stop somewhere between Brattleboro and Albany melting into the night, but the net was closing.

With the phone call recorded with his confession on tape, there was no doubt about his guilt.

The FBI released the audio to the media, hoping someone would recognize his voice, hoping someone would spot him.

And then on April 21st, 2022, a hiker in the Green Mountain National Forest found a body.

It was Miguel Martinez.

He’d hanged himself from a tree about 15 miles from Elmwood Terrace in a part of the forest where he and Lauren used to take Isabella and Marcus hiking when they were young.

The spot was significant.

Investigators later found photos from 2003 showing the Martinez family at that exact location.

All four of them smiling, Lauren holding Marcus’s hand, Miguel with Isabella on his shoulders.

A note was found in his pocket addressed to Isabella and Marcus.

But there was also a second note.

This one addressed to the investigating team, and what it contained would provide the final pieces of the puzzle.

The first note to his children read, “I can’t live with what I did.

I thought I was protecting our family, but I destroyed it instead.

Your mother was a good person.

She deserved better than me.

She deserved to live.

I’m sorry for taking her from you.

I’m sorry for the lies.

I’m sorry for everything.

Please don’t remember me as the monster I became.

Remember the father who loved you, even though that father was built on a lie.

I love you both.

I’m sorry, Dad.”

The second note to investigators provided details that only the killer would know.

“I built the chamber on the night of September 14th, 2005.

It took me 8 hours.

I used concrete from my job at Riverside Builders.

The metal pipe is in the garage in the tool box on the second shelf.

That’s what I hit her with.

I aimed for the back of her head.

I thought she was dead.

I swear I thought she was dead.

But when I went back the next morning to make sure everything was sealed properly.

I heard sounds coming from under the concrete, scratching sounds.

I stood there for an hour listening to her die.

And I didn’t help her.

I couldn’t help her because then everything would have come out. So I let her suffocate. That’s the truth. I’m a coward and a murderer, and I deserve whatever judgment awaits me.”

The investigation confirmed it was suicide.

Miguel had used a length of rope he’d purchased at a hardware store, a bitter irony that wasn’t lost on anyone.

The coroner estimated he’d been dead for approximately 24 hours when he was found.

And just like that, the case was over.

The man who’d killed Lauren Martinez was dead.

There would be no trial, no chance for him to face justice in a courtroom, no opportunity for Isabella and Marcus to confront him about the life he’d stolen from them.

Detective Brennan returned to the Martinez house with Miguel’s second note.

She wanted to verify every detail he’d confessed to.

In the garage, exactly where Miguel had described, they found a metal pipe in a toolbox on the second shelf.

It had been cleaned, but not well enough.

Luminal testing revealed blood spatter patterns on the floor of the garage that matched the location where Lauren would have been standing.

Microscopic analysis of the pipe found traces of blood in the corrosion pits of the metal.

DNA testing confirmed it was Lauren’s blood.

That pipe was the murder weapon, and it had been sitting in Miguel’s garage for 17 years, just another tool in a toolbox, while he went about his daily life.

But here’s what haunted Detective Brennan most about Miguel’s confession.

The part about going back the next morning.

The part about hearing Lauren scratching at the walls.

The part about standing there for an hour listening to her die and choosing not to help her.

“That’s the moment,” Brennan told her partner Marcus Lou, “when he stopped being a man who’d made a terrible mistake and became a monster. That hour when he stood there listening to his wife suffocate and did nothing. That’s unforgivable.”

Remember that footage that construction worker Danny Chen had captured?

The video of the excavation pit, the concrete slabs, the chamber beneath?

That footage became crucial evidence in reconstructing exactly how Miguel had built the tomb.

Forensic engineers studied the video, analyzing the construction technique, the way the concrete had been poured, the dimensions of the chamber.

Their conclusion was chilling.

Miguel had built the chamber with ventilation holes along the top edge, small gaps between some of the concrete slabs that would have allowed air to seep in.

But then, after sealing Lauren inside, he’d gone back the next day.

The day he’d heard her scratching, and filled those gaps with additional concrete, sealing the chamber completely, he’d deliberately cut off her air supply, ensuring she would die.

It wasn’t a crime of passion.

It wasn’t even a murder that had gone wrong.

It was calculated, cold-blooded, and cruel.

The aftermath of the Martinez case rippled through Burlington for years.

Isabella and Marcus Martinez inherited their father’s estate, including the house at 163 Elmwood Terrace.

They sold it immediately.

Neither of them could bear the thought of ever setting foot in that backyard again.

The new owners demolished the house entirely and built something new.

But everyone in the neighborhood knows what happened there.

Some people cross the street rather than walk past that property.

Parents tell their children not to play near that yard.

It’s become the kind of place that exists in community memory as a site of tragedy.

Isabella and Marcus both underwent extensive therapy.

They’ve spoken publicly about their experience, about the trauma of learning that their entire childhood was built on a lie, about the complicated grief of losing both parents in such a horrific way.

Isabella started a nonprofit organization called Voices for the Voiceless, which advocates for missing person’s cases and works to ensure that disappearances are taken seriously by law enforcement, even when the circumstances suggest someone left voluntarily.

“My mother tried to leave us a message.”

Isabella said in an interview 2 years after the case was resolved.

“She called her best friend. She said she needed help, but no one knew how to read the signs. If we’d known then what we know now, if police had taken my mother’s disappearance more seriously when it happened, maybe things would have been different. Maybe she’d still be alive.”

Through her nonprofit, Isabella has helped reopen 17 cold missing person’s cases across New England.

Three of those cases resulted in discoveries similar to her mother’s.

Bodies found hidden on properties belonging to family members.

Deaths ruled as homicides that had previously been classified as missing persons.

In one case, a woman who’d been missing since 2008 was found buried under a concrete patio at her ex-husband’s house.

The ex-husband was arrested and convicted largely because Isabella’s organization had pushed authorities to take another look at the case.

The Burlington Police Department implemented new protocols for missing person’s cases because of Lauren’s story.

Now, every missing person’s report triggers a comprehensive investigation regardless of whether the circumstances suggest voluntary disappearance.

Text messages and digital communications are scrutinized more carefully.

Family members are interviewed more thoroughly.

And crucially, properties associated with the missing person, especially properties belonging to spouses or partners, are given closer attention.

“The Lauren Martinez case changed how we approach these investigations,” Detective Sarah Brennan said in a 2024 training video used by police departments across the country.

“We can’t take anything at face value anymore. We have to look deeper, ask harder questions, and never assume that someone just chose to leave.”

Julie Hendris, Lauren’s best friend, still lives in Burlington.

She visits Lauren’s grave.

Lauren was given a proper burial in Greenwood Cemetery after her remains were released.

Every Sunday, “I failed her,” Julie said in a newspaper interview.

“She reached out to me for help, and I didn’t push hard enough to figure out what was wrong. I think about that every single day. What if I’d insisted she’d tell me what was scaring her? What if I’d been more persistent when Miguel said she’d gone to Connecticut? Maybe I could have saved her.”

But Julie has also become an advocate for recognizing signs of danger in domestic relationships.

She gives talks at community centers and churches about trusting your instincts, about not accepting easy explanations when something feels wrong, about the importance of asking friends directly if they’re safe.

“Lauren was scared.”

Julie tells audiences.

“She knew something bad was going to happen. She reached out, but she didn’t want to worry me. Didn’t want to create drama. Didn’t want to accuse Miguel of anything until she was sure. Women are trained to be polite, to not make a fuss, to give people the benefit of the doubt. And sometimes that training kills us.”

The case became a cautionary tale about domestic violence, about financial crimes, about the masks people wear in public while hiding darkness in private.

Miguel Martinez had been everyone’s favorite neighbor, the devoted single father, the helpful guy with the perfect lawn.

And all along, he was a murderer who’d spent 17 years walking on his wife’s grave.

Dr. Patricia Holden, the medical examiner, said it was the most disturbing case of her career.

“The premeditation involved, the construction of that tomb, the fact that he sealed her in there while she was still alive.

It speaks to a level of callousness that’s hard to comprehend.

But what really haunts me is the scratch marks on those walls.

That’s what I see when I close my eyes.

Her desperate fight to survive and how utterly alone she was in those final moments.”

The Riverside Builder embezzlement was never officially solved.

The company was long gone, and there was no one left to press charges against Miguel, but financial analysts estimated he’d stolen somewhere between 75 and $90,000 over a 2-year period.

That was what Lauren’s life was worth to him.

That was the price of his freedom, his reputation, his comfortable middle class existence.

In September 2024, on what would have been the 19th anniversary of Lauren’s murder, Burlington held a vigil in her honor.

More than 300 people attended.

Former students from Riverside Elementary, now adults with children of their own, shared stories about Mrs. Martinez and how she’d inspired them to become teachers themselves.

Colleagues remembered her warmth, her dedication, her infectious love of learning.

One of Lauren’s former students, now a teacher herself, named Amanda Chen, spoke through tears.

“Mrs. Martinez taught me that every person matters, that every voice deserves to be heard. She made me feel special when I was just a shy third grader who didn’t think anyone noticed me. And now knowing how she died, knowing that she tried so hard to escape, but no one could hear her, it breaks my heart. So I make sure that in my classroom every voice is heard. Every child knows they matter. That’s how I honor her.”

Isabella and Marcus both spoke at the vigil.

Marcus, now 28 and working as an environmental consultant, addressed the crowd.

“Our mother was taken from us twice.

First when our father killed her, and then again when he spent 17 years making us believe she’d abandoned us.

We grew up thinking we weren’t enough to make her stay.

That kind of pain shaped our entire lives.

But now we know the truth.

Our mother loved us.

She would never have left us, and she died trying to do the right thing, trying to hold someone accountable for their crimes.”

Isabella added, “My father’s last note to me asked me to remember the good father he’d been, not the monster he became.

But I can’t separate those two people.

The father who tucked me in at night was the same man who’d stood in the backyard earlier that evening standing over my mother’s grave.

The father who taught me to ride a bike was the same man who’d listened to my mother scratching at concrete walls and did nothing.

They’re not two different people.

They’re the same person, and I have to live with that knowledge for the rest of my life.”

The case also raised uncomfortable questions about the limits of family loyalty and the lengths people will go to protect their own secrets.

Miguel had raised two children, by all accounts doing a good job as a father while literally walking over their mother’s grave every single day.

How did he live with himself?

How did he sit at the dinner table with Isabella and Marcus, knowing what he’d done to the woman who’d given them life?

Psychologist Dr. Elliot Nash, who’d worked on the case, offered his perspective.

“People have an enormous capacity for compartmentalization, for creating mental barriers between different parts of their lives.

Miguel convinced himself that he was a good father, that he was doing what was necessary to protect his family.

He rationalized his crime by focusing on the consequences of not committing it.

Prison, financial ruin, his children, and foster care.

Over time, he built an entire narrative in which he was the victim, forced into an impossible choice.

That’s how he lived with himself.

He rewrote history in his own mind.”

The charges that would have been filed against Miguel Martinez had he lived to stand trial were extensive.

First-degree murder, kidnapping, false imprisonment, improper disposal of human remains, filing a false police report, embezzlement, obstruction of justice, and evidence tampering.

The prosecution had built a case that would have likely resulted in life imprisonment without the possibility of parole, possibly even the death penalty given the particularly cruel nature of Lauren’s death.

But his suicide meant there would never be a trial, never be a conviction, never be that moment in a courtroom where a judge looks a defendant in the eye and holds them accountable for their crimes.

For Isabella and Marcus, that absence of closure has been one of the hardest parts of their healing journey.

“I wanted to face him in court,” Isabella said.

“I wanted to look him in the eye and ask him how he could do this to mom, to us. I wanted him to have to sit there and listen to every detail of what he did and see the pain it caused. His suicide took that away from us. He got to escape and we’re left with all these questions that will never be answered.”

The physical evidence from the case, the concrete slabs, the metal pipe, Lauren’s remains after they were examined, were all properly documented.

And then, at Isabella and Marcus’ request, destroyed.

They didn’t want any of it to exist anymore.

Didn’t want there to be artifacts of their mother’s suffering sitting in some evidence room.

The only thing they kept was that video Danny Chen had recorded on his phone.

The construction worker had given them a copy.

And though they’ve never watched it, they keep it as a reminder.

A reminder that truth eventually comes to light.

A reminder that their mother’s story didn’t end in silence.

A reminder that even when someone tries to bury the evidence 4 ft underground and seal it with concrete, eventually someone will dig deep enough to find it.

Lauren Maria Martinez was 36 years old when she died.

She’d been a teacher for 11 years.

She’d touched the lives of hundreds of children.

She’d been a devoted mother, a loyal friend, a beloved daughter and sister.

She’d discovered a crime and had the courage to confront the person responsible, not knowing that her moral stand would cost her everything.

The last thing she saw was probably the interior of that garage where Miguel struck her.

And then darkness.

And then when she woke up, the concrete walls of her tomb, the last sounds she heard were probably her own screams, her own desperate clawing at those walls, her own fading breath as the oxygen ran out.

No one deserves to die that way.

No one deserves to be erased from the world while their murderer goes on living, pretending to grieve, raising their children on a foundation of lies.

But Lauren Martinez’s story didn’t end in that tomb.

It lived on in the students she’d taught who became teachers themselves.

It lived on in her children who channeled their trauma into advocacy and change.

It lived on in the policy reforms that came from her case.

Reforms that might save other missing persons from being dismissed too easily.

On Lauren’s gravestone in Greenwood Cemetery, Isabella and Marcus chose an inscription that Lauren had once said to Marcus when he was struggling in school.

“Keep trying. Keep growing. Keep shining your light.”

And in a way, that’s exactly what Lauren’s legacy has done.

Her light snuffed out in that dark tomb 17 years ago has been rekindled by everyone who’s learned her story and vowed to do better, to look harder, to never assume that disappearance means abandonment.

The Martinez case will never be fully resolved.

The questions will always outnumber the answers.

But Lauren Maria Martinez is remembered.

Her life mattered.

Her death matters.

And the secret garden that her husband tended for 17 years has been transformed into something else.

A reminder that truth, no matter how deeply buried, will eventually come to light.

Rest in peace, Lauren.

You deserve so much.