Case Profiles #81
If anyone has a photo of Angelica, please email us at truecrimene@gmail.com
Angelica Martinez
On April 5th, 2003, 23-year-old Angelica Martinez pulled her mom into the bathroom of her uncle’s apartment in Hartford, Connecticut for a private conversation. Angelica asked her mom to fight for custody of her 2-year-old daughter if anything happened to her. Alarmed, her mom asked her what was going on and why she’d say something like that. Angelica’s body was found fifteen days later on April 20th in an industrial parking lot in Springfield, Massachusetts behind a nightclub called Club X-Static. A houseless man found her body at around 4:20 a.m. She was last seen two days prior in her apartment she shared with her boyfriend, Peyton Lazio, getting ready for a night out with her friends. Angelica was hard working, a great mom and taking night classes for a radiology degree at Capital Community College on top of everything else to better herself and her daughter’s life. Autopsy results were inconclusive and the official cause of her death was ruled “undetermined.” Captain William Noonan, head of the Detective Bureau at the Springfield Police Department, stated, “The challenges are obvious. We don’t have a smoking gun telling us how she died.” While suspicious, police don’t even have enough evidence to say that a crime was committed.
Angelica had plans to pick up her two friends and drive to the Hippodrome, a club in Springfield. Angelica was found wearing her clubbing outfit: a brown lace top and brown denim pants. She had no ID, no wallet and no purse, and all of her jewelry was gone. Her sister Elsie stated, “My sister never goes anywhere without jewelry.” It’s not believed Angelica had been beaten and then mugged as the only outward wounds were a cut above her left eye and on the left side of her chin. She likely never made it to the club. Elsie stated, “Somebody’s got to pay for this. You don’t leave a girl like that in the back of a parking lot like she’s trash. That was a mother, a daughter. So beautiful.” Angelica’s boyfriend, 33-year-old Peyton, was known to be extremely controlling and abusive. Angelica and Peyton had lived briefly in Florida with Angelica working at a Walgreen’s and Peyton unemployed. He would spend his time at Walgreen’s while Angelica was there. He had gotten into trouble in the mid 1990’s for stalking after following an ex-girlfriend home late at night after she would get off of work, and he made attempts to get her work schedule from her coworkers so he would know when she would be there.
Angelica had expressed to family and friends that she wanted to leave Peyton but also wanted her daughter to have a relationship with her father and have him in her life. She began seeing another man named Christopher, and Angelica’s friends and family said that Peyton was aware of this relationship. Christopher said that he often urged Angelica to go to the police about Peyton as he had made threats to her, but Angelica didn’t because she was worried about her daughter. Peyton was found to have hidden tape recorders throughout the apartment and in his and Angelica’s shared vehicle to record Angelica’s conversations. Police found some of the tape recorders after Angelica’s death. Towards the end of 2001, Peyton moved out and Angelica filed a motion for sole custody of their daughter. In March of 2002, Angelica filed a motion with the court to force Peyton to pay child support, but a month later changed her mind after saying that she and Peyton “reconciled their differences” and that he had moved back into the apartment. A month before her death, Angelica confided in her sister and her friends that she didn’t love Peyton anymore and she and her sister began coming up with a plan to get her out of there. Elsie stated, “We were going to gather [the baby’s] clothes and Angie’s clothes. The next day they would take a flight. We talked about it for about a month. When it came down to it, she said, ‘Elsie, I’m afraid. When he finds out why I left, he’ll find me. If he sees me with another man, he’s going to kill me.’” On the night of April 18th, Angelica was to meet two friends: Michelle Sosa and Janet Morales, to go to the Hippodrome club in Springfield. She also planned to try to meet Peyton at some point that night as well. Angelica’s friends had last heard from her at around 9:00 p.m. and said she was excited about getting ready to go out. Peyton said he kissed her goodbye and that she left at around 10:30 p.m. She never picked up her friends and didn’t even take her car she shared with Peyton. Per her cellphone records, Angelica made dozens of calls that night, including several to Christopher, until about 9:57 p.m. The next call was at 11:51 p.m. when someone used it to dial Christopher’s home phone in Springfield. Angelica didn’t have her cellphone on her person when her body was found and her phone still has not been found.
There have been no further leads in Angelica’s case. Anyone with any information on the suspicious death of Angelica Martinez is asked to please call Springfield Police Detective Bureau at 413-787-6355.
Aisha Dickson
On the evening of January 6th, 1995, police were called to a home in Bangor, Maine. The caller was reporting that they had found their baby unresponsive in her crib. When police arrived, they discovered 8-month-old Aisha Dickson, who very noticeably had been severely beaten. She was rushed to the hospital where she was pronounced dead. Aisha had weighed only 11 pounds at the time of her death, and every bone in her body had been broken, with some old injuries healing and some of them being new. Aisha had been living with her mother Sarah, her father DeShawn, and her maternal grandmother June. When police asked what happened that day, Sarah told them that after she got home, she took Aisha out shopping and then returned home to play with her and feed her before putting her down for the night. Sarah claimed she had been “fussy” all day and said that after being in her crib for a little while, she had woken up and was given a bottle to go back to sleep. Later, Sarah woke up in the middle of the night to check on her daughter and noticed that she had “thrown up some formula” and had choked on it. June called 911 while DeShawn performed CPR. Unfortunately, Bangor police could not conclusively determine who had beaten Aisha this severely, and as a result, no one in the home was charged with her murder. Following Aisha’s death, DeShawn and Sarah moved away and proceeded to have two more children who were taken away by Child Protective Services. A friend of the parents, Brian Stormann, claimed that while visiting the family at the hospital shortly after Aisha’s death, DeShawn confessed to the baby’s murder, saying, “I don’t understand. I’ve done that a lot of times. She can’t be dead.” Despite the implications that someone in that house was responsible for her murder, no one has been charged. If you or anyone you know has any information on the death of Aisha Dickson, please call Bangor Police at 207-947-7382.
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If anyone has a photo of Angelica, please email us at truecrimene@gmail.com
wabi.tv - “Bangor Police seek information on decades-old investigation into baby’s death”