Jurors found Noel Ledesma guilty after prosecutors said he strangled Yvette Martinez and left her body in the trunk of a burning car.
SALINAS, Calif. — A Monterey County jury convicted a former Soledad man of first-degree murder in the 2010 killing of his ex-girlfriend, ending a cold-case prosecution built around rejection, jealousy and a burning car left on a remote road.
The defendant, Noel Ledesma, 44, was found guilty Feb. 10 in the death of 22-year-old Yvette Martinez. Prosecutors said Martinez and Ledesma had ended their relationship earlier in 2010 but were still in contact. Over time, the district attorney’s office argued, Ledesma kept trying to win her back while Martinez moved on. The case took years to mature into a prosecution, but when it finally reached a jury, the state presented a blunt theory: humiliation over rejection led to murder, and an attempt to burn the victim’s car became part of the cover-up.
According to prosecutors, Martinez spent the evening of Oct. 9, 2010, with friends and a new boyfriend, including a trip to a corn maze. During that time, the district attorney’s office said, Ledesma repeatedly called and texted her and was largely ignored. Prosecutors also said some of his friends mocked him for seeming desperate and unable to get her attention. That detail became central to the motive theory at trial. The state said Ledesma then strangled Martinez, placed her body in the trunk of her car and drove east into a rural area. The next day, authorities found the vehicle burning near Highway 198 and Priest Valley Road, with Martinez’s body still in the trunk.
Prosecutors said the evidence also showed an effort to destroy the scene more completely. According to the district attorney’s office, Ledesma tried to push the burning car into a canyon, but it became stuck on a berm instead. That failure may have helped preserve the evidence later used in the case. The first-degree murder verdict means jurors accepted the state’s view that the killing was deliberate and premeditated, not the product of a sudden quarrel or a lesser form of homicide. For a case that sat unresolved for about 15 years, that was the prosecution’s most important hurdle.
The long delay gave the case a cold-case shape uncommon in intimate-partner killings. Prosecutors first announced a formal murder charge in 2025, years after the original investigation. That gap meant the state had to persuade jurors with a mix of preserved evidence, reconstructed relationship history and motive testimony tied to events from a single night in 2010. Cold cases often falter when memory fades or physical proof weakens. Here, the district attorney’s office said the evidence held long enough to support a conviction. The relationship background, the repeated calls, the ridicule from friends and the attempt to burn the car gave the jury a complete narrative arc rather than a mystery without motive.
Ledesma’s conviction resolves the central question of guilt but not the case entirely. He still faces sentencing, where the court will fix the punishment tied to the first-degree murder verdict. Under California law, that conviction carries a long prison term. For Martinez’s family, the verdict provides the clearest public answer yet in a case that began with a young woman’s burning car on a remote road and ended more than a decade later in a Monterey County courtroom.
Ledesma now stands convicted of first-degree murder. The next milestone is sentencing, where the court will impose the prison term attached to the jury’s verdict.
Author note: Last updated March 15, 2026.