HOUSTON -–The “promising” area indicated by ground radar as a possible burial site for a missing pregnant woman turned up nothing Wednesday, investigators said.
Searchers combing 328 acres of Waller County land for the body of Senovia Medina found a "promising" area of disturbed earth Wednesday afternoon using ground-penetrating radar. The 37-year-old woman was last seen alive in January of 2006.
The searchers included police, Texas EquuSearch and other volunteers. A tractor was used to dig into the location but it was not a burial site after all. Searchers will continue the hunt on Thursday.
They started their search on Tuesday, just days after Medina’s boyfriend was arrested on weapons charges. Police arrested Miguel Antonio Martinez after a SWAT standoff at his southwest Houston home Friday. They said he was making and selling illegal silencers.
But investigators said before he was arrested, Martinez confessed to a wired informant that he’d killed his girlfriend back in 2006. Investigators said he later confessed a second time, but changed his story.
He told investigators he accidentally killed Medina and tried to perform CPR, but when that didn’t work he wrapped her body in garbage bags and buried her in a wooded area south of I-10, near Woods
Road, in Waller County.
But Martinez could not or did not give investigators an exact location in the 328 acre mix of woods and open fields. So the second day of searching included ground-penetrating radar and a remote-controlled airplane outfitted with a digital camera to find a hastily dug shallow grave.
"We can pick out items or objects that the foot searchers might need to go in and actually clear," said Gene Robinson of RP Flight Systems, a group that was working with Texas EquuSearch in the recovery effort.
After the radar spotted the long-narrow area of disturbed ground late Wednesday afternoon, investigators brought in a backhoe tractor to start digging.
Earlier in the day, Medina’s siblings showed up at the search site with a portrait of their sister and the grief they’ve carried in the five long years since she vanished.
"She was my good sister," said Rosa Amelia Medina, through tears. "We miss her so, so much."
"A spectacular sister," said her brother, Angelo Medina. "But she’s not gone. She lives in my heart."
Investigators said though Martinez has not been charged with Medina’s murder, that could change soon – whether or not they find a body.
"The search should have been done five years ago," said Houston Police Sergeant and Homicide investigator J. J. Wilson. "But we didn’t have the information then that we do now. We’re just trying to make up for lost time and finish this investigation and make a good case out of this."
Police believe Martinez killed Medina because he thought the baby she was carrying wasn’t his. She was three months pregnant when she disappeared.
"She’s not gone," said Angelo Medina. "She’s with God. She’s up there … Our angel with the little baby."
Investigators on Wednesday morning said they’d already found numerous bones and bone fragments in the search area, but because the land is heavily traveled by cattle and wild animals, they did not yet know if the bones were human.
Meanwhile, Martinez remained in jail Wednesday on $500,000 bond.
