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It’s like the plot of a film noir Hollywood script. But the case of the gang killer and his jailer girlfriend is nonfiction, and it is troubling on so many levels.
Jody Rufino Martinez, 41, is a self-professed “soldier” in the Syndicato de Nuevo Mexico prison gang and is looking at life in federal prison after his conviction last month on murder and racketeering charges.
But top billing goes to Santana Bustamante, 29. She’s a corrections officer at the Rio Arriba County Detention Center in Tierra Amarilla, where Martinez was a prisoner. Somewhere along the line, they became lovers.
The jailer was linked to the killer when federal authorities began investigating SNM’s criminal activities. A month after his release from jail in September 2018, Martinez allegedly shot a man in the groin. The FBI says Bustamante waited in a truck outside the victim’s home while Martinez went inside and shot the man.