Authorities said the child was strangled before a fire was set in her room in July 2022.

PERRYTON, Texas — A 43-year-old man has been sentenced to life in prison without parole after pleading guilty in the killing of 4-year-old Hope Raley, a case that began when firefighters answering a house fire in Perryton found the girl dead and the defendant hiding under the home.

What first appeared to be a morning fire on South Drake Street turned into a capital murder case after investigators concluded Hope had been strangled before the blaze was set. The plea closed a case that drew in local police, the Texas Department of Public Safety, the State Fire Marshal’s Office and county prosecutors. The immediate stakes were both criminal and factual: authorities had to determine whether the child died in the fire or whether the fire had been used to hide a killing.

Firefighters and police were called on July 20, 2022, to a home at 802 S. Drake in Perryton, a Panhandle city in Ochiltree County near the Oklahoma line. Witnesses told first responders a young child might still be inside. Crews moved in and found Hope dead in her bed while working the fire, which police later said seemed to have started on the bed. The fire was mostly limited to one room, according to later reporting on the case, but the scene quickly widened beyond fire suppression. A homeowner told authorities a man was still inside the house. During the search, responders found Humberto Martinez in a crawl space beneath the residence. He was taken for treatment for smoke inhalation, and the child’s body was sent to Lubbock for an autopsy.

The medical findings shifted the case. The State Fire Marshal’s Office said a medical exam showed Hope died from strangulation before the fire was set. Investigators then examined how the blaze began and concluded Martinez intentionally started it with a lighter and combustibles to cover the crime. State Fire Marshal Debra Knight said the investigation helped “reveal the truth in a complex and tragic case.” Officials also said Martinez was the last person seen with Hope. The official record still leaves some questions unanswered in public, including a clear motive and the full nature of Martinez’s relationship to the home at the time of the fire. But the central evidence trail became clear: a child found dead in a burned room, an autopsy ruling out fire as the cause of death, and a fire investigation that treated the blaze as deliberate.

The case moved in stages over more than three years. Martinez was arrested the next day in Lubbock. Early coverage said he was first charged with second-degree felony arson after investigators connected him to the blaze. By October 2022, Perryton police had announced a capital murder arrest, and local reporting later said the formal capital murder charge came in September 2022. Prosecutors ultimately pursued the count that applies when a child younger than 10 is killed. On March 4, 2026, Martinez pleaded guilty to capital murder in Ochiltree County. With the approval of Hope’s family, according to local reports and county officials quoted afterward, the plea ended the case without a trial and brought the mandatory outcome of life in prison without parole rather than a continuing court fight over what happened in the house that morning.

Local and state officials described the prosecution as the product of overlapping agencies. Ochiltree County Attorney Jose N. Meraz said the fire investigation showed the matter was “more complex than a simple house fire.” In a separate local account, Meraz said Hope was “loving and full of life” and said the work involved the Perryton Police Department, the Ochiltree County Sheriff’s Department, the Office of the Attorney General of Texas, the Texas State Fire Marshal’s Office, the Department of Public Safety, the Amarillo Police Department and the county attorney’s office. The child’s obituary said Hope died July 20, 2022, and listed a memorial service held in Perryton on July 26 of that year. That public record placed the case in the small-town frame that officials later returned to when they spoke of loss, not only prosecution.

People in Perryton also remembered the shock of how the case began. Former Perryton Police Assistant Chief Nick Yara told a local television station that in his career, this was “by far the worst case” he had dealt with. The words captured why the file stayed with the community long after the scene was cleared and the charges were filed. The image at the center of the case never changed: firefighters entering a house for what looked like a room fire, then discovering a child dead and a man concealed beneath the floor. The case did not unfold through one dramatic courtroom twist. Instead, it was built through a sequence of findings from the fire scene, the autopsy, the arrest and the eventual plea.

Martinez remains sentenced to life without the possibility of parole. With the guilty plea entered and sentence imposed, the next milestone is administrative rather than evidentiary: the case now stands as closed in court, while the public record remains limited to the facts released by officials and local reports.

Author note: Last updated April 1, 2026.