Prosecutors said he strangled Yvette Martinez, put her body in the trunk of her car and tried to destroy evidence by setting the vehicle on fire.

SALINAS, Calif. — A Monterey County jury has convicted a former Soledad man of first-degree murder in the 2010 killing of his ex-girlfriend, bringing a long-delayed resolution to a case prosecutors said was driven by rejection and humiliation.

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 dated earlier in 2010 but broke up while remaining in contact. Over time, the prosecution argued, Ledesma kept trying to reunite with her while she moved on. By early October of that year, Martinez had begun seeing someone else. The case that followed became one of Monterey County’s long-running cold-case prosecutions, ending only after investigators revived the matter years later and put it before a jury in 2026.

According to the district attorney’s office, Martinez went out in Salinas with friends and her new boyfriend on Oct. 9, 2010, including a stop at a corn maze. Prosecutors said Ledesma spent much of that night calling and texting her, but she largely ignored him. The state said some of Ledesma’s friends then mocked him for appearing desperate and for being unable to reach her. That detail became central to the motive theory. Prosecutors argued that after being ridiculed and rejected, Ledesma strangled Martinez, placed her body in the trunk of her car and drove east. The next day, authorities found the vehicle burning off Highway 198 and Priest Valley Road. Martinez’s body was inside the trunk.

The prosecution also said Ledesma tried to push the burning vehicle into a canyon to further hide the crime, but the car became stuck on a berm. That, according to the district attorney, helped preserve evidence that later supported the murder case. Public reports on the conviction do not describe every piece of trial testimony in detail, but they do show that jurors accepted the state’s theory of a deliberate killing followed by an effort to destroy evidence. The first-degree murder verdict means the jury concluded the crime was willful, deliberate and premeditated, not a sudden quarrel or lesser homicide. That was a major step in a case that had remained unresolved for about 15 years.

The case carried an unusual mix of old and new. The killing itself dates to 2010, but public attention sharpened again only after Ledesma was arrested years later and the district attorney’s office pushed the case to trial. Cold cases often rise or fall on whether investigators can preserve enough physical evidence and witness memory to convince a jury long after the crime. Here, prosecutors appear to have built a story around relationship history, repeated contact, humiliation by friends and the effort to burn the car with Martinez still in the trunk. Those details gave jurors a narrative of motive and concealment that survived the long gap between the killing and the trial.

The verdict does not end the case entirely. Ledesma still faces sentencing, where the court will determine the punishment for the first-degree murder conviction. Under California law, the conviction carries the prospect of a lengthy prison term, and the sentencing hearing is expected to formalize the legal consequences of a case that began on a fall night in 2010 and stretched across more than a decade. For Martinez’s family, the jury’s decision provides the clearest public answer yet to how and why her death was treated as homicide after her burning car was found on a remote road.

Ledesma now stands convicted of first-degree murder in Monterey County. The next milestone is sentencing, where the court will fix the prison term tied to the jury’s verdict.

Author note: Last updated March 15, 2026.