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When Leticia Martinez-Cosman struck up a conversation with a stranger sitting near her at a Costco food hall near Seattle, she thought she had made a new friend. The pair talked about baseball and the Seattle Mariners, said Ricardo Martinez, Martinez-Cosman’s brother. Martinez-Cosman, who had company tickets, invited the man to watch a game on opening weekend.
“Just like, on the spur of the moment,” Martinez told The Washington Post. “Because my sister is open and friendly.”
A selfie that Martinez-Cosman sent to a friend from the March 31 ballgame shows her smiling in Mariners gear from seats near home plate. Next to her was the man she had invited, Brett Gitchel, also smiling playfully and sticking out his tongue.
But after the game, Martinez-Cosman disappeared. On Monday, a little more than three weeks later, Gitchel was charged with murder after Martinez-Cosman was found dead, authorities said.
The story of Martinez-Cosman’s death shocked Martinez and the Seattle community that had searched for the 58-year-old woman in the 11 days she was missing. Gitchel, 46, pleaded not guilty to charges of premeditated murder, kidnapping and arson after investigators laid out a lengthy narrative that accused him of killing Martinez-Cosman, abducting and attempting to kill her adult son and taking steps to hide evidence of the crimes.
An attorney representing Gitchel declined to comment.
Martinez-Cosman, known as Leti to her friends, was a giving person who enjoyed spending time with her family at the ballpark and putting on events for her community, Martinez said. She worked in human resources but used to run a cafe where she hosted live-music shows and Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, offering the participants free coffee.
“If she saw something, someone sad, she’d always go up to them and try to make them laugh or make their day or something,” Martinez said.
Martinez said his sister was performing one such act of kindness when she invited Gitchel to the Mariners game. But Martinez-Cosman did not return home after the pair left the game together, according to court documents.
Calls to Martinez-Cosman’s phone went to voice mail, and a friend told investigators that she received uncharacteristic texts from Martinez-Cosman’s phone the next morning, canceling a babysitting commitment and saying she was going to see a friend, according to court documents.
Two days after the Mariners game, Martinez-Cosman’s son, Patrick Cosman, was kidnapped and attacked by a man investigators later identified as Gitchel. Cosman, 24, said a man approached the home he shared with his mother in White Center, a town south of Seattle, in the early hours of the morning. The man claimed that Martinez-Cosman had been in an accident and that he would take Cosman to see her, according to court documents. After driving Cosman to the city of Renton, the man attempted to strangle Cosman, documents state. Cosman fought off his attacker, biting his hand, and the man fled after Cosman called police.
Cosman called his dad, then went to Martinez, who said he was stunned to learn about both the attack and his sister’s disappearance. Martinez reported his sister as a missing person to police.
Just two hours after Cosman was attacked, the Seattle Fire Department responded to a vehicle fire in south Seattle, a few miles from the ballpark where Martinez-Cosman was last seen. Investigators later identified the vehicle as an SUV belonging to Martinez-Cosman, according to court documents. The fire was intentionally started using an accelerant, investigators said.
But Martinez-Cosman was still missing. Her brother, restless, did everything he could think of to continue the search himself. He spent a late night driving to different bars with Gitchel’s photo, which Martinez-Cosman’s friend had shared.
“I spent like a whole hour and a half up and down all the bars around West Seattle,” Martinez said. “I said, ‘If you find this guy, just hold him, and we’ll call the cops or something.’”
Seattle police identified Gitchel by obtaining Martinez-Cosman’s phone records, documents state. Investigators linked a number she called on the evening of the ballgame and the next day to Gitchel, whose driver’s license photo matched the image of man in the selfie taken by Martinez-Cosman, according to court records.
Gitchel was arrested by Seattle police on April 5 and initially denied knowing Martinez-Cosman or having attended a Mariners game, according to court documents. He later admitted to accompanying her to the March 31 game after being shown the photo of the two together, but he said he didn’t know where she was and that she left with another person at the end of the game, investigators said.
Based on physical evidence and cellphone data, investigators said they determined that Gitchel was the man who attacked Martinez-Cosman’s son. Gitchel had days-old cuts and scrapes on his hands, and cell tower data placed Gitchel’s cellphone both at Cosman’s home when Cosman said he was kidnapped and in Renton a few hours later, according to court documents.
Cell tower data also placed Gitchel at the south Seattle location where Martinez-Cosman’s car was found on the morning it was set on fire, according to court records, and detectives found security video from a gas station near the location showing Gitchel purchasing a lighter and a gas canister and filling it with fuel that morning, according to court documents. A similar canister was found behind the bushes by the wreck of Martinez-Cosman’s car, investigators said.
After his sister disappeared, Martinez returned to work but said he could hardly focus. Every day on his commute, he passed the Renton area where Cosman was attacked. His thoughts went to his missing sister, and he wondered whether she had been taken to that area, too.
“I swear something was telling me, she’s in there, she’s in there,” Martinez said. “She’s got to be in those bushes alongside the freeway. I know she’s around here.”
On April 11, Seattle police found human remains in a wooded area in Renton, KIRO 7 reported. Martinez identified the body as his sister’s. She still had a Mariners wristband from the game, Martinez said.
The King County Medical Examiner’s Office reported that Martinez-Cosman died on April 1, the day after the ballgame, and ruled her death a homicide by strangulation, according to KIRO 7.
Martinez-Cosman’s family has started two fundraisers: one for Martinez-Cosman’s funeral expenses and one for her son, who has autism. Martinez-Cosman was Cosman’s primary caregiver and spent much of her time taking care of him, Martinez said.
Martinez, who was on edge for almost a month as the search for his sister slowly unraveled, is still reeling from her death, he said.
“I’m finding out more and more stuff about her,” Martinez said. “How giving she was and how many friends she had out there. It’s just unreal. She’s going to be missed a lot.”
Source link: https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2023/04/26/seattle-murder-missing-baseball-game/