Bronx Street Astronomer 'Jupiter Joe' Convicted of Killing Teen After DNA Linked Him to Crime Decades Later By Christine Pelisek

A Bronx astronomer, known by the name “Jupiter Joe,” was recently found guilty of the 1999 murder of a 13-year-old girl, who had dreams of becoming an astronaut.

Joseph Martinez, convicted on Friday, Nov. 14, was linked to the killing of Minerliz “Minnie” Soriano through DNA evidence.

According to a Bronx District Attorney’s Office press release, Martinez, who offered adults and children free astronomy lessons about the planets and stars, “sexually abused Minerliz and compressed her neck, causing her death.”

The straight-A student was last seen leaving her middle school on Feb. 24, 1999.

Her body was found four days later in a garbage bag inside a dumpster behind a Bronx video store, about two miles from her home.

“She dreamed of one day becoming an astronaut,” her best friend Kimberly Ortiz previously told PEOPLE. “I used to make fun of her about it,” she said. “I used to tell her, ‘We’re from the Bronx, we’re not going to be astronauts.'”

The teen, who grew up in the Pelham Parkway section of the Bronx, was a “latchkey kid,” says retired NYPD homicide detective Malcolm Reiman, who worked on the Soriano case.

“She’d sit in the lobby doing her homework until someone came home to unlock the apartment door,” he tells PEOPLE. “She was responsible for doing the family’s laundry. The family didn’t have much money, so she would do door to door candy sales to make a little money for herself. And she was knocking on every door in that building and selling candy.”

“Every male in that building had the opportunity to meet this little girl and my feeling was there was a predator among them,” he says.

Reiman says Martinez, who lived in the same apartment building, was interviewed in 1999 and told authorities he had previously seen the teen getting mail in the lobby and selling candy door to door with her sister.

But he was never considered a suspect at the time and the case went cold.

Two decades later, however, when DNA found on Soriano’s sweater partially matched that of Martinez’s deceased father, investigators followed him and collected a straw he left at a diner — which later matched crime scene evidence.

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It was the first time New York City used familial DNA testing — a technique that searches offender databanks for a male relative of an unknown perpetrator — to catch a killer.

For Reiman, he is thankful the “nightmare” case is finally over.

“I think it’s a closing of a nightmare,” he says. “And I’m hoping that she’s at peace now. I think that’s what we all hope, that she’s finally got justice and that she’s at peace now.”

Martinez is scheduled to be sentenced on Jan. 8, 2026.