Celia Linda Martinez, 50, was one of five people murdered at Pato’s Place, a bar in Tulare, California, on July 18, 1995. Perpetrators wearing ski masks entered the bar with shotguns, demanded money from patrons, collected about $300, and then shot the victims in the head at point-blank range. The scene was described as a place of carnage with heavy bloodshed.

The investigation produced few leads until 1997, when Anthony Wolfe—arrested on unrelated counterfeiting charges—cooperated with authorities and implicated Donald and Timothy Young. The Young brothers were arrested in 1999, later indicted by a grand jury in 2002, and tried beginning in 2005. In December 2005 a jury found both guilty of five counts of murder and one count of attempted murder, with special allegations exposing them to the death penalty.