Joyvaline Martinez was 23 when she disappeared from East Hartford, Connecticut. She was last seen on October 10, 2003, and did not show up for her own birthday party — an absence her family said was out of character while she was living with her mother.

In September 2007 a hunter found skeletal remains in woods behind a strip mall off Hartford Road in New Britain. Over time investigators recovered remains of multiple women from that secluded site; advanced decomposition delayed identification. Joyvaline’s mother provided a DNA sample, and in September 2013 mitochondrial DNA testing confirmed one set of those remains was Joyvaline’s. Her death was classified a homicide, along with the deaths of Diane Cusack and Mary Jane Menard, women who had been known to frequent the same downtown New Britain area and struggled with drug dependency.

Subsequent searches at the burial site uncovered additional victims, bringing the total to seven. In 2015 authorities publicly identified a suspect, William Devin Howell, already incarcerated since 2005 for a manslaughter conviction. Does anyone have information about Joyvaline’s life in East Hartford or her last known movements?