An Oregon man is prison-bound after prosecutors said he stabbed a romantic rival in the heart during a fatal attack that was “motivated by jealousy.”
Eliazar Martinez-Rodriguez, 35, was sentenced on Tuesday, September 15, to 19 years and two months in prison for killing Jefferson Smith Cates in 2024, according to the Clackamas County District Attorney’s Office. Cates died at age 30.
He was sentenced to an additional five years and 10 months in prison for beating a jail inmate after he was charged in Cates’ death, the office said in a news release. Martinez-Rodriguez is to serve 25 years in total.
Before Martinez-Rodriguez killed Cates, both men were romantically seeing the same woman, according to prosecutors.
At first, while Martinez-Rodriguez would sometimes stay with the woman at her Clackamas apartment, he didn’t know she “also had been intimate with Cates,” the district attorney’s office said.
But at some point, Martinez-Rodriguez learned of their romantic relationship and became furious.
On June 22, 2024, the fatal encounter between Martinez-Rodriguez and Cates followed shortly after Cates and the woman arrived at her apartment together, according to prosecutors.
Martinez-Rodriguez was also at the residence when they got there.
Cates, who prosecutors said became “unnerved” by Martinez-Rodriguez, tried to get away and left the woman’s apartment.
Martinez-Rodriguez found Cates at another location at the complex and stabbed him, striking his heart, according to prosecutors. Witnesses said they heard Cates scream.
Cates ultimately went to an acquaintance’s apartment and died of the stabbing, prosecutors said.
His mother, Lynette Brunson, told Martinez-Rodriguez at sentencing, “I carry Jefferson’s ashes with me every day, but you carry his blood on your hands.”
“The violent and vicious manner in which Mr. Martinez-Rodriguez murdered Jefferson by stabbing him in the heart … caused me to have recurring nightmares resulting in high blood pressure, a stroke and heart damage called takosubo cardiomyopathy … nicknamed ‘broken-heart syndrome,’” Brunson also said.
“Because that is exactly what Mr. Martinez-Rodriguez has done, breaking not only my heart, but the hearts of everyone who knew and loved Jefferson,” she added.
Martinez-Rodriguez ultimately pleaded guilty to first-degree manslaughter in Cates’ death and to second-degree assault over the alleged unprovoked beating of an inmate in May.
When Martinez-Rodriguez fatally stabbed Cates, he was on supervised release following his federal prison sentence in a separate case related to firearms, according to prosecutors. Though he violated the conditions of release and was arrested as a result, a federal judge decided against detaining him over the violation.
Brunson said the judge’s choice “to let Mr. Martinez-Rodriguez out of custody literally haunts me.”
