Testimony begins in rape trial of two former Albuquerque firefighters

Attorneys on Tuesday offered jurors two starkly different accounts of an encounter between three former Albuquerque firefighters and a woman who accused them of raping her in 2023.

Defense attorneys described the incident as “a consensual sexual experience” at an Albuquerque apartment following a charity golf tournament.

Prosecutors said the men plied her with alcohol and raped her after one of the men invited her to his apartment complex for drinks and a swim in his community pool.

Testimony began Tuesday in the trials of Aden Heyman, 48, and Anthony Martin, 46, each on three counts of criminal sexual penetration. The 2nd Judicial District Court trial is scheduled through Friday before Judge Britt Baca.

The third former firefighter, Angel Portillo, 33, also is charged with three counts of criminal sexual penetration for his role in the incident. No trial has been scheduled in Portillo’s case.

Albuquerque Fire Rescue spokesman Lt. Jason Fejer said Tuesday that all three no longer work for the agency.

At the time of the alleged attack on July 15, 2023, Heyman was a lieutenant, Portillo was a firefighter and Martin had recently retired as a driver with the department.

In testimony on Tuesday, the woman, now 40, pointed out Martin and Heyman to jurors as two of the men who attacked her.

The woman “eventually blacked out completely at the pool,” Assistant District Attorney Crystal Cabrido said in opening statements. The woman woke up pinned to a bed in a dark room with three naked men around her, she said.

“She began to immediately cry as she realized that they were having sexual intercourse with her,” Cabrido told jurors. The woman fled the apartment by jumping out the window of a ground-floor bathroom, she said.

Heyman’s attorney, Robert Gorence, told jurors that the woman became sexually aggressive with all three of the men as the group was drinking around the pool that evening.

Gorence said that Heyman will testify that the woman made sexual advances and sexually explicit comments to him and the other men before the group entered Martin’s apartment. A cellphone photo shown to jurors Tuesday showed her kissing one of the men beside the pool.

The woman refused to submit to a rape-kit examination until three days after the alleged attack, Gorence told jurors.

“There is no DNA evidence, at all, linking Mr. Heyman or Mr. Martin with any criminal offense” even though officers urged her to submit to a rape examination, Gorence said in opening statements. “It wasn’t for lack of trying.”

The alleged victim testified Tuesday that her sister, who held a leadership post in Albuquerque Fire Rescue, introduced her to Martin and Portillo, so the four could play together in a golf tournament to benefit a high school sports program.

After the tournament, the woman went to Martin’s apartment complex at his invitation to swim and relax, she told jurors. Her sister felt sick and didn’t join them, she said.

“We were having fun in the sun at the pool,” she testified. Later in the afternoon, Heyman joined them at the pool, she said.

Prosecutors introduced a photograph the woman sent to her sister showing her kissing one of the men to “mess with the sister,” she testified.

The woman testified that she continued drinking and eventually became so intoxicated that she blacked out.

The woman testified that she woke up in Martin’s apartment with Martin, Portillo and Heyman naked in the room with her, she told jurors.

“I was terrified,” she said. “I woke up and I was crying. I remember the three of them were naked.”

The woman testified that she fled the apartment by telling the men she needed to use the bathroom, then ran downstairs and climbed out a bathroom window.

A resident at the complex testified Tuesday that he and his wife called 911 after he found the woman crying and distraught. Albuquerque police responded to the complex at 11 p.m.

Martin’s attorney, Ben Ortega, said in opening statements that the encounter began as consensual sex, but at some point “she turned on them.”

The woman refused to be drug tested or to turn her phone over to law enforcement for analysis, Ortega told jurors.

“What you will see from here is going to be a shifting morass of conflicting statements and actions,” he said.