A Northwest Baltimore man has been convicted of allegedly murdering his own adult daughter before proceeding to dismember her body, and dump her remains at an apartment complex dumpster some two years ago in May 2019.
Malik Samartaney, 68, formerly known as Lawrence “Marty” Banks, an ex-Marine from Northwest Baltimore, has been found guilty of the second-degree murder of his daughter Dominique Foster, 43, and the unlawful disposal of her body.
Samartaney was acquitted of first-degree murder after jurors could not find evidence proving that he killed his daughter with premeditation, the Baltimore Sun reported.
Samartaney's body was recovered in May 2019 after a neighbor alerted 911 to report a suspicious package inside a dumpster of the Clarks Lane Garden Apartments in Northwest Baltimore. After officers rushed to the scene, they found a shopping cart stuffed with black trash bags and Foster’s mangled and headless remains inside.
Foster’s body would be retrieved severely mutilated, taking detectives nearly three weeks to identify her by her tattoos, Fox News reported.
Despite intense searches led by police divers and a bloodhound, authorities were not able to find Foster’s head, hands, feet, or a murder weapon.
Samartaney’s ex-fiancee would go on to testify that she could not reach him for several hours on the day Foster was allegedly killed. She also claimed that she saw him later that night and noticed that he had scratches all over his arms and neck. He rebuffed that they were merely burn marks that he suffered after the radiator of his van overheated.
Google’s GPS systems would later be used to track the movement of Samartaney’s cellphone. It showed that he had left his apartment and traveled around 700 feet through a wooded path to the dumpster where Foster's body would eventually be found. The time on the GPS system matched the time obtained from surveillance camera footage showing an unidentified person pushing the shopping cart with the victim's remains into the dumpster.
Samartaney reportedly told Foster that he was “disgusted” by her and that she did not deserve to be his daughter over her drug habit. He had also sent text messages to Foster's children telling them their mother had contracted HIV and also sent them a video of her shooting up on drugs.
Samartaney's defense attorneys had presented a theory that Foster may have been attacked and murdered by the Latino street gang of MS-13, but this speculation would summarily be dismissed.
Samartaney has previously been sentenced to 15 years in prison for assault after he threw then 7-months-old Foster through a glass door during an argument with her mother in 1975. He was subsequently released in December 1988.
He had also pleaded guilty to killing a drinking buddy in Anne Arundel County in the early 1990s. He was similarly a suspect in the murder of his first wife in the 1970s, and in the killings of his girlfriend’s grown daughter and her infant granddaughter in 2006.
Samartaney faces a maximum of 40 years in prison and is scheduled to be sentenced on Dec. 6 by Baltimore Circuit Court Judge Jennifer Schiffer.
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