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Speaker 1: dot CEO. Forgotten is a production of ihont Media and
Speaker 1: Unusual Productions. Before we start. This podcast contains accounts which
Speaker 1: some listeners will find disturbing, but without them, the story
Speaker 1: can't be fully understood. Please take care while listening last
Speaker 1: time on Forgotten. At the beginning, I thought it was
Speaker 1: a typical case of a Serra killer, but it appeared
Speaker 1: so highly organized group. The fact that a lawyer is
Speaker 1: murdered in such a public way or should we call
Speaker 1: ourn execution, indicates that we're talking about something very big
Speaker 1: behind these murders. If you really want to know the
Speaker 1: underbelly of what, you need to talk to the Devil's lawyer,
Speaker 1: Dante Dante, very smart decided to hide this guy too
Speaker 1: coment to present under false charges under a different name.
Speaker 1: He would always leave me with a little titbit, and
Speaker 1: one of them was this guy's alive if you're interested.
Speaker 1: It was two thousand and three and Alfredo Coccado was
Speaker 1: in Juarez with an assignment from the Dallas Morning News
Speaker 1: find out who is kidding the women and why? Alfredo,
Speaker 1: who had been asking everyone he could think of, but
Speaker 1: no one seemed able to give him answers. Finally, Estas
Speaker 1: Kanda introduced him to Dante almaras, the so called Devil's lawyer,
Speaker 1: and Dante did not disappoint. He had a drug dealer
Speaker 1: on the run hidden in the Horre's prison, who claimed
Speaker 1: firsthand knowledge of the killings. The fact that you had
Speaker 1: an eye witness was incredibly important, he alleged, and I
Speaker 1: had no reason to not beloon, but it alleged to
Speaker 1: be part of the why scottel And it finally worked
Speaker 1: out where I was able to visit this person under
Speaker 1: what as m was an alias. But we talked long
Speaker 1: and long, and I kept asking, so why are these
Speaker 1: women being killed? Alfreda was apparently on the verge of
Speaker 1: getting the story, but just like Dante, the source didn't
Speaker 1: give up all his information at once, and the thing
Speaker 1: that really kind of cut my eyeway said, you know,
Speaker 1: these are women who are coming from other parts of
Speaker 1: the country, who if they go miss him for a
Speaker 1: day or two or a week, no one's going to
Speaker 1: miss him immediately. And so you know, little things started clicking.
Speaker 1: So here was Alfredo sitting in a jail cell in
Speaker 1: Juarez when, to his surprise, this alleged cartel member started
Speaker 1: giving him specifics. I had a night witness who alleged
Speaker 1: that he had been at these parties or these women
Speaker 1: would be brought into and I mean they would turn
Speaker 1: into orgies or rapes, and eventually the women would be
Speaker 1: killed because they knew too much. Alfredo was shocked, although
Speaker 1: more so when the witness went on to explain that
Speaker 1: the women were taken off the streets to celebrate successful
Speaker 1: drug runs to the US. So this was the first
Speaker 1: time that I might talking to someone facebook face and
Speaker 1: he's given me an account, a night witness account, and
Speaker 1: we're like, there's no way we can report that unless
Speaker 1: we really get as much evidence as possible. Alfredo had
Speaker 1: a shocking but potentially plausible explanation for what was happening
Speaker 1: to the women in Huires, But could he trust the information.
Speaker 1: After all, he had heard the account from a drug
Speaker 1: dealer who wants to save his own skin, who he
Speaker 1: met through an underworld lawyer, himself openly on a quest
Speaker 1: for revenge. At times, you feel like an American Joey.
Speaker 1: I feel like everybody's sort of playing you, you know.
Speaker 1: But if it was true, it opened up all kinds
Speaker 1: of new questions. How could the men act with such
Speaker 1: brutality and impunity? Who else knew what Alfredo had just
Speaker 1: been told and who might be complicit in covering it up.
Speaker 1: I'm as Voloshi and I'm this is forgotten. The women
Speaker 1: are by you know, do you know? Hala Felicia. So
Speaker 1: just months earlier, Monica Alfredo's in DC interviewing presidents and ambassadors,
Speaker 1: and now he's in a jail cell in Juarez, interviewing
Speaker 1: a drug dealer with Dante by his side. How does
Speaker 1: he get here? Something to remember here is that Alfredo
Speaker 1: ended up in this jail cell out of naivety more
Speaker 1: so than astute planning. He's convinced that all of Mexico's
Speaker 1: problems will disappear now that it has free and fair elections,
Speaker 1: and he's on his way to Mexico City to cover
Speaker 1: this progress. Wattis was only supposed to be a pit stop.
Speaker 1: He's now waited into the nether world and Dante was
Speaker 1: his link. And how do you make sense of this
Speaker 1: nether world where Dante of a Dandie operates and where
Speaker 1: he's did Alfredo, Well, that's a big question. In Mexico.
Speaker 1: There are these two parallel universes that coexist, the one
Speaker 1: that's visible on the surface and the one that's not.
Speaker 1: And it's that invisible universe that operates completely outside the
Speaker 1: rule of law. It's the one everyone knows exists, but
Speaker 1: nobody talks about. To talk about it openly is to
Speaker 1: ask for trouble because this realm is ruled by organized crime,
Speaker 1: and this is where Alfredo's witness operates. But Alfredo's mission
Speaker 1: is to find out who is killing the women of
Speaker 1: Hottas and to answer that question, you really have no
Speaker 1: choice but to tread into the Hottis underworld as a
Speaker 1: reporter who's been relentlessly asking who's doing this, who's behind
Speaker 1: the murders, who's responsible. What do you think Alfredo's thinking
Speaker 1: when he was hearing this testimony. Well, I'm certain that
Speaker 1: Alfredo was feeling a mix of giddiness and fear because
Speaker 1: you're starting to tread past an invisible line where you
Speaker 1: go from the traditional, reliable sources into this grayer world.
Speaker 1: And I mean, as you might imagine, he's blown away
Speaker 1: by this account, but he knows that as a good journalist,
Speaker 1: he just can't take this account and put it in
Speaker 1: the newspaper. Everyone you interview will have an agenda, probably
Speaker 1: most especially a drug trafficker, So you can't just take
Speaker 1: a witness account at face value. You have to get
Speaker 1: confirmation from multiple sources. Alfredo had a potentially huge break
Speaker 1: about the connection between the women's murders and organized crime
Speaker 1: in Huirez, but he couldn't go to print without verifying
Speaker 1: the information was true. And in that sense, Alfredo's journey
Speaker 1: was just beginning. And meanwhile, he wasn't the only person
Speaker 1: who was still asking questions about who was responsible for
Speaker 1: the murders of women in Huirez. By this point, Paula
Speaker 1: Flores had been trying to establish who was responsible for
Speaker 1: her daughter's murder for five years, and they've been long years.
Speaker 1: Paula was prepared to tell Sir Glorio's story again and
Speaker 1: again to keep her memory alive and in the hope
Speaker 1: it might bring her closer to the answer she craved.
Speaker 1: She got increasingly involved in activism with the mothers of
Speaker 1: other victims. But back when Sagario first went missing, Paula
Speaker 1: told us her son Chewi took it very hard. Before
Speaker 1: she disappeared, she had bought a cassette of Los Demidradios
Speaker 1: and we had a van an arrow Star that they
Speaker 1: bought between themselves. In those days, she would insist that
Speaker 1: Julie play the cassette in the van because she didn't
Speaker 1: know how to work it, and she would tell Julie
Speaker 1: play the cassette, play that the Meidandios cassette, and Juie
Speaker 1: would say, quit being a pest, I'll put it on
Speaker 1: in a second. He would stall and not do it.
Speaker 1: After she disappeared, my son would lock himself in that
Speaker 1: van with the cassette and he would play that music
Speaker 1: and just cry because it reminded him of her. Before
Speaker 1: moving to Juarez, Paula has sent letters to her husband Jesus,
Speaker 1: asking if the city was safe for their six daughters.
Speaker 1: She'd heard about the murders there and was concerned about
Speaker 1: cholos or gang members in the neighborhood. Jesus replied that
Speaker 1: there weren't any just a boy who hung around with
Speaker 1: his sister. And after the family moved to Juarez, they
Speaker 1: got to know this boy, he was called Mamuelo, was
Speaker 1: a boy about sixteen years old. Actually felt sorry for
Speaker 1: him because he had no family. He had nothing here.
Speaker 1: He was abandoned by his mother when he was very young.
Speaker 1: Mamuilio became friends with paulas son Cheui and started to
Speaker 1: spend time with the family, even sharing meals with them.
Speaker 1: My son and he'd known us since we moved here.
Speaker 1: Always noticed that he liked Sa Gradio. But mamue Leo
Speaker 1: was far from being a desirable suitor. He was what's
Speaker 1: known as a coyote. We arrived here at ninety five.
Speaker 1: He was working smuggling people into the United States. Only
Speaker 1: did he cross people, but he also cross drugs and all.
Speaker 1: Paula and her family lived in Lomas de Puleo, which
Speaker 1: at the time was only separated from the US by
Speaker 1: a barbed wire fence, so smuggling was an appealing line
Speaker 1: of business in the area. For a teenager like Manuelio.
Speaker 1: It seemed to offer better prospects than working in a
Speaker 1: factory for less than seven dollars a day. Yea often
Speaker 1: came to my house asking for water because he was
Speaker 1: crossing the US border. Never refused to give him water.
Speaker 1: While Paula was concerned about Manuelio's connections to the Huire's underworld,
Speaker 1: she also understood his circumstances. He was as poor as
Speaker 1: the Flores family, and even more vulnerable because he didn't
Speaker 1: have any family of his own, so Paula helped him
Speaker 1: out where she could. A few weeks after Sir Garrio's
Speaker 1: body was discovered, Manuelio paid her a visit. Paula was
Speaker 1: at home grieving, tending to an altar commemorating her daughter,
Speaker 1: flowers letters we need the Pooh stuffed toy from the mikiler,
Speaker 1: and something about this visit seemed off. Maybe asked me
Speaker 1: for water. I told him go ahead fill the gallon.
Speaker 1: That time he saw me crying and he said, you
Speaker 1: cried too much, stopped crying for her. These were words
Speaker 1: that did not seem appropriate to the situation, and the
Speaker 1: angered Paula tugging at a suspicion she already felt. Yes.
Speaker 1: They turned around and said, you know what, I'll always
Speaker 1: curse my daughter's killers, because she didn't deserve to die
Speaker 1: that way. And he told me nervously, don't say that,
Speaker 1: and they said, yes, that's what I asked all the time.
Speaker 1: I curse them. After a few tense moments, Mamoeleo left
Speaker 1: with his gallon of water, and Paula returned to the altar.
Speaker 1: By this point, she and her family had searched frantically
Speaker 1: through the night, posting flies and trying to track down
Speaker 1: any leads. She'd yelled to Grio's name desperately into the night.
Speaker 1: She'd even broken into a government meeting and begged the
Speaker 1: Attorney General on her knees for help, and she'd prayed
Speaker 1: and prayed. I would ask God to let my daughter
Speaker 1: come to me and tell me who had harmed her,
Speaker 1: who had taken her. At night in bed, I would
Speaker 1: turn my back to my husband and face the corner
Speaker 1: looking for my daughter. You was go on speaking to God.
Speaker 1: I told him I'm not good enough to see my daughter,
Speaker 1: but allow her to come to me, even if it's
Speaker 1: in my dreams. Let her tell me in my dreams.
Speaker 1: But I don't know if I was asleep or awake,
Speaker 1: but I heard a voice, or you have voice talking
Speaker 1: to me softly like yeah, yeah, called me Baula. She
Speaker 1: said baola one day yeah, when she spoke without moving,
Speaker 1: not knowing if I was asleep, I asked her, is
Speaker 1: that you said at you? But as a very clear voice,
Speaker 1: she told me yes. I started dreaming of her. In
Speaker 1: Durango was a place where water trickles out of stones,
Speaker 1: and we collected water to drink from there. And I
Speaker 1: saw her kneeling down washing some clothes there. I went
Speaker 1: down to her and the first thing I did was
Speaker 1: caress her hair and moved it off her face. Her
Speaker 1: hair was long, black and wavy. The first thing I
Speaker 1: told her was who took you? My daughter? Who hurt you?
Speaker 1: Who took you? Tell me who took you? She told
Speaker 1: me it was Manueliyo. In the depths of her grief,
Speaker 1: after weeks of searching for Cigario with no answers and
Speaker 1: no help from the authorities, it seemed to Paula like
Speaker 1: her prayers had been answered. She had a name, and
Speaker 1: even though it came from a dream, it seemed plausible.
Speaker 1: Mammoilio's life as a coyote brought him into contact with
Speaker 1: dangerous criminals, but he was someone who Paula knew who
Speaker 1: Sigario had known. They'd invited him into their home and
Speaker 1: thought of him as a friend, so the next time
Speaker 1: he showed up in search of water, Paula challenged him.
Speaker 1: At first, Mamoilio denied all knowledge, but Paula had a
Speaker 1: relentless conviction in her dream, and ultimately Mammoilio confessed that
Speaker 1: he did know something about her daughter's fate. He told me,
Speaker 1: you know what the narcos from Elvayo did it, asked him,
Speaker 1: what could the narcos from Elvalio have to do with
Speaker 1: my daughter? Told me, when they're like a girl, they
Speaker 1: find her, no matter the cost. Paula's dreams seemed to
Speaker 1: have revealed something to her that she already felt. Mamulio
Speaker 1: knew something about Cigario's murder. But who are these other
Speaker 1: narcos drug traffickers from Elvaie? How are they involved? When
Speaker 1: we come back? Mamuelio appears poised to answer those questions.
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Speaker 1: the break, Manuelo told Paula that narcos were responsible for
Speaker 1: Sagario's murder. Paula now felt she had something to go on.
Speaker 1: The authorities had been unhelpful even after her protest before
Speaker 1: the Attorney General, but now she had new information to
Speaker 1: share with them, and so she went to the Special
Speaker 1: Prosecutor's office in Juarez to ask them for help. At first,
Speaker 1: Paula was treated with the usual dismissive attitude, especially when
Speaker 1: she told them that the lead began with a dream.
Speaker 1: But Paula persisted and ultimately Manuelie was arrested and he
Speaker 1: gave the authorities some more details about his part in
Speaker 1: so Gloria's fate. In the third class normal statement, he
Speaker 1: names two other people. He states that he was paid
Speaker 1: five hundred U S. Dollars for taking them to my
Speaker 1: daughter's workplace. They brought him people to cross illegally, but
Speaker 1: he also crossed drugs for them. This all seemed to
Speaker 1: be taking Paula closer and closer to the answer she craved.
Speaker 1: But then Manuelo retracted his statement, and in fact, he
Speaker 1: entered a new testimony before he was sentenced, saying that
Speaker 1: he had acted completely alone. Paula, Jesus, and two of
Speaker 1: their children went to the sentencing hearing to challenge him.
Speaker 1: I faced him, I told him, tell the truth once
Speaker 1: and for all. You didn't act alone. Julie approached him
Speaker 1: and said how many times did you stab her? At least?
Speaker 1: And then he got scared and he said nod. He
Speaker 1: went quiet and said like three, I believe my daughter
Speaker 1: had six. Mamoilio didn't even know how many times Sagrario
Speaker 1: had been stabbed, and Paula didn't believe a word he
Speaker 1: was saying in front of everyone. She pressed him him.
Speaker 1: I used to feed you along with my daughters due
Speaker 1: to meet with my children. I said, why don't you
Speaker 1: tell us the truth at once? Who are you covering
Speaker 1: up for? That's how he called the state police. He said,
Speaker 1: it's just that they told me that I should just
Speaker 1: accuse myself for all of this to be over. Why
Speaker 1: would Mamoilio paint himself as a murderer when in fact
Speaker 1: he was likely a scout. Why would he be prepared
Speaker 1: to take the fall for these other smugglers, and why
Speaker 1: would the authorities pressure him to do so? The process
Speaker 1: of scapegoating was familiar Sharif the so called Rebelde's gang,
Speaker 1: the bus drivers Manuelio. Except Manuelio likely wasn't innocent in
Speaker 1: Sagario's disappearance. He had initially confessed that he was an
Speaker 1: accessory to a larger crime. Since two thousand and five,
Speaker 1: he has served a twenty nine years sentence. You've always
Speaker 1: told the authorities if he's getting other people involved, he
Speaker 1: didn't just make them up. They said that the emblematic
Speaker 1: case of Sagardo has been solved. Murderer was in jail already,
Speaker 1: and all I've always said the opposite. But he's not
Speaker 1: the only one, and that the authors of the crime
Speaker 1: are still free, Gail Minona, Who are the authors of
Speaker 1: the crime and how do they remain free? These are
Speaker 1: questions Paulett is asking twenty years after her daughter's murder.
Speaker 1: But the suspicions and hints we'd heard that there was
Speaker 1: a network of scouts in Juarez identifying women to be
Speaker 1: murdered by other men were starting to seem more more
Speaker 1: plausible to me. Hearing about Paula's dream why she sees
Speaker 1: Sagrario again in their hometown in Durango is one of
Speaker 1: the moments in our reporting the sticks with me the most.
Speaker 1: But Monica, you told me that hearing these kinds of
Speaker 1: dreams from family members is something I've experienced before. Yes.
Speaker 1: So it was the aunt of a young woman who
Speaker 1: went missing in twenty ten, and she also describes a
Speaker 1: dream very similar to Paula's dream, in which she's invoking
Speaker 1: her missing niece and imploring her to please tell her
Speaker 1: where are you? Who did this to? You? Help me
Speaker 1: solve this crime. And I think those dreams are born
Speaker 1: out of desperation, just the sheer desperation and impotence that
Speaker 1: these families feel not being able to rely on the
Speaker 1: authorities whose job it is to find those responsible. And
Speaker 1: yet even if the authorities don't want to acknowledge it,
Speaker 1: once you hear this story about Manuelio alongside Alfredo's story,
Speaker 1: the connections seem hard to dispute. I mean, there's these
Speaker 1: chilling parallels between what Manuelio tells Paula and what this
Speaker 1: drug dealer witness tells Alfredo. Manuelio was just an adolescent,
Speaker 1: a young man, and really, I mean, the way these
Speaker 1: drug traffickers recruit young men like him is they say, hey, look,
Speaker 1: this is all you have to do. They make it
Speaker 1: seem very simple. Here's what you have to do, and
Speaker 1: here's what we're going to pay you. And for a
Speaker 1: lot of these immigrants in what is who don't necessarily
Speaker 1: have the family ties that they used to back in
Speaker 1: their hometowns in the interior of Mexico, joining a gang
Speaker 1: or the drug cartel offers that connection of family that
Speaker 1: they may have lost. But the tradeoff is he has
Speaker 1: to then answer to the underworld. There's no justice system
Speaker 1: in drug trafficking. If you run a foul of the cartel,
Speaker 1: that's typically a death sentence. Manuelio most certainly knew this,
Speaker 1: so when he got orders, he knew that his choice
Speaker 1: was either to follow those orders or kiss his life goodbye.
Speaker 1: And of all people, it feels like Paula Flores understood this.
Speaker 1: That was something very remarkable to me, is that there's
Speaker 1: a part of her that pities him, that feels sympathy
Speaker 1: for him being in this impossible situation. As of today,
Speaker 1: Manuelio is in jail, and his official confession states that
Speaker 1: he acted alone, that as a sixteen year old, he
Speaker 1: abducted and killed Sagrio, the daughter of the family who
Speaker 1: gave him water as he smuggled people through the desert.
Speaker 1: The authorities never followed up on his initial confession to
Speaker 1: Power about the narticles from Elvae. Rather than acknowledging a
Speaker 1: potential network, they preferred to blame individuals, and despite mounting
Speaker 1: evidence pointing to organization behind the murders, there was an
Speaker 1: enduring suspicion on both sides of the border that a
Speaker 1: serial killer was at work in Huirez. That's what brought
Speaker 1: candiscrophic there in the nineteen nineties. She's a forensic criminologist
Speaker 1: at Fresno State University. I was trained by FBI profilers
Speaker 1: in Quantico, Virginia as a psychologist. My background is consistent
Speaker 1: with the kinds of things that the agents are learning
Speaker 1: about mental disorders, various forms of psychopathology, and how they
Speaker 1: may leave clues at crime scenes. But basically it was
Speaker 1: drilling down case after case trying to identify patterns of
Speaker 1: behavior that could be reflective of the kind of person
Speaker 1: that would perpetrate that kind of crime. Candice went to
Speaker 1: Huirez with her friend and colleague, Robert Wrestler. He was
Speaker 1: a retired FBI agent who had helped create the bureau's
Speaker 1: Behavioral Science unit. He was one of the world's top
Speaker 1: experts on serial killers. In fact, he's credited with coining
Speaker 1: the term. Candice and Wrestler were in Juarez at the
Speaker 1: invitation of an American public safety advisor to the Huire's authorities,
Speaker 1: so Candice got access to the case files. I saw
Speaker 1: the homicide photographs, I went through all the autopsy reports
Speaker 1: and things, and without doubt in my mind, there was
Speaker 1: one serial murderer operating who was getting the little girls
Speaker 1: and the young adolescent girls in terms of patterns of behavior.
Speaker 1: As Candice reviewed the case files, it became clear to
Speaker 1: her that there was a serial killer operating in Huires,
Speaker 1: someone praying on very young victims, but the murders of
Speaker 1: Cigarrio and Lilie Lejandra didn't match that patter and noted
Speaker 1: many others. What stun Candice was that there was clearly
Speaker 1: something else biker going on in the city as well,
Speaker 1: something on a scale she'd never seen before. Were most
Speaker 1: of these hundreds of murders where they attributed to serial killers,
Speaker 1: while not in the traditional sense. There was one crime
Speaker 1: scene in particular that Candice examined which confirmed to her
Speaker 1: that what was happening in Juarez was unlike anything else
Speaker 1: she'd ever encountered, and as a warning, her description is
Speaker 1: very upsetting. Well. One of the bodies was left on
Speaker 1: the outskirts of Warez, and they had clearly driven her.
Speaker 1: They because of the numbers of footprints, they had abducted her,
Speaker 1: driven her, got out of the truck and made her
Speaker 1: walk without her shoes into the semi desert area where
Speaker 1: presumably they raped her repeatedly and strangled her and just
Speaker 1: left her exposed nude legs spread open, just showing their
Speaker 1: their disgust of her. So the first person that would
Speaker 1: walk upon the crime scene as it were, would be
Speaker 1: met with her legs open. Candice was deeply shocked despite
Speaker 1: her years of experience investigating serial killing and sexual crime.
Speaker 1: In fact, even Robert Wrestler was taken aback. I asked
Speaker 1: Agent Wrestler about that, because he has more experience and
Speaker 1: homicide and his little finger than I have in my
Speaker 1: whole body. And I said, Bob, have you ever seen
Speaker 1: anything like this in your career when your experience And
Speaker 1: he said no, I haven't. The men that I study
Speaker 1: mostly they operate alone. I mean, I think about it.
Speaker 1: If I were intent upon killing a number of people
Speaker 1: as long as I could, I don't think i'd want
Speaker 1: anybody watching me do it. Certainly they could turn me in.
Speaker 1: How would I know I could trust them with this?
Speaker 1: So I started thinking, how could all of these men
Speaker 1: trust each other? What if one of them goes to
Speaker 1: the bar and start shooting his mouth off about their
Speaker 1: latest victim. And then I realized he's not going to
Speaker 1: be doing that, because there is a pact. If it's
Speaker 1: not spoken, it's certainly unspoken that if you start turning
Speaker 1: any of us in, pointing any fingers in any of us,
Speaker 1: we think you love your family, and we'll kill them first.
Speaker 1: What Candice was describing went beyond killing for pleasure. It
Speaker 1: was killing as a bonding ritual, a new definition of
Speaker 1: serial killing. According to our analysis, one of the key
Speaker 1: reasons why so many women were murdered in Juarez was
Speaker 1: to create a code of loyalty and silence. The murders
Speaker 1: were not a side effect of cartel violence. They were
Speaker 1: a crucial part of how it worked. But if this
Speaker 1: was apparent from the crime scenes and even from the
Speaker 1: testimony of lower level cartel affiliates, why didn't the authorities
Speaker 1: not take more decisive action? While Candice and Robert Wrestler
Speaker 1: traveled to Juarez as private individuals, but not long after
Speaker 1: their trip, the FBI launched an official operation in Juarez
Speaker 1: to learn more about how the cartel operated. It was
Speaker 1: led by Frank Evans, who was assistant Special Agent in
Speaker 1: charge of the FBI's El Paso office from nineteen ninety
Speaker 1: eight the Sagrario went missing to two thousand. My name's
Speaker 1: Frank Evans, and while I was in the FBI, I
Speaker 1: had the opportunity to work violent crimes, kidnappings, extortions, organized crime,
Speaker 1: of course, drug investigations or what ultimately brought me to
Speaker 1: the FBI office in El Paso. So what interested the
Speaker 1: El Paso FBI in the hottest cartel well at that time. Obviously,
Speaker 1: the Warrest cartel was a major mover of contraband in
Speaker 1: the United States, any kind of drug that could be moved, marijuana, cocaine.
Speaker 1: The cartel controlled they called the Warres Corridor. Wires's position
Speaker 1: across the border from El Paso made it one of
Speaker 1: the world's most sought after drug trafficking routs, and the
Speaker 1: cartel acted with extraordinary violence to protect that turf. And
Speaker 1: this violence didn't respect nationality. So in nineteen ninety nine,
Speaker 1: the FBI received a tip that a number of American
Speaker 1: men had been killed by the cartel in Mexico. If
Speaker 1: they could prove of these murders of American citizens, they
Speaker 1: could secure an indictment for the leader of the Juires cartel,
Speaker 1: the Sente Gario Fuentes. The FBI wanted to have him
Speaker 1: arrested and extradited for trial in the US, and they
Speaker 1: were given unprecedented jurisdiction by the Mexican government to cross
Speaker 1: the border to recover and analyze the bodies. The mission
Speaker 1: was called Operation Plaza Sweep. I mean we crossed in
Speaker 1: with food, water, portable toilets, heavy machinery, forensic equipment. We
Speaker 1: actually had an entire forensic morgue in the FBI space
Speaker 1: here in El Paso, and the scale of the investigation
Speaker 1: was extremely large. You know, the cartel didn't have taco
Speaker 1: stands waiting for us, and you know called drink stands.
Speaker 1: They were truly shocked that you now have one hundred
Speaker 1: and twenty FBI agents with equipment coming into Mexico. How
Speaker 1: did you know there were shock on their behalf? You know,
Speaker 1: Bertie's told us listening. You know, potentially one of Frank's
Speaker 1: goals when he arrived in Juarez was to evaluate how
Speaker 1: evidence was connected and stalled, and he discovered some fundamental problems.
Speaker 1: Many of the crime scenes were contaminated. In some cases,
Speaker 1: the bodies were discovered and you know, okay, guys, when
Speaker 1: you discover one, don't touch it. Let your forensics people
Speaker 1: come in. Well, then the forensics people come in, they
Speaker 1: turn the body over and there's fresh cigarette butts under
Speaker 1: the body. Well, when you check into it and you
Speaker 1: find out the cigarette butts belonged to the detective that
Speaker 1: was there first, Well, wait a minute, you didn't touch
Speaker 1: the body. No, no, I didn't touch the body. Well,
Speaker 1: how did your cigarette butts get under the body? Oh,
Speaker 1: you know, the media wanted to take some pictures, so
Speaker 1: I rolled the body over and it must have happened that.
Speaker 1: How does this occur, Well, it doesn't occur by accident,
Speaker 1: it occurs by design. If you have a contaminated crime scene,
Speaker 1: you can't tie it successfully to a subject or subjects.
Speaker 1: To Frank, it appeared the crime scenes were being purposely
Speaker 1: disturbed by the very people whose job it was to
Speaker 1: preserve them. When you don't follow your established protocols, you
Speaker 1: are ensuring that any evidence that is recovered is going
Speaker 1: to be almost impossible to introduce a trial. You undermined everything.
Speaker 1: Frank was discovering that it wasn't the exception for crime
Speaker 1: scenes to be tampered with in Huirez, It was the norm,
Speaker 1: and it prevented crimes from ever being solved. The killings
Speaker 1: Frank was initially concerned with were murders of men committed
Speaker 1: by the cartel, But then he had an idea. What
Speaker 1: if the FBNI also offered to help the local please
Speaker 1: get to the bottom of the women's murders. When we
Speaker 1: come back, we learn what came of that offer. During
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Speaker 1: to learn more. Hi there, I'm doctor John White, WebMD's
Speaker 1: chief medical officer and host of the spotlight On series
Speaker 1: from our Health Discovered podcast. In this special episode, we'll
Speaker 1: hear about living a fulfilling life with chronic card failure,
Speaker 1: a condition that doesn't have to be as scary as
Speaker 1: it sounds. I was outside shoveling snow and I noticed
Speaker 1: I was coughing up flim unbeknownst to me, I left
Speaker 1: a trail of blood behind me, and I was one sign. Now.
Speaker 1: Of course, prior to I was excessively gaining weight. I
Speaker 1: had issues breathing, sleep apnea, I had a lot of
Speaker 1: those classic signs. My legs were beginning to retain fluid,
Speaker 1: and I was having heart palt patients. My heart would
Speaker 1: be really excessively fast and so. But ultimately it was
Speaker 1: when that occurred that I thought something was seriously wrong.
Speaker 1: Listen to Health Discovered on the iHeartRadio appreever you get
Speaker 1: your podcasts. Before the break, Frank Evans was describing his
Speaker 1: work to exhume bodies as part of Operation Plaza Sweep,
Speaker 1: an FBI effort to secure an indictment against the Huias
Speaker 1: cartel leader for the murder of American citizens. In that investigation,
Speaker 1: his Mexican counterparts were from the federal police, but one
Speaker 1: in quires Franks or an opportunity to offer the FBI's
Speaker 1: resources to the local and state police to help solve
Speaker 1: the murders of women. Part of it was selfish. We
Speaker 1: were trying to see can we work with anybody locally,
Speaker 1: you know, is it possible that there's a local group
Speaker 1: that might be able to be vetted into Plaza sweep.
Speaker 1: You know, we have resources that we will make available
Speaker 1: to you as you look at these harmicides. We will
Speaker 1: give you the best minds the FBI has in criminal
Speaker 1: profiling to look at your case and tell you what
Speaker 1: they think. Specifically, Frank offer access to the FBI's analysts
Speaker 1: at Quantico, the men and women who'd been trained in
Speaker 1: Robert Wrestler's approach to forensic psychology. The officials in Huis accepted,
Speaker 1: and as they've done with Candice, they handed out the
Speaker 1: case files. We were given seventy six files, each file
Speaker 1: representing one of the deceased. The profilers took those files,
Speaker 1: they went through them just like they would a file
Speaker 1: that would be provided by a United States law enforcement entity,
Speaker 1: and they identified thirty four cases that had items of
Speaker 1: interest that they wanted to explore further. Thirty four of
Speaker 1: the seventy six files shared by the police had common
Speaker 1: characteristics indicating to the FBI profiles that the people may
Speaker 1: have been involved in the murders. This felt like a
Speaker 1: potentially huge break. Then something happened that told Frank everything
Speaker 1: he needed to know about his partners in Mexico. It
Speaker 1: was at that point that the authorities, the State Attorney
Speaker 1: General's Office of Chihuahua, it was like, oh, we've gotten
Speaker 1: the FBI reports and they agree with us one hundred
Speaker 1: percent and case closed. In fact, they claimed that the
Speaker 1: FBI's reports confirmed the guilt of Abdel Latif Sharif Sharif,
Speaker 1: the Egyptian chemist who stood accused of both being a
Speaker 1: serial killer and then paying a gang to commit murders
Speaker 1: on his behalf in order to prove his innocence. They
Speaker 1: distorted what the report said in order to validate the
Speaker 1: position that they had been espousing. But why why the
Speaker 1: failure after failure to resolve these crimes once and for all,
Speaker 1: we had evidence that, unfortunately I am not at liberty
Speaker 1: to go into too, that the handling of the femicide
Speaker 1: cases was not in accordance with accepted police procedure. And
Speaker 1: the assumption is it is either than gross incompetence on
Speaker 1: the part of the police officials or it's deliberate. You know,
Speaker 1: you can only be incompetent so many times you can't
Speaker 1: be incompetent three hundred plus times. From our perspective, it
Speaker 1: showed that there wasn't a real commitment to resolve the femicides.
Speaker 1: Do you ever know? Could you tell why why there
Speaker 1: was a lack? No? We speculated, Well, our speculation was
Speaker 1: that when you don't want a crime to be solved,
Speaker 1: it's because the resolution of it is going to be
Speaker 1: extremely either embarrassing to somebody in power, or it's going
Speaker 1: to come back to you, you being the law enforcement authorities.
Speaker 1: The law enforcement authorities, Was it possible they weren't just
Speaker 1: failing to solve the murders of women, but actively involved
Speaker 1: in them. Could this explain why decades of murders had
Speaker 1: gone unsolved? Well, Alfredo's reporting was also beginning to suggest
Speaker 1: this might be the case. So Alfredo ultimately did feel
Speaker 1: that he could trust what he'd heard from that drug
Speaker 1: dealer in the Houire's prison, Monica, and he went to
Speaker 1: print with a huge story. How did he get there, Well,
Speaker 1: he paired up with another colleague, and together they backed
Speaker 1: up the witness's account with intelligence from federal law enforcement
Speaker 1: from the US and Mexico. One of the law enforcement
Speaker 1: accounts that Alfredo prints in his story is an unnamed
Speaker 1: US official who cites ry intelligence and he says, quote,
Speaker 1: all you have to do is put together a simple
Speaker 1: investigative equation of why and how, and you get to
Speaker 1: the who why because they can because there's a sense
Speaker 1: of excitement, a sense of and erotic feeling. Cicadios that is,
Speaker 1: hitmen fit the profile. There is no limit anymore to
Speaker 1: what they can do. They enjoy the feeling of ecstasy,
Speaker 1: the orgies. The women are like trophies for them. They
Speaker 1: are thrill kills. These guys like the feeling of control.
Speaker 1: But they need help, and that's where the local and
Speaker 1: state police come in. I hate that quote, but I
Speaker 1: don't doubt it's true. Alfredo was able to verify that
Speaker 1: the very police who were supposed to be protecting the
Speaker 1: public and investigating the crimes were actually the ones committing
Speaker 1: the crimes. When you read that first article on the
Speaker 1: front page of the Dallas Morning News, I mean it
Speaker 1: was huge. Alfredo's story went to print in February two
Speaker 1: thousand and four. Later on, he reprinted the drug dealers
Speaker 1: play by play account in his book Midnight in Mexico
Speaker 1: to have it debate him we asked him to read
Speaker 1: it aloud. The cops would first identify potential victims study
Speaker 1: their routine. It wasn't hard to lure the women. Police
Speaker 1: would stopped at them on the street as they got
Speaker 1: off work and tell them that a family member was
Speaker 1: missing or something had happened to their child, and wouldn't
Speaker 1: they please get in the backseat of the police car.
Speaker 1: The cops would then transport them to the parties, where
Speaker 1: they would be gang raped. By the end, the women
Speaker 1: always knew too much and they would killed. This would
Speaker 1: explain the lackluster search for Cigario. It would explain why
Speaker 1: when witnesses is reported seeing Lily Alexander struggling, the police
Speaker 1: logbook for the night says nothing to report. This was
Speaker 1: a conspiracy and it wouldn't have been uncovered without the
Speaker 1: work of journalists like Alfredo. This is how journalism is
Speaker 1: supposed to work. This is why we need a strong
Speaker 1: and robust press. It took the combination of these Mexican
Speaker 1: reporters who first wrote about these crimes beginning in nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety three, then Diana calling attention to the systematic nature
Speaker 1: of the murders, and Alfredo confirming the corruption behind it.
Speaker 1: But this isn't where the story ends. I mean, the
Speaker 1: corrupt cops are only part of the equation. Alfredo had
Speaker 1: finally corroborated what Dante's source had told him, and it
Speaker 1: exposed the involvement of certain police officers. But if law
Speaker 1: enforcement agents were acting on behalf of the cartel, how
Speaker 1: far did the influence of organized crime reach? And who
Speaker 1: else was complicit in the abduction and murder of women.
Speaker 1: On his journey to answer those questions, Alfredo paid a
Speaker 1: visit to the corridors of power in Mexico City, and
Speaker 1: he came into contact with a force that seemed far
Speaker 1: more menacing than corrupt cops. Yeah, I mean, I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm in the heart of se Alquie is in downtown quiet,
Speaker 1: near the cathedral, near the park, and I'm walking away
Speaker 1: and there's a number comes in and the sun of
Speaker 1: number is just unknown. It says unknown on your says
Speaker 1: unown on the phone, and the person says a key
Speaker 1: or lad Lize's face, what's that in English? I'm right
Speaker 1: behind you. On the sixteenth of September, Avenue I was
Speaker 1: being watched. Alfredo was scared, and he turned to the
Speaker 1: only person he could think of Aunte. It was the
Speaker 1: first time I saw Dante and at that he looks worried,
Speaker 1: and then he finally says yeah the chaste, which means
Speaker 1: you're fucked. I said why, He says, they're aren'to you?
Speaker 1: La Lina's aunto you. In the next episode, Alfredo makes
Speaker 1: a break for safety. He tries to understand what La
Speaker 1: Line is and what their role might be in the murders.
Speaker 1: I'm as Floshen and I'm Monica. See you next time?
Speaker 1: Do you know? See? Do you know? I love Velicia?
Speaker 1: Forgotten The Women of Juarez is co hosted by Me
Speaker 1: Monica and me oswal Oshin. Forgotten is executive produced by
Speaker 1: Me and Mangesh Hattiga. Our producers are Julian Weller and
Speaker 1: Katrina Norvell. Sound editing by Julian Weller, Jacopo Penzo and
Speaker 1: Aaron Kaufman. Lucas Riley is our story editor. Caitlin Thompson
Speaker 1: is our consulting producer. Recording assistance this episode from Alice
Speaker 1: Daniel and Michael Perez. Production support from Emily Maronoff and
Speaker 1: Aaron Kaufman. Our theme tune is rich in Thought as
Speaker 1: performed by Natalia. Music by Leonardo Heblum and Hakkabo Libermann.
Speaker 1: Additional music by Aaron Kaufman. Carla Tassara is the voice
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