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Speaker 1: Forgotten is a production of ihont Media and Unusual Productions
Speaker 1: Before we start. This podcast contains accounts which some listeners
Speaker 1: will find disturbing, but without them, the story can't be
Speaker 1: fully understood. Please take care while listening. Last time on Forgotten,
Speaker 1: would run around the house and shout her name with
Speaker 1: all my strength in the silence of the night. I
Speaker 1: felt you could hear me, so I would call it
Speaker 1: to my daughter. The authorities have the responsibility for solving
Speaker 1: these crimes. They have not done this, and perhaps never
Speaker 1: intended to do it. I pick it up, and then
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, there's this electric saw sound coming in.
Speaker 1: They took my phone to try and see they could
Speaker 1: trace that call, and they traced it back to Mexican
Speaker 1: military intelligence. Dinah was disconcerted by that threatening call, but
Speaker 1: it wasn't immediately clear just how frightening it really was.
Speaker 1: How long after you received that call did your source
Speaker 1: trace it back within a month? You know. First, I
Speaker 1: wasn't sure what to do that phone call, and I
Speaker 1: casually mentioned to this officer and he said, you know what,
Speaker 1: can we have your telephone to check it out? But true,
Speaker 1: tracing that callback helped Diana understand that the threats against
Speaker 1: her were not idle. And then she got a visit.
Speaker 1: A friendly source came over one time to pass on.
Speaker 1: We met for coffee and the source was told to
Speaker 1: convey to me. After this source met with three police
Speaker 1: officers in Huais municipal, state, and federal, and the message
Speaker 1: to me was not to bother to come to Judas
Speaker 1: all right. So I think that was a very good
Speaker 1: indicator that I needed to start back in way. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Diana attracts the escalation of the threats to starting to
Speaker 1: publish articles about the connection between the victims and the
Speaker 1: Echo computer schools. The computer schools suggested that some kind
Speaker 1: of network was involved, in these crimes, and the threats
Speaker 1: suggested that the authorities might be protecting the network. But
Speaker 1: all of this time, the Egyptian chemist at Latif Sharif
Speaker 1: Sharif had been languishing in jail, accused of being the
Speaker 1: serial killer and continuing to mastermind murders from jail. As
Speaker 1: far as the authorities and even some of the local
Speaker 1: press were concerned, the case was closed. Then in two
Speaker 1: thousand and one, something happened that made it clear the
Speaker 1: crimes were not just ongoing but escalating. The Mexican press
Speaker 1: had decided that the big nightmare of the femicides had ended.
Speaker 1: And I remember and one of the reporters in Huadis,
Speaker 1: who had covered the murders from the very beginning at
Speaker 1: turning to me at a press conference saying, to me,
Speaker 1: your problem, Diana, is that you do not believe that
Speaker 1: the Egyptian Shahdif Shahdif killed all those women. And it's over,
Speaker 1: It's ended, all right. I just looked at him, you know,
Speaker 1: and I started to think, well, perhaps he's right, maybe
Speaker 1: it's over. And then a month later, eight bodies are discovered,
Speaker 1: and everybody like, oh my god, this is like starting
Speaker 1: over again. For the first time in five years, a
Speaker 1: mass grave of women had been discovered in Juarez, and
Speaker 1: even Diana was shocked. I remember it was in our
Speaker 1: past with the time there was a report about bodies
Speaker 1: had been discovered. Women's bodies had been discovered. This is horrible.
Speaker 1: Not only is it just one more murder, it's eight
Speaker 1: bodies planted in one place. What is happening to our
Speaker 1: young ladies. The horrific discovery at the cotton field came
Speaker 1: at a time when Diana still believed it was safe
Speaker 1: for her to travel to Juarez, so as soon as
Speaker 1: she heard about it, she jumped in her car and
Speaker 1: headed for the border. First of all, I had to
Speaker 1: figure out where this place was. I imagine something on
Speaker 1: the edge of the city. And so when I got
Speaker 1: directions and I saw where this graveyard was located, I said,
Speaker 1: believe it. It's in the middle of a city. In
Speaker 1: across the street is the Association of Makilolaus, the organization
Speaker 1: that represents all the assembly plants in Sudharis. It's in
Speaker 1: the middle of a very active commercial zone next to
Speaker 1: housing development. I just couldn't believe it. Somebody has to
Speaker 1: have seen something. Why choose this site to dump, literally dump,
Speaker 1: eight bodies of women. This was November two thousand and one,
Speaker 1: just nine months earlier, in February, Lili Alejandra had been
Speaker 1: abducted and murdered, and because of the witnesses and the
Speaker 1: physical evidence from the autopsy, Diana believed there were enough
Speaker 1: leads to finally solve the murders. That didn't happen, But
Speaker 1: now there were eight bodies in a well traffic part
Speaker 1: of town known locally as the cotton Field, just two
Speaker 1: miles from where Lili Alejandra's body had been found. The
Speaker 1: cotton Field discovery ignited a global interest in solving the murders.
Speaker 1: ABC News at a special edition of twenty twenty, and
Speaker 1: the eyes of the world were on Juarez. The cotton
Speaker 1: Field murders presented an opportunity for the authorities to conduct
Speaker 1: a good and thorough investigation that leads to the killers,
Speaker 1: solve these cases and maybe prevent more. I'm Volosh and
Speaker 1: I'm Monica. This is forgotten. The women of barras known
Speaker 1: know I Love Fla. With the cotton Fields discovery, Dina
Speaker 1: felt like the murders might finally be solved. The pressure
Speaker 1: was building. The mother's protest movement had the urgency, the
Speaker 1: international press was demanding answers, and her trusted source, Oscar Minez,
Speaker 1: was once again overseeing the crime scene. I mean, if
Speaker 1: you have any bodies in an area, you can add
Speaker 1: denice seriality in these murders. Isn't that a chance that
Speaker 1: they appear everybody the next to each others? You know,
Speaker 1: had you ever seen anything like that? When you stepped
Speaker 1: out onto this cotton field and saw the bodies, well,
Speaker 1: are seeing many bodies not in the same area. For
Speaker 1: me was a highly organized crime. You can see it.
Speaker 1: And when you're talking about and he says, you took
Speaker 1: it a group. If you have a group, you have
Speaker 1: a leader, You have a leader, you have a hierarchically,
Speaker 1: you have resources. So this is not like a long
Speaker 1: the wall for a couple of kids. When Oscar first
Speaker 1: began overseeing the autopsies of young women in Huirez, he
Speaker 1: believed that a serial killer in the vein of a
Speaker 1: Ted Bundy was responsible, but after Lee Alexander's autopsy, he
Speaker 1: began to suspect something more organized, perhaps even a group.
Speaker 1: We drove out to the cotton field with Oscar to
Speaker 1: learn more about a crime scene that seemed to confirm
Speaker 1: his theory. You surrounded back hotels, businesses supposed to New
Speaker 1: American councilor he has some commercial listen next week. Were
Speaker 1: you very shocked when you when you heard what these
Speaker 1: bodies were? Yes, because I was expected to find about this.
Speaker 1: On the oscar of the c there was a dry
Speaker 1: dish and there were three bodies position in line, and
Speaker 1: then we started just looking around and then we started
Speaker 1: lifting rocks and then we found five more bodies. Those
Speaker 1: were buried. They were not out on the open oscar
Speaker 1: had been sounding alarm and now multiple bodies have been
Speaker 1: discovered in a single location. He was determined to make
Speaker 1: sure the forensic work was unimpeachable, to demonstrate once and
Speaker 1: for all how all these crimes were connected. It was
Speaker 1: like an archaeologist with a brass slowly clear and the
Speaker 1: dirt in order to preserve the skeletons. Because when you
Speaker 1: have a skeletons to wark, which you need to look
Speaker 1: at every aspect, every legion of the to try to
Speaker 1: determine the because of death. So and then how long
Speaker 1: did that process take like an hour? No? No, they
Speaker 1: take a couple of days and night and day. How
Speaker 1: did the discovery compared to say, the discovery of the
Speaker 1: body of Lilia Lejandra. Well, the case of Lilia Lejandra,
Speaker 1: it was the same part. I believe that those cases
Speaker 1: were related. Same people killed him. This was a bombshell
Speaker 1: to me, Monica. I mean, Lilia Alejandra's autopsy had suggested
Speaker 1: all these leads that weren't properly followed up on, and hey,
Speaker 1: you have this crime scene that suggests Oscar and Diana
Speaker 1: were absolutely right to insist on the importance of Lilia's case.
Speaker 1: How did the crime scene first emerge. It was a
Speaker 1: Tuesday morning, November sixth, two thousand and one, and there
Speaker 1: was a man who worked as a bricklayer. He was
Speaker 1: taking a short cut across a vacant lot not far
Speaker 1: from a main intersection in a commercial area of Houais,
Speaker 1: and he told the local newspaper that he smelt something
Speaker 1: funny and went in for a closer look, and that's
Speaker 1: when he saw the body of a woman. And so
Speaker 1: he goes and he alerts the police, who show up
Speaker 1: and find two more bodies. By the time the forensic
Speaker 1: team is on the scene, there's a total of eight bodies.
Speaker 1: They show various stages of decomposition. Some look like they've
Speaker 1: been dead for perhaps a couple of weeks, and others
Speaker 1: for as much as a few months. And one of
Speaker 1: the bodies is naked except for a pair of torn
Speaker 1: white socks, and just like the other cases before, her
Speaker 1: hands are tied behind her back with shoelaces. It appeared
Speaker 1: that this body had been kept in cold storage. The
Speaker 1: fact that it's a place which people pass through often
Speaker 1: and then all of a sudden, disguise finds the bodies,
Speaker 1: it feels like they probably weren't there all along, right,
Speaker 1: someone would have noticed them. The fact that they show
Speaker 1: up all at once, you know, kind of points to
Speaker 1: the strong possibility that they were placed there at the
Speaker 1: same time. And what do we know about who these
Speaker 1: eight victims were? Yeah? So the first body that the
Speaker 1: bricklayer discovered was identified as fifteen year old Esmeralda Erra Montreal.
Speaker 1: Esmeralda's family came from the state of Sacatecas. Her mom
Speaker 1: worked at a Phillips factory in Wais and as Miralda,
Speaker 1: at the time, she was saving up money for her
Speaker 1: kin Senera, to save up money for this party. Is
Speaker 1: Miralda starts working as a housekeeper, and like so many others,
Speaker 1: she goes to work one day and is never seen again.
Speaker 1: Diana interviews as Miralda's mother, Irma at some point, and
Speaker 1: one of the eerie details that surfaces from that interview
Speaker 1: is that an Echo recruiter had stopped by their neighborhood
Speaker 1: and left them a brochure at their house. Some of
Speaker 1: the connections between these women are chilling, uncanny. Even another
Speaker 1: woman who's identified from the cotton field is a twenty
Speaker 1: year old woman named Claudia Yvette Gonzales, and Claudia worked
Speaker 1: at Amakila owned by Lear Corporation. So the day Claudia
Speaker 1: went missing, she showed up to work a few minutes
Speaker 1: late and the factory turned her away. After that, she
Speaker 1: was never seen again. You have all these details that
Speaker 1: point to a connection, that point to an organized network
Speaker 1: behind these killings. We'd had about the shoelaces from Lily
Speaker 1: Alejander's autopsy, we'd had about connection to the Echo computer schools,
Speaker 1: and we'd heard about victims being snatched at moments of
Speaker 1: maximum vulnerability, just like Cloudier Yvette, who was turned away
Speaker 1: from the Makila for being late and then found herself
Speaker 1: alone on the streets of Juarez. The crime scene seemed
Speaker 1: to confirm so much of the evidence that had already
Speaker 1: piled up about how these crimes were connected. Then something
Speaker 1: truly extraordinary happened. Just days after the bodies were found.
Speaker 1: Two suspects confessed to all eight murders at the cotton fields.
Speaker 1: About every month, we would snap them a total of eight,
Speaker 1: take them by force, raped them and later strangled them.
Speaker 1: That is a translation of a video made by the
Speaker 1: Juarez police in which two men confessed to the murders
Speaker 1: of those eight women. It appears to be a decisive
Speaker 1: break in the case. When we come back we find
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Speaker 1: That's l e eesa dot com. After the cotton Fields
Speaker 1: mass grave was discovered, two men confess to the murders.
Speaker 1: They were bus drivers, Gustavo Gonzales Mezza known as La
Speaker 1: Folca or the Seal, and Javied Garcia at Udibe known
Speaker 1: as Eso the match. Their job was to drive the
Speaker 1: young women who worked in factories to and from work.
Speaker 1: Bus drivers had access and opportunity to identify when a
Speaker 1: young woman like sa Gari Gonzalez started to commute alone.
Speaker 1: So the suspects seemed plausible, but were they actually responsible.
Speaker 1: Well when the mass grave was discovered and the suspects confessed,
Speaker 1: Fredrick Crawford was the FBI Special Agent in charge of
Speaker 1: El Paso. His office was just a few miles away
Speaker 1: from the site of the mass grave, and he'd taken
Speaker 1: a special interest in the murders of women in Huarez
Speaker 1: and was following this case closely as a potential breakthrough.
Speaker 1: You could sense that the pressure was mounting. Political pressure,
Speaker 1: public pressure, international pressure. The families and relatives and friends
Speaker 1: of the disappeared women who were allowed those women would
Speaker 1: hold the marchers morning the deaths and drawing attention to that.
Speaker 1: That was huge. There was a crescendois building. The international
Speaker 1: community was fully aware, so the pressure must have been
Speaker 1: enormous on the other side of the border. Politically, it
Speaker 1: was in this context that the Office of the Attorney General,
Speaker 1: known as the PGR, produced two suspects. I remember the
Speaker 1: PGR announced they had made a rest the bus drivers,
Speaker 1: the bus drivers. The attisode that's them, the bus drivers,
Speaker 1: and he was showed the bus drivers. They had him
Speaker 1: in custody. So I have my agents come in, all right,
Speaker 1: give me the real story and we see what's on there. Immediately, yes,
Speaker 1: I wasn't sure. I was thinking seventy thirty it's BS
Speaker 1: in favor of the BS, and so I wanted the
Speaker 1: agents to tell me what's going on. They said, hey, Boss,
Speaker 1: it just says they confessed. They said, Boss, don't ask
Speaker 1: us where we got this, but these are photos of
Speaker 1: their torsos. And I said, well, what are those? What
Speaker 1: are those around circle marks? Burn marks? They said, that's
Speaker 1: cattle Proude's Boss, So forget those confessions. I said, oh
Speaker 1: my god. Okay, So they're under pressure to solve the crime,
Speaker 1: and so they tortured the confessions. I said, yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: I'm not one to laugh because many African American was
Speaker 1: tortured in the Deep South to confess the crimes that
Speaker 1: he didn't do. Because of that, I know full well
Speaker 1: it's not reliable when you torture somebody. In the very
Speaker 1: moment that it seemed most likely that the crimes could
Speaker 1: finally be sold, two innocent men have been coesced into
Speaker 1: taking the full In the video produced in house by
Speaker 1: the Wires Police Department, the bus drivers appeared dazed and
Speaker 1: later they managed to get in front of the media
Speaker 1: themselves elves and show the world what had happened to them.
Speaker 1: One had a knee swollen to several times its normal size.
Speaker 1: There were those burn marks that Hardrick described, and there
Speaker 1: were also allegations of suffocation and waterboarding. So a few
Speaker 1: years before Monica Sharif had been pinned with these crimes,
Speaker 1: why did the authorities go to such lengths with the
Speaker 1: bus drivers. Every time a mass grave is turned up
Speaker 1: in Wattas of women's bodies, it's been a turning point
Speaker 1: for the city, and it's been a moment when suddenly
Speaker 1: people paid attention and there was great fear the police
Speaker 1: can sort of sweep these individual murders under the rug
Speaker 1: up until the point where these mass graves are discovered.
Speaker 1: So they had to do something to show they were
Speaker 1: taking these crimes seriously, because rightly so, the community was terrified.
Speaker 1: The first discovery of a mass grave happened in late
Speaker 1: summer of nineteen ninety five. There were nine bodies found
Speaker 1: in a deserted terrain in the southern outskirts of Juarez,
Speaker 1: not far from the airport, in a plot of land
Speaker 1: called Lotte Bravo, and bravo in Spanish means wild or untamed.
Speaker 1: Two months later, Shadif is arrested. He was declared as
Speaker 1: a primary suspect in the women's murders, and when he
Speaker 1: was questioned about this, he was stunned. He told the
Speaker 1: Washington Post. I've hung around with a lot of prostitutes
Speaker 1: and drunks and topless dancers. I'm not proud of it.
Speaker 1: I'll admit to my sins, but I never killed anybody.
Speaker 1: Sharif is the perfect scapegoat, given his outsiders status and
Speaker 1: his violent criminal history. The police kept building up cases
Speaker 1: against him that were subsequently thrown out in court until
Speaker 1: he died in jail in two thousand and six. In
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety five, the first mass grave of women in
Speaker 1: Juarez was discovered, and shortly afterwards Sharif was jailed. In
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety six, another mass grave of women was discovered,
Speaker 1: and the authorities claimed Shariff was orchestrating the murders from
Speaker 1: prison to prove his innocence, using a gang called the Rebeldez.
Speaker 1: Now it was two thousand and one and another mass
Speaker 1: grave had been discovered, and even before seeing the images
Speaker 1: of torture, Diana believed that the process of scapegoating that
Speaker 1: usually followed such a discovery was happening all over again.
Speaker 1: They were obviously given the script. This seemed frightened to me.
Speaker 1: You know, to just nonchalantly admit to eight murders is
Speaker 1: quite a feat. And that again spoke to the idea
Speaker 1: that here we go again scapegoats. All right, they have
Speaker 1: the boilerplate language. Somebody is in charge of right now,
Speaker 1: the novella of how this is going to play out,
Speaker 1: you know, someone in law enforcement, and here's what you're
Speaker 1: going to say, and period. It was just a matter
Speaker 1: of like two days after the human remains were gathered
Speaker 1: and taken to the morgue, and already they had two
Speaker 1: men that the authorities that were responsible to bus drivers.
Speaker 1: And we saw that as very suspicious. I mean, how
Speaker 1: can you have suspects already five days after the bodies
Speaker 1: have been discovered at the cotton Field. Diana attended a
Speaker 1: press conference where you got a sickening sense that history
Speaker 1: was repeating itself. One of the reporters from White Has
Speaker 1: asked the state attorney general has hey, is it possible
Speaker 1: that Shadif is involved in these murders too? And he
Speaker 1: turned to the rest of the reporters. This state attorney
Speaker 1: general is said, you know, we're looking into that. Here
Speaker 1: we go again, but they have the perfect scapegoat. He's
Speaker 1: been in jail this whole time, and they may try
Speaker 1: to find a way to link him to these bus drivers,
Speaker 1: and then the bus drivers, of course to the eight
Speaker 1: murders of these young women. One of the things you
Speaker 1: can't fail to notice in Juarez is buses often repurposed
Speaker 1: American school buses, which are everywhere and which I used
Speaker 1: to transport Makila workers to and from their jobs. When
Speaker 1: you and I went to downtown Huirez, we went to
Speaker 1: Mina Street, which is where many of the young women
Speaker 1: were last seen alive, but also the central bus exchange
Speaker 1: in Juarez. So it's easy to see how bus drivers
Speaker 1: might have had the access or the opportunity to kidnap, abduct,
Speaker 1: and kill women. How much of that drove the authority's
Speaker 1: decision to focus on these two men. There is evidence
Speaker 1: to support the notion that the victims were scouted and
Speaker 1: selected in the same way. It appears the scapegoats were
Speaker 1: also scouted and selected because they themselves had vulnerabilities that
Speaker 1: made them less able to defend themselves. And why bus drivers, Well,
Speaker 1: it so happened that before the cotton Fields, a woman
Speaker 1: had survived an attack by a bus driver on her
Speaker 1: way home from work, and so bus drivers were already
Speaker 1: seen as an enemy in the public's eye, and so
Speaker 1: police just kind of picked up on that thread and
Speaker 1: arrested to more bus drivers, saying these guys are responsible
Speaker 1: for the deaths of those women found dumped in the
Speaker 1: cotton field. You could say they were easy targets, just
Speaker 1: like sharif. We don't hear as much about the individuals
Speaker 1: who are falsely accused of committing the crimes. And one
Speaker 1: of those who was accused was the bus driver named
Speaker 1: Javier Garcia Uribe, no relation to me. I went digging
Speaker 1: through news archives around the time they were arrested, and
Speaker 1: I came across this article written by a reporter named
Speaker 1: Minervacanto and she traveled to Hawadis and spent several days
Speaker 1: with the bus driver's wife. Her name is Miriam Garcia.
Speaker 1: The couple they have two children, and so one night
Speaker 1: in two thousand and one, all of a sudden, they
Speaker 1: are surrounded by armed men whose faces are covered with
Speaker 1: Halloween masks, and they threaten Javier, Miriam and their two
Speaker 1: kids and eventually take Kavier, stuff him in a car
Speaker 1: and take him away while Miriam protests, but she's really
Speaker 1: helpless to do anything these men are armed. She spends
Speaker 1: the next three days desperately searching for her husband, just
Speaker 1: like the mothers are searching for the daughters. The next
Speaker 1: time that Miriam sees her husband is on television confessing
Speaker 1: to the murder of these eight women who were found
Speaker 1: in the cotton field. Miriam, just like Baola, She's desperate
Speaker 1: to come to the rescue of her husband, who she
Speaker 1: firmly believes is being scapegoated. On one of the Governor's
Speaker 1: visits to Wattis, she manages to push her way to
Speaker 1: the front of the crowd and denounces her husband's arrest
Speaker 1: and please with the governor, show me one shread of evidence,
Speaker 1: one shread of evidence to prove my husband's guilt, and
Speaker 1: she surrounded and moved away from the governor. Just the
Speaker 1: brazenness by which this is all playing out that inspires
Speaker 1: this passion, in these rage and these loved ones that
Speaker 1: are like, how dare you? How dare you? And they
Speaker 1: call him out in these very passionate public ways. All
Speaker 1: of this scapegoating raises a very serious question. Why would
Speaker 1: the authorities do it were they're trying to protect the
Speaker 1: real killers all along? And if so, how could the
Speaker 1: killers have so much power over the authorities. When we
Speaker 1: come back, we hear from Oscumnez about some strange details
Speaker 1: of the Cottonfield crime scene that revealed the extent of
Speaker 1: what the killers might be capable of, and Hardrick Crufit
Speaker 1: takes the case to the very top of the FBI.
Speaker 1: What is Circle? First of all, it's a beautiful shape.
Speaker 1: It's consistent a community. It's meant to be inclusive the
Speaker 1: globe at Circle. We build USDC a digital dollar that's
Speaker 1: actually dollar backed one to one. We're building a future
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Speaker 1: of the spotlight on series from our Health Discovered podcast.
Speaker 1: In this special episode, we'll hear about living a fulfilling
Speaker 1: life with chronic cart failure, a condition that doesn't have
Speaker 1: to be as scary as it sounds. I was outside
Speaker 1: shoveling snow and I noticed I was coughing up flem.
Speaker 1: Unbeknownst to me, I left a trail of blood behind me,
Speaker 1: and I was one sign. Now, of course, prior to
Speaker 1: I was excessively gaining weight, I had issues breathing, sleep apnea,
Speaker 1: I had a lot of those classic signs. My legs
Speaker 1: were beginning to retain fluid, and I was having heart
Speaker 1: put patients. My heart would be really excessively fast and so.
Speaker 1: But ultimately it was when that occurred that I thought
Speaker 1: something was seriously wrong. Listen to Help Discovered on the
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. In Warez,
Speaker 1: the women's murders and scapegoating seemed to be two sides
Speaker 1: of the same coin, but not every official was content
Speaker 1: to let the true killers go free, and before the
Speaker 1: bus drivers confessed, Oscar Minez was generating some telling leads
Speaker 1: at the crime scene about a sinister network responsible for
Speaker 1: the murder. We started working on our Thursday. By Sunday,
Speaker 1: the Attorney General of the state gave up pressing interviews,
Speaker 1: saying that he had apprehended the murders and that the
Speaker 1: whole day victims have been identified. What I mean, we're
Speaker 1: just in the process of I mean, those are not
Speaker 1: the guys, this is not their profile. I'm looking for
Speaker 1: It was clear from Dinah's reporting that at least one
Speaker 1: of the ways the victims were selected using echo computer
Speaker 1: schools was highly methodical, and Oscar saw clear signs that
Speaker 1: the way the women in the cotton field had been
Speaker 1: killed and dumped was also organized. Who could be capable
Speaker 1: of these kinds of crimes and why would they leave
Speaker 1: bodies in such a brazen spot. Those were the questions
Speaker 1: on Oscar's mind as he worked the crime scene. Then
Speaker 1: all of a sudden he became aware of something suspicious
Speaker 1: and disconcerting. I noticed that there were these men with
Speaker 1: nice cars, clean and shape and everything in Beermudas and
Speaker 1: they were very happy. I mean they seem suspicious. I mean,
Speaker 1: these people were too quickly to arrive there, and if
Speaker 1: you had to guess who they were, these people they
Speaker 1: don't have like a ninety five yeard in that you know,
Speaker 1: and like so I don't know. The fact that these
Speaker 1: sharply dressed men could turn up to the crime scene
Speaker 1: suggested they didn't have an office job or a factory job,
Speaker 1: and also wanted to learn more about who they might be.
Speaker 1: I took picture with the telescopic lens, and I took
Speaker 1: the photographs of the license plates. Like I said, their
Speaker 1: leads that you follow for reasons that will become clear.
Speaker 1: Oscar wasn't able to follow up on that lead. But
Speaker 1: the men weren't the only unexplained presence at the crime scene.
Speaker 1: There were a lot of areas of research in this case.
Speaker 1: It could have led to something relevant. Bosom was promising.
Speaker 1: I believe there was connection with some construction companies because
Speaker 1: the second globle bodies, the ones who were buried, they
Speaker 1: were buried under rubble, and it was enough material to
Speaker 1: cover the bodies. You need like a dump truck to
Speaker 1: do that. The people who do this have access to
Speaker 1: equipment for a constructure company. You can identify that where
Speaker 1: their rubble came from. The cotton Field had so many
Speaker 1: promising leads, the connection between the victims, the license plates
Speaker 1: of the men who turned up at the crime scene,
Speaker 1: and then there's this rubble from a construction site. But
Speaker 1: the authorities never pursued those lines of investigation because the
Speaker 1: bus drivers had already confessed. Then the crime scene gets
Speaker 1: even weirder. The families, in their demand for justice and
Speaker 1: Monica are one of the key engines that keeps pressure
Speaker 1: up on the authorities. In Huarez. What do the families
Speaker 1: do about this crime scene? Three months after the cotton
Speaker 1: field discovery, a group of American volunteers and international reporter
Speaker 1: went back to the scene of the crime to do
Speaker 1: a sweep at the request of the families. One of
Speaker 1: those volunteers was an American professor, who describes how they
Speaker 1: lined up and combed the lot in one long, single row.
Speaker 1: They carried sticks with pointed ends and were instructed to
Speaker 1: put anything they found in a plastic bag. And it
Speaker 1: turns out they found quite a lot women's underwear, book bags, purses,
Speaker 1: a high heeled shoe, clumps of hair. But the most
Speaker 1: significant thing they found that day was a pair of overalls.
Speaker 1: A teenage boy found them in a plastic bag, and
Speaker 1: one of the mothers saw them, and she ran over
Speaker 1: there and took those overalls in her arms. It turns
Speaker 1: out they belonged to her daughter, Claudia, who was turned
Speaker 1: away from the Makila for being late. One of the
Speaker 1: students captured that moment in a photograph. It shows this
Speaker 1: mother sobbing, clutching the overalls, embracing them as if they
Speaker 1: were her daughter. What's odd about this sweep is that
Speaker 1: it happens three months after the bodies were discovered, and
Speaker 1: nobody has been able to explain how those items got there,
Speaker 1: especially the overalls, and how they could have been there
Speaker 1: this whole time without anybody discovering them sooner. This wasn't
Speaker 1: the first time evidence had turned up in suspicious circumstances.
Speaker 1: In the days after the cotton Field discovery, Oskominez received
Speaker 1: a surprise visit agent to my office and say, I
Speaker 1: need you to put this in the evidence of the case.
Speaker 1: And I said no, Dessen order by the Attorney General,
Speaker 1: I say no. If he wants to do it, I
Speaker 1: skim to send Britain order. Oscar was being asked to
Speaker 1: plant evidence by a state official and he was pushing back.
Speaker 1: What evidence was he asking you to plan? Apparently there
Speaker 1: were drugs and Braley hairs. I didn't even open the
Speaker 1: back because when the Attorney General gave the press conference,
Speaker 1: he said that this buzz driv drug addict and they
Speaker 1: have found evidence in their van that the girls have
Speaker 1: been abducted there with the band. I believe it was drugs.
Speaker 1: And then some kind of evidence connecting the disease to
Speaker 1: the vehicle. Whoever it is, who doesn't want the truth
Speaker 1: of these murders to come to light. I want to
Speaker 1: stop at death threats or even torture. They also seem
Speaker 1: to have some sort of sway over the police and
Speaker 1: the Attorney General's office, and Oscar's resistance wasn't going unnoticed.
Speaker 1: I mean I received treads. I was careful. I didn't
Speaker 1: went to at night during that time. I'm yes, you know,
Speaker 1: but I didn't study or prepared to plant evidence. You
Speaker 1: know what I mean. It's like, but ask you the
Speaker 1: way you tell this to us, you say it come okay,
Speaker 1: very nonchalantly. Well, at that time, I was very angry.
Speaker 1: I don't tend to get scared, get to get angry.
Speaker 1: So I was very angry. And when you're angry, you
Speaker 1: don't stop to think clear of the consequences. What was
Speaker 1: important to you to put your job, at the least
Speaker 1: and at amost your safety on the line in this
Speaker 1: particular case, I mean, just because my jab is to
Speaker 1: get to the truth of the case. And also if
Speaker 1: we're talking about a serial killer or killers, or a
Speaker 1: group acting in this way, if you close a case
Speaker 1: with a scapegoat, this is not the end of it.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's going to continue and continue and continue.
Speaker 1: But the order was coming from a powerful place, and
Speaker 1: when you don't obey those who are politically powerful, you
Speaker 1: tend to suffer the consequence I had to I quit.
Speaker 1: I tried to protect the file when the file went
Speaker 1: to the Josh is more difficult to manipulate that when
Speaker 1: I decided to present my resignation later. But like I said,
Speaker 1: I was out anyways. It was a matter of men
Speaker 1: as probably Oscar Health Firm, not just because of principle,
Speaker 1: but the very practical purposes. He knew the bus drivers
Speaker 1: would have to be tried, and he wanted to make
Speaker 1: it as hard as possible to secure a conviction, hoping
Speaker 1: that that would force the authorities to lead a real
Speaker 1: search for the guilty parties. If you see the file,
Speaker 1: the original file, there is not a single evidence that
Speaker 1: connects the bus drivers to the crime. There is no
Speaker 1: evidence that the victims that the state says I didn't
Speaker 1: belong to, there's no proof of that. And the only
Speaker 1: proof you find is that this guys were torture. That
Speaker 1: was a fact, even though it was clearly a case
Speaker 1: that was manipulated about the state. Even though Oscar was
Speaker 1: essentially forced to resign within days of the discovery of
Speaker 1: a crime scene that he felt could finally have exposed
Speaker 1: who was killing the woman in Juarez, His protection of
Speaker 1: the bus driver's file, his refusal to plant evidence was consequential.
Speaker 1: It made the state's case much harder to prove, especially
Speaker 1: when a prominent father and son team of lawyers, Mario
Speaker 1: Escobedo Senior and Junior, took them honest clients his dinner again.
Speaker 1: They were probably the first lawyers to be so open
Speaker 1: about what they understood about the femicides in Huais, and
Speaker 1: they started to mention that there were people getting away
Speaker 1: with murder. But this resistance to the official narrative brings heat.
Speaker 1: Mario became aware that he was being far. He called
Speaker 1: his father in the cell phone and said to help me,
Speaker 1: help me. Meanwhile, across the border in El Paso, Modred
Speaker 1: Crawford couldn't believe what he was seeing, and he was
Speaker 1: more determined than ever to do something about the crimes.
Speaker 1: I'm stunned and amazed at the response of our colleagues
Speaker 1: in Mexico to an enormous crime. On my numbing crime,
Speaker 1: Andrew couldn't intervene directly in the affairs of another sovereign nation.
Speaker 1: But in two thousand and two he visited the jay
Speaker 1: At Cahoover Building in Washington, DC because he wants to
Speaker 1: get approval to keep digging from his boss, Robert Mueller. Oh. Yes,
Speaker 1: director Robert Muller. And I was in the director's office
Speaker 1: on the seventh floor. We call it Mahogany Row, all
Speaker 1: the mahogany tables, and I expressed concern that my outspoken
Speaker 1: activities interaction with my colleagues on the other side of
Speaker 1: the border. I was concerned that I was doing something
Speaker 1: that they did not find to be in the best
Speaker 1: entrance of the FBI And Deputy Director Bruce Gappard said,
Speaker 1: just keep doing what you're doing, and the director just
Speaker 1: nodded affirmatively. It wasn't long before Heredrich Crawford clearly understood
Speaker 1: that something even darker was happening in Juarez than his
Speaker 1: initial hypothesis about a cross borders serial killer. And although
Speaker 1: the bus drivers were in jail, the true killers remained free.
Speaker 1: So as the investigations continued on both sides of the border,
Speaker 1: so did the killings of women in Huirez. In our
Speaker 1: next episode, death threats against investigators graduate into outright murder,
Speaker 1: I'm as Veloschen and see you next time. Quella Felicia
Speaker 1: Forgotten The Women of Juarez is co hosted by Me
Speaker 1: Monica and me oswald Oshan Forgotten is executive produced by
Speaker 1: Me and Mangesh Hatigia. Our producers are Julian Weller and
Speaker 1: Katrina Norvelle. Sound editing by Julian Weller and Jacopo Penzo.
Speaker 1: Lucas Riley is our story editor. Caitlin Thompson is our
Speaker 1: consulting producer. Production support from Emily Maronoff and Aaron Kaufman.
Speaker 1: Recording assistance this episode from Melissa Kaplan. Music by Leonardo
Speaker 1: Heblum and Hakabo Liberman. Additional music by Aaron Kaufman. Special
Speaker 1: thanks to Cecilia Vaye and Minervacanto, whose research and reporting
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