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Speaker 1: is a production of ihump Media and unusual productions. Before
Speaker 1: we start. This podcast contains accounts which some listeners will
Speaker 1: find disturbing, but without them, the story can't be fully understood.
Speaker 1: Please take care while listening. Previously on Forgotten, I said,
Speaker 1: it's just that we're bringing a lot six daughters. I mean,
Speaker 1: in this case, tells been how organized is it? Because
Speaker 1: she was abducted, she was kept in a place, so
Speaker 1: someone was guarding her. The important thing about these computer
Speaker 1: scolls is that the young ladies were putting their personal
Speaker 1: data into the questionnaires and their pictures were taken. Became
Speaker 1: very easy for someone at another end. However, this information
Speaker 1: was being forwarded to let this operate as a catalog,
Speaker 1: you know, catalog of potential victims. When FBI Special Agent
Speaker 1: in charge of El Paso, Padrick Crawford, arrived at the
Speaker 1: border and took note of the women's murders in Juarez,
Speaker 1: his first thought was at a lone serial killer was
Speaker 1: at work there, perhaps even an American. But then this
Speaker 1: connection emerged between Lili Alejandra Andrade and multiple other victims
Speaker 1: to the Echo Computer School, and it started to seem
Speaker 1: like whoever was killing the women wasn't acting alone. They
Speaker 1: sent Dina Washington Valdez on a mission to find out
Speaker 1: as much as she could about Echo. I learned two
Speaker 1: things about the schools. They were used to get background
Speaker 1: on potential victims, because you fell out a questionnaire your name,
Speaker 1: where you live, your age, the neighborhood. You know, whether
Speaker 1: you're a student or you work in the business somewhere.
Speaker 1: And it was like impossible to find out who really
Speaker 1: owned these schools. In fact, it was the FBI who
Speaker 1: had gathered the initial tip off about the computer schools
Speaker 1: through their informant network in Juarez, and according to the intelligence,
Speaker 1: the computer schools were just the tip of the Iceberg,
Speaker 1: there were other businesses in Juarez, whether women were held
Speaker 1: after they'd been abducted. But because these crimes were happening
Speaker 1: in another country, the Bureau couldn't take any direct action,
Speaker 1: And so the FBI sent that information or to the
Speaker 1: TWA authorities who had their primary jurisdiction or these crimes.
Speaker 1: That information seemed extremely promising, the kind of intelligence that
Speaker 1: could lead to arrests, to justice and to the end
Speaker 1: of almost a decade of killings. The Mexican authorities did
Speaker 1: go into the computer schools and took out a bunch
Speaker 1: of documents and software and that sort of thing, and
Speaker 1: they see, we're looking at this as possible evidence. So
Speaker 1: where did that investigation lead. In this episode, we'll find out,
Speaker 1: and we'll visit downtown Juarez, the place where many of
Speaker 1: the young women were last seen alive. I'm as Voloshin
Speaker 1: and I'm Monica. This is forgotten the women, as c
Speaker 1: Star now Knowsquella Felicia Dina Washington Valdez has seen promising
Speaker 1: leads evaporate into nothing before the physical evidence from Lilia
Speaker 1: Lejandra's autopsy, the witnesses this time, she didn't want to
Speaker 1: take any chances so she teamed up with a group
Speaker 1: of fellow reporters to lead a parallel investigation into the
Speaker 1: businesses named in the FBI intelligence the Echo Computer School,
Speaker 1: where Lilia had been due to start class a few
Speaker 1: days after she was abducted, but also several other businesses.
Speaker 1: We did what we call a media raid for lack
Speaker 1: of a better term. Several reporters and I went to
Speaker 1: the places that were identified. These are we call them
Speaker 1: in Spanish, places of concern. So we went from place
Speaker 1: to place, asking why can we interview the owners here?
Speaker 1: And this has been alleged. Girls are being screened here,
Speaker 1: girls are being grabbed here. With the cameras rolling, the
Speaker 1: business owners played along with Dinah's questions. The Echo Computer
Speaker 1: School categorically denied involvement in the murders, but after Dinah
Speaker 1: had gone, it was made clear to her that she
Speaker 1: should never come back. How was that message that your
Speaker 1: media attention was unwelcome conveyed to you? As reporters? We
Speaker 1: were threatened with arrests. There were rest warrantsho shoot for
Speaker 1: three of us. And this came from the police or
Speaker 1: yes to all police, And it was because the owners
Speaker 1: complained about accused of trespassing, but no, we would ask
Speaker 1: for permission. It seemed clear that the Juare's authorities didn't
Speaker 1: welcome Diana's assistance in their investigation. And what was striking
Speaker 1: was that the businesses named by the informants were not
Speaker 1: in some far flung reach of the city. They were
Speaker 1: right in the heart of Juarez. Is downtown a place
Speaker 1: that young women like Lida Alejandra and Sigario Gonzalez pass through.
Speaker 1: Often you're sixteen, seventeen year old. He went downtown to
Speaker 1: do narrant for your parents, or to try in some
Speaker 1: new shoes, to apply for a job, and push, you know,
Speaker 1: or grabbed and lured and you're murdered. To date, I
Speaker 1: mean downtown whais continues the very center of the city.
Speaker 1: This is where girls disappear without anybody seeing anything or
Speaker 1: hearing anything. You know, it continues to be that way. Yes,
Speaker 1: to this day, downtown Juarez is an extremely dangerous place
Speaker 1: for young women. In January twenty twenty, a women's activist
Speaker 1: called Isabel Cabaniers de Latore was shot in the head
Speaker 1: there as she cycled home from meeting some friends at
Speaker 1: a bar. But Huires hasn't always been this way. Moniqua.
Speaker 1: You spent quite a lot of time in Juarez when
Speaker 1: you were growing up. When I was a kid, my
Speaker 1: memories of Watts are very pleasant and joyful. We would
Speaker 1: go there after church with my great grandmother to a
Speaker 1: restaurant that's maybe a mile away from the International Bridge
Speaker 1: to have a big lunch there, and right before crossing back,
Speaker 1: we'd stop at a gas station and pick up a
Speaker 1: crate of glass bottled sodas that you couldn't find in
Speaker 1: El Paso. But today I prefer to stay away from Watts.
Speaker 1: I can't believe I'm saying it, because ten years ago,
Speaker 1: as a young reporter, I would kind of scarf at
Speaker 1: people who would tell me, Yeah, I don't go to
Speaker 1: Huatus anymore, it's too dangerous, and I would get kind
Speaker 1: of angry because I would say, there's still life over there,
Speaker 1: There's still families, people, we should interact like what is
Speaker 1: to me was the other half of my identity. To me,
Speaker 1: it was like they were turning their back on our
Speaker 1: sister city, and I have a different understanding of it now.
Speaker 1: The downtown part of Juarez is close to the mouth
Speaker 1: of the Paso del Lotte Bridge that connects the city
Speaker 1: to El Paso. Migrants from Central America and elsewhere arrive
Speaker 1: here on their journey to seek asylum in the US.
Speaker 1: It's also one of the most dangerous parts of Ouarez,
Speaker 1: but Monica suggested we visit to get about a picture
Speaker 1: of the final moments of the dozens of women who
Speaker 1: have disappeared there, seemingly into thin air. In the car
Speaker 1: on the way over, we come up with a cover
Speaker 1: story in case anyone asks us what we're doing there.
Speaker 1: It's just the lookouts are also there. Just if they
Speaker 1: get a bad vibe from your presence, Like if we
Speaker 1: act casual and tell them, yeah, yeah, we're reporting on
Speaker 1: the on the migrant caravan, that kind of um eases then.
Speaker 1: But yeah, we're going around looking at the missing posters
Speaker 1: of women and we're asking a lot of questions. They
Speaker 1: might send someone to scare us off. It turns out
Speaker 1: that it's not just police who threatened people who ask
Speaker 1: too many questions. It's also the gangs who control downtown Houarres.
Speaker 1: Their business interests range from human trafficking to drug dealing
Speaker 1: to murder. So we're here in downtown Quattas and yeah,
Speaker 1: on this street just behind us was where one of
Speaker 1: the Echo Computer stores had an office and this is
Speaker 1: this is ground zero for missing women in Hottus, right
Speaker 1: down here. Who everyone is. Yes, you think there's a
Speaker 1: lot of witnesses around, but also there's just so much
Speaker 1: activity going on that you know, if someone gets into
Speaker 1: somebody's car, even if it's by force, correct, I can
Speaker 1: imagine coming here as a as a young woman from
Speaker 1: somewhere else in Mexico arriving. I mean, it's such a maze.
Speaker 1: Every weren't with you, We've even completely lost, that's a
Speaker 1: good way to describe it. Downtown Hottis is like a maze.
Speaker 1: This is where the unknown starts. This is where women
Speaker 1: were seen for the last time, and after that the
Speaker 1: mystery begins. We're on a street called Mina that's like
Speaker 1: the central archery for most bus routes traveling east and
Speaker 1: west across the city. This is the spot where Sir
Speaker 1: Groo Gonzalez likely made her final transfer twenty years ago.
Speaker 1: The sidewalks are a blur of shoppers and vendors selling
Speaker 1: cheap jewelry and pirated DVDs. The smell of engine exhaust
Speaker 1: mixes with food being cooked on open grills, and it's loud.
Speaker 1: There's music coming seeming me from everywhere. But there's also
Speaker 1: something else, more sinister, just beneath the surface. A brothel.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, it's a it's a well it
Speaker 1: says it's a Thangas nightclub, which is Thong's nightclub. And
Speaker 1: I think there's a hotel on the upper floor and
Speaker 1: the nightclub is on the lower floor. And it's on
Speaker 1: the block right next to the fabric store where one
Speaker 1: of the young women was last seen. Many cities have
Speaker 1: red light districts Amsterdam, Tokyo, London, but what's striking about
Speaker 1: Juarez is that there's no separation between places that sell
Speaker 1: sex and the transportation hub and shops selling everyday necessities.
Speaker 1: You're just seeing on that lamp post. So it doesn't
Speaker 1: take long before we come across these missing posters. The
Speaker 1: flyer for a missing woman. She looked maybe between fourteen
Speaker 1: and sixteen years old. The black and white fliers bearing
Speaker 1: pictures of young women's faces are not the only evidence
Speaker 1: of what happened here. Also on lamp posts are pink
Speaker 1: squares with black crosses overlaid. Each one has been painted
Speaker 1: by a family grieving and lost daughter. Well it used
Speaker 1: to be that every time the body of a murdered
Speaker 1: woman was discovered in Huadis, the families of previous victims
Speaker 1: and activists would come out and paint these crosses as
Speaker 1: a reminder to the city that these murders were happening.
Speaker 1: While most people in downtown Juarez hustle by on their way,
Speaker 1: every so often notice a man standing still. I think
Speaker 1: there's a lookout over here. So in a sea of
Speaker 1: people moving back and forth, they're not hard to spot.
Speaker 1: In Spanish, they're called alcornez hawks, birds of prey. They're
Speaker 1: the on the ground intelligence for organized crime, gangs, cartels.
Speaker 1: Just because the way the stands. Sometimes it's just a
Speaker 1: sense that you get. I get a little bit nervous
Speaker 1: about staying in one place for a long time, especially
Speaker 1: just because we stick out, and especially when you start
Speaker 1: looking at missing flyers. Wow, that's a guy that he's
Speaker 1: trying to spook us an, Yeah, should we get out
Speaker 1: of anyway? We did get out of there, but young
Speaker 1: women like Sigario Gonzalez didn't have that choice. They had
Speaker 1: to pass through every day, and it's devastating to think
Speaker 1: that that daily commute could make them so vulnerable. It's
Speaker 1: also easy to see why they might stop to sign
Speaker 1: up for a computer class that promised the kind of
Speaker 1: skills that might help them leave this place behind, and
Speaker 1: in turn, how that aspiration could lead to to them
Speaker 1: being spotted, selected, tracked, and ultimately killed. But I was
Speaker 1: also curious about what it was like to be a
Speaker 1: journalist in this environment, where you had to have a
Speaker 1: cover story and bring discreet equipment just to ask questions
Speaker 1: about missing young women whose fate was obvious from the
Speaker 1: posters and the hand painted crosses adorning almost every other
Speaker 1: lamp post. When we come back, we go to meet
Speaker 1: a reporter who knows Huarez from the inside out and
Speaker 1: whose colleague paid the ultimate price for asking too many questions.
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Speaker 1: dot com. Leaving downtown Juarez one he can I get
Speaker 1: back in the car to hear from one of the
Speaker 1: city's most celebrated journalists about what it's like to report here.
Speaker 1: We're headed to the local daily newspaper here in what
Speaker 1: is called in Barrio to speak with Sandra Rodriguez Mieto
Speaker 1: in Viario suffered three casualties during the drug war, two
Speaker 1: reporters and one photographer. If I remember correctly, Sandra can
Speaker 1: tell us about the fee there oh that community se
Speaker 1: After a brief registration, we were shown upstairs to Sandra
Speaker 1: Rodriguez Nieto's office. Sandra has won multiple international awards, including
Speaker 1: the Daniel Pearl Award for Outstanding International Investigative Reporting in
Speaker 1: twenty fourteen. She was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard. On
Speaker 1: the walls of her office are some gruesome photographs, including
Speaker 1: a dead man strung up by his arms and wearing
Speaker 1: a pig mask. He was one of the thousands of
Speaker 1: victims of the drug war. When Al Chapo's Sina Loa
Speaker 1: cartel was moving in on Juarez in two thousand and eight.
Speaker 1: The man's body is displayed as a message don't squeal.
Speaker 1: Also on Sandra's wall is a map of the city,
Speaker 1: and we pointed out the part of downtown Juarez where
Speaker 1: we just come from. When's that street, Mina Mina, That's
Speaker 1: where the bass stop and that's where a lot of
Speaker 1: the girls were seen for the last time. We were
Speaker 1: right there. Yeah, there's a very very very dangerous place
Speaker 1: of the Syria. I wouldn't recommend you guys to go back. Yeah. Oh,
Speaker 1: that's had certainly a song where they have lookouts. That's
Speaker 1: how they control the area through intimidage. In the last decade,
Speaker 1: a total of twenty nine journalists have been murdered in Mexico,
Speaker 1: more than any other country, including Syria. Mexico's record for
Speaker 1: solving those crimes is abysmal. Nearly all go unpunished, and
Speaker 1: when journalists try to solve crimes themselves, they often become
Speaker 1: the targets. Something Sandra is reminded of daily, actually armandous desk,
Speaker 1: is that it's right there, and it's going to be
Speaker 1: actually the tenth anniversary this month, ten years. Can you
Speaker 1: imagine ten years has been like this? Right outside Sander's
Speaker 1: office is the desk of a reporter called Armando Rodriguez,
Speaker 1: preserved as he left it. His desktop computer is there
Speaker 1: with dust covered keys, and there's also a dry bunch
Speaker 1: of yellow marigolds left in memory of him. Armando Rodriguez,
Speaker 1: who was our colleague. He was covering the crime bit
Speaker 1: for twenty years in whities, so he knew everything and
Speaker 1: he got killed in two thousand and eight when he
Speaker 1: was taking his starter out to the school. What does
Speaker 1: it feel like for you to sit here in your
Speaker 1: office looking every day at an empty desk belonging to
Speaker 1: one of your colleagues. The point is not living with
Speaker 1: an empty list, but living with the idea of impunity.
Speaker 1: It drives it crazy not to know who did it
Speaker 1: and why. What's it like to work as a Do
Speaker 1: you get ted? Do you get just to it? Yes?
Speaker 1: What to the danger, to the stress, to the possibility
Speaker 1: of getting killed, don't we That's where you and I
Speaker 1: differ because my home is on the other side, where
Speaker 1: I can go home and not worry about that, whereas
Speaker 1: you live here the full day every day. Well, I
Speaker 1: will say that you are being very humble because you
Speaker 1: know that. I mean, you hear more stories, you hear mortyrror.
Speaker 1: You might be more scared, and you keep on coming.
Speaker 1: We live here, I know, I think, I know. The
Speaker 1: place is dynamic, and I think I know more and
Speaker 1: then makes me feel a little bit safer. But that's
Speaker 1: how we protect ourselves. I think that's the story that
Speaker 1: we tell ourselves. Yeah, we tell ourselves different versions of
Speaker 1: the same story. Yeah. Sandro Rodriguez could take any assignment
Speaker 1: she wanted, and yet she chooses to work here in Juarez.
Speaker 1: She chooses to walk past Armando's empty desk every day.
Speaker 1: That was something that was starting to stand out to
Speaker 1: me about this story. How, in spite of the enormous
Speaker 1: obstacles and dangers, reporters keep on pushing to get towards
Speaker 1: the truth. I remember you telling me, Monica, about your
Speaker 1: mother who really didn't want you to come to Juarez
Speaker 1: to report, and I know you first went there to
Speaker 1: report on the drug war. How did you first get
Speaker 1: involved with reporting on the women's murders. I got an
Speaker 1: email from one of the family organizations, basically a red alert.
Speaker 1: There's a young woman who's I don't know, sixteen, seventeen
Speaker 1: years old. She's missing and please help us find her.
Speaker 1: We'd think something better has happened to her, and so
Speaker 1: I I from from there. I reached out to the
Speaker 1: girl's mother, Susanna, and met her at her house in
Speaker 1: Wattas and told her take me down the route that
Speaker 1: your daughter Lupita would take to come home every day.
Speaker 1: This was just days after her daughter had gone missing,
Speaker 1: and she was armed with her own stack of black
Speaker 1: and white flyers announcing her daughter's disappearance. We got off
Speaker 1: of the bus. We walked through the same streets in
Speaker 1: downtown Wattas where you and I walked, handing out these leaflets,
Speaker 1: putting them up on the lamp posts. And she walked
Speaker 1: me down that street, Mina, and she said, this is
Speaker 1: the street my daughter was last No, Mina Street is
Speaker 1: the street you took me to. It's not far from
Speaker 1: where Paula Flores and her family and the search for
Speaker 1: Cigario back in nineteen ninety eight. Erie is not a
Speaker 1: strong enough word for the similarities between Paula talking about
Speaker 1: the search the night after Sagrario goes missing and Susanna
Speaker 1: describing her family's search. This switch goes off, and nothing
Speaker 1: else in the world matters, not their own safety, not
Speaker 1: the safety of their living relatives. They have a one
Speaker 1: track mission, which is to locate and rescue their daughters.
Speaker 1: Back at her house in Lomas de Puleo, Paulaflores remembers
Speaker 1: that April day in nineteen ninety eight when Sagario failed
Speaker 1: to come home from work, and the desperate search that followed.
Speaker 1: Every day, I would stand there at the door, and
Speaker 1: that comforted me seeing her getting off the bus and
Speaker 1: coming home. That day, like any other day, I was
Speaker 1: waiting for her, and I began to despair when she
Speaker 1: didn't arrive. We knew that she had worked and that
Speaker 1: she had left at the time. Everyone left, but no
Speaker 1: one saw anything. And I tell you that very night
Speaker 1: we began searching at the Red Cross, in the hospitals,
Speaker 1: on the streets, searching for her. You always san much.
Speaker 1: That night, I grabbed all the photos I had of
Speaker 1: my daughter. I would pass them out at gas station, saying,
Speaker 1: I'm looking for my daughter. Can you please help me
Speaker 1: find her. There were nights I would step outside and
Speaker 1: I would shout her name. I would run around the
Speaker 1: house and shout her name with all my strength in
Speaker 1: the silence of the night. I felt she could hear me,
Speaker 1: so I would call to my daughter. Paula and her
Speaker 1: family searched and searched, but they didn't find Sagrario, and
Speaker 1: they didn't get much help from the authorities. Either filed
Speaker 1: the report, and initially they didn't accept it. They claimed
Speaker 1: she had run off with her boyfriend. What they always
Speaker 1: say even today. No, I told them, her boyfriend is
Speaker 1: with us, helping us look for her. After so much,
Speaker 1: insisting the police finally made up a missing report, but
Speaker 1: they did nothing. They did nothing to look for her.
Speaker 1: The police did nothing. The police did ultimately open the
Speaker 1: missing person's report, but that was about as far as
Speaker 1: they went. At one point they told Paula they couldn't
Speaker 1: search for Sagario because they didn't have any available vehicles.
Speaker 1: And it turned out this was a common experience for
Speaker 1: families whose daughters had gone missing, so much so that
Speaker 1: a protest camp of mothers formed outside the police station.
Speaker 1: They weren't looking for her, they weren't doing anything. But
Speaker 1: by then we started to get to know the people protesting.
Speaker 1: At the sit in outside the police station, we met
Speaker 1: this lady. She started asking us about Sagaradio's case while
Speaker 1: my daughter was still missing. She was the one who
Speaker 1: told us on that occasion that the Attorney General was
Speaker 1: right there at the station in a meeting. She said,
Speaker 1: you want to see him. I said, yes, I want
Speaker 1: to see him and tell him to look for my daughter,
Speaker 1: implore him, beg him. She said, we'll have to go
Speaker 1: in by force. When we come back. The outcome of
Speaker 1: that confrontation and Estechavescano, Ahuara's accountant, who began to create
Speaker 1: a ledger of the missing women. What is Circle? First
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Speaker 1: dot com so estechavs Kano. Who is she? Monica? Esther
Speaker 1: was one of the first people to really notice these
Speaker 1: murders and disappearances. She was an accountant who moved to
Speaker 1: Sulabhuadis and she joined the editorial board of Eddiadio. Esther
Speaker 1: stood no more than five feet tall. She wore her
Speaker 1: hair short and with these perfect golden highlights. Sometimes she
Speaker 1: liked to wear pearls. And it turns out Esther was
Speaker 1: a big fan of good whiskey and good wine. There
Speaker 1: is a phrase in Spanish that I think describes Esther perfectly,
Speaker 1: and that's which means small but fierce. She was a single,
Speaker 1: independent woman who forged a career in post World War
Speaker 1: two Mexico. And this was at a time when it
Speaker 1: was unheard of for a woman to leave the house
Speaker 1: before she was married, but she did it, and she
Speaker 1: climbed the corporate ladder, working as an executive level accountant
Speaker 1: in these multinational companies. She's just just a badass. I
Speaker 1: love the way she lived her life. And she moves
Speaker 1: to Wadis right before her fiftieth birthday, and so she's
Speaker 1: reading the newspaper on a daily basis and This is
Speaker 1: how she comes across these headlines detailing the disappearances and
Speaker 1: murders of women all across the city. She's an accountant,
Speaker 1: so record keeping comes natural to her, and so what
Speaker 1: she does is she starts clipping out these articles from
Speaker 1: the newspaper and compiling them into an archive. It's report
Speaker 1: after report, narrating a variation on the same theme, where
Speaker 1: the victim was found, her age, what she was wearing,
Speaker 1: the autopsy findings, and Esther and a group of friends
Speaker 1: started visiting the families of the missing and murdered women
Speaker 1: that Esther would read about in the paper. They would
Speaker 1: call attention to these cases by staging sit ins at
Speaker 1: the governor's office. She didn't worry about being polite or
Speaker 1: let's wait until tomorrow, or cross our fingers and hope
Speaker 1: it turns out okay. No, she was a no nonsense,
Speaker 1: no bullshit sort of person who got things done. In Esther,
Speaker 1: Paula had found her match and an important ally. Together,
Speaker 1: they forced their way into the police station, brushing off
Speaker 1: officials and members of staff who tried to stop them,
Speaker 1: and finally they got in front of the Attorney General,
Speaker 1: Arturo Chaves. Chaves. Once we were in the first thing
Speaker 1: I did was kneel down. I just asked him one question.
Speaker 1: I asked him if he had any daughters, and he
Speaker 1: said yes he did. Said then, I, oh, you can
Speaker 1: put yourself on my shoes. My daughter is missing. I
Speaker 1: was crying and begged him to look for my daughter.
Speaker 1: I told him they were doing nothing to find her.
Speaker 1: I remember that my husband tried to lift me by
Speaker 1: the arm, telling me not to kneel. I said, no,
Speaker 1: from my daughter, I'll kneel before anybody. To everyone's surprise,
Speaker 1: Javis Chaves listened to everything Paula had to say, and
Speaker 1: after some silence, he promised to help the investigation and
Speaker 1: search for Cigaria. There was a moment of hope, but
Speaker 1: it soon faded. Offered nothing but words if the authorities
Speaker 1: always treated us like that. Powder took the investigation back
Speaker 1: into her own hands and even went on to identify
Speaker 1: a prime suspect. We'll come back to him for now.
Speaker 1: The question is why was the official response so underwhelming?
Speaker 1: Why the women like Paula and Esther have to become heroes. Well,
Speaker 1: remember that evidence that authorities took out of the computer
Speaker 1: school his Diana again. They just you know, when they
Speaker 1: got the photo up. They see, we found nothing that
Speaker 1: was it. You know. Not only did the authorities threaten
Speaker 1: Diana with arrest for trespassing, she claims they didn't lead
Speaker 1: a proper investigation into the computer schools themselves. And this
Speaker 1: mirrored the way they treated the victims' families. There was
Speaker 1: no help for these families. The authorities made fun of them,
Speaker 1: defamed the daughters in many cases, calling them prostitutes. They
Speaker 1: would say that they were out at hours of a
Speaker 1: night when they should be at home, or that they
Speaker 1: ran off with a boyfriend, the mythical boyfriend that didn't exist,
Speaker 1: and it didn't matter if this was demonstrably untrue. Remember
Speaker 1: in Sagario's case, the authorities said she'd probably run off
Speaker 1: with her boyfriend, even though Andrews himself helf was actively
Speaker 1: involved in the search. This became just a very routine
Speaker 1: way for the authorities to explain what was happening. And
Speaker 1: yet we know from practically more than ninety percent of
Speaker 1: the murders. Most of the victims were out doing errands,
Speaker 1: they were going to school, they were on their way
Speaker 1: to apply for a job in the daytime. The thing
Speaker 1: is victim blaming excuses the police from having to search
Speaker 1: for the real culprit. It also reinforces this notion that
Speaker 1: people can literally get away with murder, and it further
Speaker 1: traumatizes the families. Diana told us about the case of
Speaker 1: Irma Perez, whose daughter Olga went missing in downtown Juarez
Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety five and who was discovered murdered later
Speaker 1: that year. She had all this pain in her over
Speaker 1: her daughter's death and the way the authorities treated the
Speaker 1: investigation and the way they defamed her. And you know,
Speaker 1: she says, you know, her daughter died once she was murdered,
Speaker 1: and she died again when the authorities then started to
Speaker 1: defame her and blame her and say all sorts of
Speaker 1: things about her that were simply not true, in order
Speaker 1: for the authorities to, I guess, justify their lack of investigation,
Speaker 1: their inefficiency, their corruption. Corruption. It's a heavy charge. Incompetence
Speaker 1: is one thing, but outright dishonesty that's something else altogether.
Speaker 1: But Diana chooses her words for a reason. Back at
Speaker 1: her house in El Paso, she pulls out an old
Speaker 1: motor or less cell phone, the kind with buttons, and
Speaker 1: to pull out antenna, and she starts to tell us
Speaker 1: about a call she received while she was reporting on
Speaker 1: the computer schools that haunts UH to this day. The
Speaker 1: phoneus ringing. I pick it up. I don't recognize a
Speaker 1: telephone number that it's coming from, but it's coming. It
Speaker 1: appears from Mexico, and I hear this this noise in
Speaker 1: the background, a newscast in English, and then all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, there's this electric saw sound coming in. We
Speaker 1: know that people get dismembered now over there. The other
Speaker 1: thing that made that call scary was here in his
Speaker 1: child voice saying mummy, no, mummy, no, lemm no. That
Speaker 1: was the same call. Yes, yeah, I went in for
Speaker 1: like six minutes, thanks long minutes. The cool was bad enough,
Speaker 1: but it was a discovery of where it originated that
Speaker 1: was truly terrifying. One of my friends at a federal
Speaker 1: law enforcement agency, I would't say which one, because it's
Speaker 1: done is a favor to me. They took my phone
Speaker 1: to try and see they could trace that call, and
Speaker 1: they traced it back to Mexican military intelligence. The authorities
Speaker 1: have the responsibility for solving these crimes. They are the
Speaker 1: ones that need to name the killers and bring them
Speaker 1: to justice. They have not done this and perhaps never
Speaker 1: intended to do it. Diana had a virtuous mission. She
Speaker 1: was trying to do what the police weren't doing. She
Speaker 1: was trying to call out this wrongdoing and for someone
Speaker 1: to come in and prevent her from doing that, how
Speaker 1: dare you? Why would someone within Mexican military intelligence place
Speaker 1: threatening calls to a US journalist trying to find out
Speaker 1: who was killing the women in Huarez? And why were
Speaker 1: they embarrassed by the international attention? Were they trying to
Speaker 1: protect the killer? Could they be involved themselves? Well? In
Speaker 1: two thousand and one, something happened that shocked Huarez and
Speaker 1: shocked the world, and two men confessed to the crimes.
Speaker 1: That's on our next episode. I'm as Voloshin and I'm Monica.
Speaker 1: See you next time, Sela Felicia Forgotten The Women of
Speaker 1: Juarez is co hosted by me Monica and me oswal Oshin.
Speaker 1: Forgotten is executive produced by Me and Mangesh Hattikila. Our
Speaker 1: producers are Julian Weller and Katrina Norvelle. Sound editing by
Speaker 1: Julian Weller and Jacopo Penzo. Lucas Riley is our story editor.
Speaker 1: Caitlin Thompson is our consulting producer. Production support from Emily
Speaker 1: Maronoff and Aaron Kaufman. Music by Leonardo Heblum and Hakkabo Libermann.
Speaker 1: Additional music by Aaron Kaufman. Karla Tassara is the voice
Speaker 1: actor for Paula Flores and Now the Best Man. I
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