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Speaker 1: doctor John White, WebMD's chief medical officer and host of
Speaker 1: the spotlight on series from our Health Discovered podcast. In
Speaker 1: this special episode, we'll hear about living a fulfilling life
Speaker 1: with chronic cart failure, a condition that doesn't have to
Speaker 1: be as scary as it sounds. I was outside shoveling
Speaker 1: snow and I noticed I was coughing up flem. Unbeknownst
Speaker 1: 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: palt 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 Health Discovered on the
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. Forgotten is
Speaker 1: a production of ihont Media and Unusual Productions. Before we start,
Speaker 1: This podcast contains accounts which some listeners will find disturbing,
Speaker 1: but without them, the story can't be fully understood. Please
Speaker 1: take care while listening last time on Forgotten. There were
Speaker 1: only speculations that the markings might have indicated the initials
Speaker 1: of a perpetrator or representative map, a map of murder.
Speaker 1: You'd have to be a cretan if you're a serial murderer,
Speaker 1: or you're a psychopath not to understand. Wow, it's like
Speaker 1: antelopes at the waterhole. What a great opportunity for a
Speaker 1: serial killer. These murders appeared to be taketplace systematically. It's
Speaker 1: specific kinds of victims or being selected and kidnapped or
Speaker 1: taken by force somehow or lured and then their body sound.
Speaker 1: Murders of women had been going on unsolved in Huirez
Speaker 1: since the early nineteen nineties. There were countless stories like
Speaker 1: that of Sir Gario Gonzalez, who went missing on her
Speaker 1: way home from work in nineteen ninety eight and whose
Speaker 1: body was found in the desert two weeks later. In
Speaker 1: early two thousand and one, there was another case that
Speaker 1: matched the pattern, Lilia Alejandra Andrade. Like Sigario, she was
Speaker 1: seventeen years old, She left for work one morning and
Speaker 1: then she never came home. But this case had some
Speaker 1: crucial differences that made El Paso journalist Dinah Washington Valdez
Speaker 1: believe that it could be solved and unlock others in
Speaker 1: the process. At the very least, it should force the
Speaker 1: local police into action. The authorities are saying nothing is
Speaker 1: related to each other. None of these deaths connect, you know,
Speaker 1: it's all random. Diana didn't buy this, and she wasn't alone.
Speaker 1: The FBI Special Agent in charge of El Paso Headrick Crawford,
Speaker 1: was concerned about the possibility of an American serial killer
Speaker 1: using Juarez as a hunting ground, but wherever the killer
Speaker 1: was based. Diana was convinced that they were carefully selecting
Speaker 1: their victims, and she was willing to do whatever it
Speaker 1: took to prove it. Can you talk about what motivated
Speaker 1: you to take vacation time, weekends, evenings to devote to
Speaker 1: this story. They were not just random victims. There's something
Speaker 1: organized taking place. As much as Diana was sure this
Speaker 1: was true, it was almost impossible to prove without official investigation.
Speaker 1: But then a case came along that looked set to
Speaker 1: change everything. I think that a good prototype or a
Speaker 1: model of these kinds of cases would be Lilia Alejandro
Speaker 1: Garcia Andrade. Lilia Alejandra was a teenager and a mother
Speaker 1: of two who worked at Immacuiladora, assembling plastic parts for appliances.
Speaker 1: She posed for photos at work promoting the product she
Speaker 1: helped make, and in February two thousand and one, she
Speaker 1: went missing. Previously, every victim had disappeared seemingly into thin air,
Speaker 1: but witnesses had seen Lilia Alejandra struggling in a car
Speaker 1: a few days after she was abducted. Diana became obsessed
Speaker 1: with this case as a key to solving the whole,
Speaker 1: and she wants to interview the witnesses herself. A lawyer
Speaker 1: in Juarez promised to help her find them. Then while
Speaker 1: they were meeting, he changed his mind. He said, don't
Speaker 1: touch this, don't go near it, like going, well, okay,
Speaker 1: you don't want to be part of it, that's fine.
Speaker 1: Just draw me the map and show me where I
Speaker 1: could find the witnesses. And so he started to draw
Speaker 1: me a nap that neighborhood to indicate work and go
Speaker 1: find people of interest, and then he tore up the paper,
Speaker 1: girdled it up and said, no, no, it's too dangerous
Speaker 1: to stay away from it, Diana. But for Diana, the
Speaker 1: warning had the opposite effect. It made her confident that
Speaker 1: she was onto something. This case continued to strongly appeal
Speaker 1: to me as an important case. So, like the naive
Speaker 1: person that I was, I go into that neighborhood stunnocking
Speaker 1: on doors. You know, here is a picture of that.
Speaker 1: You should see this young woman and blah blah blah
Speaker 1: and door to door. And I did run into someone
Speaker 1: who said, no, you need to be on the other
Speaker 1: side of the street, and they showed me where to
Speaker 1: go find a couple of witnesses. Diana was able to
Speaker 1: uncover an extraordinary detail of the last weeks of Lily
Speaker 1: Alejandra's life that directly connected her with several other victims.
Speaker 1: But Dinah also learned something else while she was interviewing witnesses.
Speaker 1: She wasn't the only person on the case. Someone identifying
Speaker 1: themselves as FBI agents knocked on the door and they
Speaker 1: wanted to know what they saw, what they knew all
Speaker 1: the details. And there is no such thing as the
Speaker 1: FBI ever doing this. Somebody went there impersonating FBI. Why
Speaker 1: would someone want to conduct their own interviews of the
Speaker 1: witnesses to this crime? What they're hoping to learn? Were
Speaker 1: they perhaps connected to leadres killer. I'm as Volosha and
Speaker 1: I'm mon, this is forgotten. The women of Uires, barn
Speaker 1: Sela Felicia. It was two thousand and one and Diana
Speaker 1: Washington Valdez had been investigating crimes that she believed were
Speaker 1: connected for years. Then Lilia Alejandro was abducted and murdered.
Speaker 1: Something unusually sinister seemed to be happening. That story about
Speaker 1: the lawyer who was literally about to help Diana tracked
Speaker 1: down these witnesses Monica and then who tore up the
Speaker 1: piece of paper he was drawing on. What do you
Speaker 1: think he was thinking about? Why did he do that?
Speaker 1: I think this lawyer was torn between helping Diana advance
Speaker 1: her investigation and not wanting to put Diana in harm's way.
Speaker 1: And that's attention that we all constantly live with doing
Speaker 1: work like this in wat is, you have to make
Speaker 1: the decision how far are you going to take things?
Speaker 1: And you told me that's something that you've thought about
Speaker 1: a lot. And then when you first started reporting Huares
Speaker 1: you even develop your own protocols. I would think carefully
Speaker 1: about what I would wear going to howatas. I really
Speaker 1: loved this pair of cowboy boots that I had, and
Speaker 1: I would love wearing them, and they would be helpful,
Speaker 1: like if you're out reporting in the desert, they're they're
Speaker 1: helpful to keep the sand out. But I would think
Speaker 1: twice about putting those cowboy boots on because I would think, shoot,
Speaker 1: what if someone stuck me into the back of their trunk.
Speaker 1: It would be very uncomfortable to be wearing these cowboy
Speaker 1: boots stuffed in somebody's trunk. But even with those grim
Speaker 1: and scary thoughts, you did go ahead and do the reporting.
Speaker 1: And Diana went ahead did the reporting. What do you
Speaker 1: know about the neighborhood that she was knocking on doors in?
Speaker 1: Diana describes it as a middle class neighborhood peppered with
Speaker 1: small businesses. One of the witnesses who lived there was
Speaker 1: a judge and another was a US citizen. They claim
Speaker 1: they saw Lelia in a car parked in front of
Speaker 1: a TV repair shop, and the people who lived there
Speaker 1: seeing an American reporter knocking on doors and asking questions.
Speaker 1: That must have been quite a strange site. Yes, yes, so.
Speaker 1: At this point Diana had appeared on TV giving multiple
Speaker 1: interviews about the work that she was doing, so she
Speaker 1: was often recognized even in Wattis, but typically a reporter
Speaker 1: going door to door in a neighborhood that isn't her
Speaker 1: own is going to stick out, which, of course, property
Speaker 1: put her risk. Absolutely to Diana, it seemed like a
Speaker 1: risk worth taking, So she was the potal significance of
Speaker 1: this case. So here's what Diana was able to piece
Speaker 1: together about Lilia. Lilia Lejandra Andrade was say, vivacious, upgoing teenager.
Speaker 1: She's very typical of the young women in watts who
Speaker 1: turned up missing. You can tell from the victimology reports
Speaker 1: that a lot of them were very responsible young women
Speaker 1: because they were either enrolled in school or working. So
Speaker 1: this young woman disappears, of all days, on Valentine's Day.
Speaker 1: It all happened because someone was supposed to pick her
Speaker 1: up the day from work and couldn't make it, and
Speaker 1: something happened when Lilia got off work. It's assumed that
Speaker 1: she got a ride with somebody. She then is missing
Speaker 1: for several days. Lilia's shift ended at six pm the
Speaker 1: day she disappeared. She borrowed money for fair from a
Speaker 1: coworker and was last seen taking a shortcut across a
Speaker 1: vacant lot on the way to the bus stop, so
Speaker 1: someone sees her, They call her over to a car
Speaker 1: and physically grab her. She is seen in a car
Speaker 1: later in the neighborhood by witnesses struggling On February nineteenth,
Speaker 1: Why does dispatchers receive several emergency calls? Witnesses report a
Speaker 1: woman struggling in a white Ford thunder Bird. These witnesses
Speaker 1: called the authorities. They call the police, need to come
Speaker 1: out here, but no one came out for several hours.
Speaker 1: Then the car vanished, and when the authorities finally showed up,
Speaker 1: there was nothing happening, so they left. And so the
Speaker 1: witnesses are concerned that if police had shown up sooner
Speaker 1: than perhaps it could have saved Alilia, because she ends
Speaker 1: up being brutally raped and then murdered and then her
Speaker 1: body dumped nearby. Despite the multiple calls, the entry in
Speaker 1: the log book for the night is nothing to report,
Speaker 1: but Lilia's body was found within roughly twenty four hours
Speaker 1: of her death, and that meant her autopsy could provide
Speaker 1: answers about what had happened to her. Lilia's body was
Speaker 1: discovered the day after the witnesses had seen her struggling
Speaker 1: in a car, but what had happened to her? Who
Speaker 1: was she with during the time she was still alive. Normally,
Speaker 1: these questions were impossible to answer when a young woman's
Speaker 1: body was discovered in Juarez. Sigario had been dead for
Speaker 1: two weeks when her body was found, by which time
Speaker 1: physical evidence that could have identified the perpetrator had deteriorated.
Speaker 1: In fact, often authorities couldn't even determine who a victim was,
Speaker 1: let alone who had killed them. But this time was different.
Speaker 1: Despite the police's inexplicable failure to respond to the emergency calls,
Speaker 1: Lilia's body was found soon after her death, and one
Speaker 1: of the few officials Diana did trust was overseeing the autopsy.
Speaker 1: I had confidence because Oscars and others that I knew
Speaker 1: personally were involved in doing this examinations at the Morgue.
Speaker 1: You and Oscar two people who are on the same side,
Speaker 1: more or less right, truth secrecy. Yes, when we come back,
Speaker 1: we meet Oscar Mines and learn about the evidence that
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Speaker 1: now the best man. I was going to plan this
Speaker 1: speech out while I got my oil change, but I
Speaker 1: went to take five and it was a lot faster
Speaker 1: than I thought. So here he goes. Okay, Tim, you
Speaker 1: were my first friend. Angela you were my first Yeah.
Speaker 1: I never thought the two of you would make it,
Speaker 1: But I guess love really is blind. No, no, no,
Speaker 1: I mean in a good way. I take five. Your
Speaker 1: oil change is faster than you think. Take five to
Speaker 1: stay in your car ten minute oil change. Before the break,
Speaker 1: Dinah Washington Valdez told us that Oscar Minez was a
Speaker 1: key source to begin to piece together who was killing
Speaker 1: young women like Lilia, Alejandra Andrade. We decided to pay
Speaker 1: him a visit. So who is this Oscar minus Monica,
Speaker 1: who gives him a special insight into the crimes. Oscar
Speaker 1: was the head of the forensics department for the State
Speaker 1: Police in Chihuahua, so he was very directly involved in
Speaker 1: the investigation of the women's murders, and he was actually
Speaker 1: one of the first investigators to sound the alarm that
Speaker 1: there might be a potential serial killer in the city.
Speaker 1: When we met him for our interview, Oscar was teaching
Speaker 1: criminology at the Hawades University and so we met him
Speaker 1: in school after one of his classes, in an empty auditorium.
Speaker 1: My name is Oscar minus Galba. I used to be
Speaker 1: a VES for the forensic department at the State Police.
Speaker 1: Can you describe your job? I mean, with everything like
Speaker 1: you like to pover see the crime scene. Working uptops.
Speaker 1: Is a lot of homicides committed against women's basically some
Speaker 1: kind of seldom ass acistic sexual predator type crimes. Um
Speaker 1: Diana was very was one of the cases they had
Speaker 1: the hardest. Yeah, I was there when the relatives went
Speaker 1: to identify the body. She was missing for what was
Speaker 1: it like a week something like that, a few days,
Speaker 1: So she wasn't murdery immediate. I mean she was badly
Speaker 1: beaten and greats which did you feel looking at these remains? Well,
Speaker 1: the first thing is trying to do the process of
Speaker 1: collecting evidence. Well, first you tend to disconnect. You see
Speaker 1: this a case when you come from their relatives of
Speaker 1: the victims, as it hits you, you know it's h
Speaker 1: And also you need to imagine and what these big
Speaker 1: things went through to try to find out when were
Speaker 1: they taken, how long were they abducted before they were killed?
Speaker 1: I mean you have to go through into all this
Speaker 1: horrible process. Was she clothed when you found her, or
Speaker 1: in a state of to us half naked? And where
Speaker 1: was the body in a field within the sea. This
Speaker 1: was the reason why Lily Alejandro was discovered so quickly.
Speaker 1: Normally victims were dumped in the desert on the outskirts
Speaker 1: of town, but Lily's body was discovered near a commercial area,
Speaker 1: almost as though the killer was becoming more brazen, and
Speaker 1: her autopsy had something strange and disturbing in common with
Speaker 1: other victims who OSCAR had examined physical evidence that didn't degrade.
Speaker 1: I didn't have access to all the cases, but the
Speaker 1: faces are related. They tied their hands choe laces. So
Speaker 1: when I saw the body of Alejandra checked their frist
Speaker 1: and soon after was the marks of choe laces. How
Speaker 1: do you know? Because I've seen this before. Multiple victims
Speaker 1: had their hands tied with shoelaces. In fact, this was
Speaker 1: so common that Oscar was actually expecting it when he
Speaker 1: examined Lily Alexandra, and indeed he was right. This is
Speaker 1: the kind of signature that psychological profilers often jump on
Speaker 1: to narrow down the field of suspects. It was a
Speaker 1: concrete lead. You warned the authorities that you suspected a
Speaker 1: serial killer. Yeah, because you saw a pattern. Their young
Speaker 1: women poor, usually students, factory workers, and they were adopted
Speaker 1: rape and usually murdered by strangulation. And then the position
Speaker 1: and the way they left the bodies, you could see
Speaker 1: connection there. Diana told us that many victims had broken
Speaker 1: necks because the perpetrator wanted to achieve a certain sexual effect.
Speaker 1: And sure enough, Lili Alexandra's neck was broken, and her
Speaker 1: case revealed another haunting fact about the killer's modus of randy.
Speaker 1: We believe she was fed at least half an hour
Speaker 1: before she was killed. She was fed. Whoever took Lili
Speaker 1: Alejandra on February the fourteenth kept her alive for several
Speaker 1: days before killing her. They also moved her around. According
Speaker 1: to the witness, reports from February nineteenth. Who could be
Speaker 1: capable of this? I mean, in this case its been
Speaker 1: how organized? Because she was abducted, she was kept in
Speaker 1: a place, so someone was guarding her. She had already
Speaker 1: been in captivity for a week, for a few days, yes,
Speaker 1: so probably she was fed and then someone came to
Speaker 1: her and then she was raping disposed. The fact that
Speaker 1: she'd been fed, along with the shoelaces and the broken
Speaker 1: neck suggested highly organized serial offender. But there was something else,
Speaker 1: something that could have begun the end game in these murders.
Speaker 1: Were you able to collect any biological evidence in the
Speaker 1: case na? But what do you compare it to in
Speaker 1: what kind of evidence? DNA seemen instructed from the bag
Speaker 1: I flew to one of what and because they had
Speaker 1: a new DNA love there? Did you fly yourself? Because
Speaker 1: I don't know. I didn't trusted you know if I
Speaker 1: said it to Mexico City, because in Mexico City they
Speaker 1: lost the first batch of tissue to test the DNA,
Speaker 1: so we had to go again and send another buys
Speaker 1: and nothing came back from that or what what came
Speaker 1: back from that? Well, you need to compare it to somewe.
Speaker 1: Oscar was so worried that the samples will get lost
Speaker 1: he personally escorted them to a lab in Guanahuato, almost
Speaker 1: a thousand miles away from Juarez. But somehow this potentially
Speaker 1: definitive biological evidence never helped secure a conviction, and this
Speaker 1: failure to act on all of the evidence that came
Speaker 1: to light in Lely Alexandra's autopsy was infuriating to her
Speaker 1: family and to Dina Washington. Valdez Oscar Minus is familiar
Speaker 1: with the DNA profile. I mean, it's like a take
Speaker 1: a piece of paper, The DNA profile is on there.
Speaker 1: Why did somebody go on and rest something. The authorities
Speaker 1: claimed that they had no suspects to cross reference to
Speaker 1: DNA with, and one of the things that stood in
Speaker 1: the way of identifying possible culprits was that the authorities
Speaker 1: maintained the Huires serial killer was already behind bars. In
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety five, after the first mass grave of women
Speaker 1: was discovered, an Egyptian national called Abdel Latif Sharif. Sharif
Speaker 1: was arrested on suspicion of being behind the killings, and
Speaker 1: he was never fully exonerated. So this was something that
Speaker 1: jumped out to me even before we started working together
Speaker 1: the Monica this idea that there was a prime suspect
Speaker 1: in jail, but the killings were continuing. How did this
Speaker 1: situation come about? So when these serial sexual murders started happening,
Speaker 1: people were startled and shocked. They couldn't understand why this
Speaker 1: was happening in their community. During that time, in the
Speaker 1: local newspapers, you'd come across headlines almost daily like a
Speaker 1: faceless psychopath stalks the city, a maniac on the loose.
Speaker 1: It's around this time that an Egyptian chemist x child
Speaker 1: from the US moves to Hoattas. His name is Abdel
Speaker 1: Latif Shadi Shadif. He's in his late forties, at least
Speaker 1: six feet tall, athletic build, and this thick, dark mustache.
Speaker 1: He's handsome and has a charming personality, and before long
Speaker 1: he becomes a well recognized character among the downtown Wattas
Speaker 1: nightclub scene. He develops this reputation as a party animal
Speaker 1: with deep pockets. Shadif again is a chemist. He works
Speaker 1: for a big American company developing valuable patents. So he's
Speaker 1: a smart, professional guy with a dark past. In the
Speaker 1: United States, Shadif wrecked up a series of arrests and
Speaker 1: accusations for rape and battery. He went to jail for
Speaker 1: the crimes, at one point even breaking out of jail
Speaker 1: while serving a twelve year sentence. He's not in what
Speaker 1: is very long before he gets arrested there too, and
Speaker 1: he's accused of kidnapping and raping a woman after hanging
Speaker 1: out in the clubs one night, and Chatty fits the
Speaker 1: profile of this serial killer the public imagines is stalking
Speaker 1: their city, killing their women. So when police arrest him,
Speaker 1: they parade him before the media and announce he's a
Speaker 1: prime suspect, and at first the public believes the police.
Speaker 1: But there's a problem. The killings continue after he gets jailed,
Speaker 1: and the killings continue in the same pattern that they
Speaker 1: were occurring prior to his arrest. So clearly something is
Speaker 1: wrong and said, how do the authority respond to that? Well,
Speaker 1: it calls into serious doubt their prime suspect. So you know,
Speaker 1: the police have to come up with a way to
Speaker 1: explain why are these murders continuing. And so it's like
Speaker 1: somebody in the hottest police force must have a vivid imagination,
Speaker 1: because the next theory they come up with gets even
Speaker 1: more twisted. They bring into custody members of an alleged
Speaker 1: gang called the Revels or the Rebels. Police claim Sharif
Speaker 1: is paying off this gang to murder more women and
Speaker 1: help make the case for his innocence. There was a
Speaker 1: moment of relief in Juarez when Sharif was arrested, because
Speaker 1: his background made it plausible that he was responsible. The
Speaker 1: authorities obviously didn't want to admit that they were wrong,
Speaker 1: so they doubled down and the Rebeldez gang appeared in
Speaker 1: the Final Flourish. It was claimed that Sharif demanded proof
Speaker 1: that the gang were killing women on his behalf, delivered
Speaker 1: in the form of underwear to his jail cell. And
Speaker 1: the thing is, the police never acknowledged that this wasn't true,
Speaker 1: and that meant that no one could acknowledge that the
Speaker 1: same killer who was killing in nineteen ninety five might
Speaker 1: still be killing in two thousand and one. That's why
Speaker 1: Oscar Manez was sounding the alarm. He didn't believe the
Speaker 1: murders had ever stopped, and in Lily Alejandra's autopsy he
Speaker 1: saw all the hallmarks of a serial killer. And this
Speaker 1: wasn't just any serial killer. It was a killer who
Speaker 1: was capable of keeping a victim alive for several days,
Speaker 1: of moving the victim around, and seemingly of intimidating witnesses.
Speaker 1: All of this made Diana all the more determined to
Speaker 1: identify her own suspects. But as she led her investigation,
Speaker 1: one of the things she found puzzling was how the
Speaker 1: crimes were being covered in the local press. It was
Speaker 1: very different for me, being in the US media, to
Speaker 1: read that Mexican press would refer to the victims as
Speaker 1: ultra sacrificada like sacrifice. To use that term specifically, I
Speaker 1: always thought it was very odd and even unnecessary and
Speaker 1: even unprofessional if I was the editor, you know, saying, hey,
Speaker 1: you know, why are you using this kind of terminology
Speaker 1: that connotes that were having a ritual here and people
Speaker 1: are reading sacrificed as part of that ritual. Later on,
Speaker 1: I realized how apt that term is to describe exactly
Speaker 1: what was happening in what is It is indeed like
Speaker 1: a giant ritual, and the offerings are these victims when
Speaker 1: we come back. Diana explains how she came to understand
Speaker 1: why the word sacrifice is so appropriate and a highly
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Speaker 1: the best man. I was going to plan this speech
Speaker 1: out while I got my oil change, but I went
Speaker 1: to take five and it was a lot faster than
Speaker 1: I thought. So here it goes. Okay, Tim, you were
Speaker 1: my first friend. Angela you were my first Yeah. I
Speaker 1: never thought the two of you would make it. But
Speaker 1: I guess love really is blind. No, no, no, I
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Speaker 1: Dinah Washington. Valdez described the murders of women in Huarez
Speaker 1: in terms of ritual. The word sacrifice is very closely
Speaker 1: related to Mexican indigenous cultures like the Aztecs. There's a
Speaker 1: thread of that that still runs strong in Mexico, just
Speaker 1: in her practice of folklore and that sort of thing.
Speaker 1: The presence of triangles on some of the victims let
Speaker 1: people to claim that they had literally been sacrificed to
Speaker 1: a saint called Santa Verte the Holy Death. Dinah didn't
Speaker 1: buy this, but she was struck by how the victims
Speaker 1: were obviously being identified well in advance of being killed.
Speaker 1: The Aztec culture, a victim is volunteered, their hearts are
Speaker 1: torn out. It's a blood offering to appease the gods.
Speaker 1: To me, this is exactly what is taking place in
Speaker 1: what is We have the offer of young women as
Speaker 1: a sacrifice. And that's the important thing about these systematic
Speaker 1: murders is to understand the women were picked. They were selected.
Speaker 1: Diana's interviews with the witnesses had turned up that strange
Speaker 1: detail about the fake FBI agents. She was never able
Speaker 1: to find out who they were, but she was able
Speaker 1: to piece together some telling details about Lili Alejandra's last
Speaker 1: few weeks alive, including the fact that photographs of her
Speaker 1: had circulated in promotional shots for the Maculadora where she worked.
Speaker 1: Her kidnapping is very interesting because apparently someone saw her
Speaker 1: and decided she's going to be next, right. They liked
Speaker 1: her look, they knew something about her background. Already, someone
Speaker 1: was watching, someone's watching. They had people looking out for
Speaker 1: certain kinds of victims, honing in on them, in on them,
Speaker 1: and then arranging for them to be kidnapped. Lilya Lejander
Speaker 1: disappeared on the very day that her family didn't come
Speaker 1: to collect her from work, and Cigario Gonzalez went missing
Speaker 1: shortly after she had changed shift and had to start
Speaker 1: commuting to work alone. The killer struck at moments of
Speaker 1: maximum vulnerability, but according to Dinah's reporting, they also had
Speaker 1: a formalized system to identify victims and to learn their schedule.
Speaker 1: I think it's worth mentioning the Eco schools downtown became
Speaker 1: and this is also information that FBI informants had given
Speaker 1: to the FBI. Several of the young ladies had disappeared
Speaker 1: in downtown what is happened to have stopped into a
Speaker 1: computer school then called Echo. The FBI again, this time
Speaker 1: it's the real FBI who who had their own interest
Speaker 1: in solving these crimes, and their informal network in Juarez
Speaker 1: suggested that victims were being identified using a computer school
Speaker 1: called Echo. In fact, Echo was a national chain of schools,
Speaker 1: one opened in the early nineties in downtown Juirez. This
Speaker 1: was the time when the personal computer was on the rise,
Speaker 1: and you can imagine a young woman like Lili Alejandra
Speaker 1: working a grueling job on an assembly line, being tempted
Speaker 1: by the promise of transcending circumstances through computer literacy. After all,
Speaker 1: most of the victims' families had moved to Juarez in
Speaker 1: search for a better life in searchial opportunity, and computer
Speaker 1: schools could lead to a coveted white collar job. What
Speaker 1: would happened is the young ladies would be walking down
Speaker 1: the sidewalk and someone would approach them with the clipboard
Speaker 1: the column, the ECO promoters wanting to interest them in
Speaker 1: the training that the ECO school provided. The important thing
Speaker 1: about these computer schools is that the young ladies were
Speaker 1: putting their personal data into the questionnaires and their pictures
Speaker 1: were taken. So it became very easy for someone at
Speaker 1: another end, whoever this information was being forward to, to
Speaker 1: let this operate as a catalog, you know, a catalog
Speaker 1: of potential victims through the questionnaires they filled out at
Speaker 1: the computer schools, including their pictures. Someone could sit down
Speaker 1: there and say, oh, yes about this one or that one.
Speaker 1: You know, these schools are being used to look for
Speaker 1: and identify young women of certain profiles. Well, I mean
Speaker 1: women disappeared and then they were found murdered later, but
Speaker 1: they were selected. Approximately how many women linked to the
Speaker 1: computer school were murdered, I can only vouch for six.
Speaker 1: But when I went back and I question the families
Speaker 1: of victims, one of the questions I'd added to my
Speaker 1: interviews was how they were coming to contact with a
Speaker 1: Nickel score, and they would say, oh, yes, you know,
Speaker 1: oh yes. Lilia Lejandra Andrade was one of them. Lilia
Speaker 1: Alejandra disappeared on a Wednesday. Her first ECHO class was
Speaker 1: set to begin on the Saturday of that week. What
Speaker 1: Dinah's reporting revealed went beyond a mere pattern. It suggested
Speaker 1: a process that almost certainly involved more than one person,
Speaker 1: and as she pushed to reveal who might be involved,
Speaker 1: she began to receive serious threats against her life. That's
Speaker 1: on our next episode. I'm as Veloschen and see you
Speaker 1: next time. Noste Hala Felicia Forgotten. The Women of Juarez
Speaker 1: is co hosted by Me Monica and me oswald Oshan.
Speaker 1: Forgotten is executive produced by Me and Mangesh Hatigia. 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
Speaker 1: Kitlyn Thompson is our consulting producer. Production support from Emily
Speaker 1: Maronoff and Aaron Kaufman. Music by Leonardo Hablum and Hakabo Libermann.
Speaker 1: Additional music by Aaron Kaufman. Special thanks to the reporting
Speaker 1: of Tim Madigan in the Fort Worth Star Telegram and
Speaker 1: John Ward Anderson in the Washington Post for details on
Speaker 1: the life and arrest of Abdel Latif Sharif Sharif. Hello, beautiful.
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