November 4, 2025 • 68 mins
Juarez, located just over the US-Mexico border, has an ongoing crisis that hasn't made the news: hundreds of women have gone missing, and many of the ones who disappear are later found dead, their wrists often bound, with strange symbols carved on their bodies. Journalists Monica Ortiz Uribe and Oz Woloshyn dive deep into this tragic mystery in their podcast Forgotten: Women of Juarez, searching for answers to the femicides that were all too often ignored by law enforcement. What did they find? Join the guys as they learn more with Oz Woloshyn about the ongoing investigation in this Classic Interview Segment.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Philom conspiracy realist. Every so often we do interviews in
place of our episodes, and we always put a lot
of time into making sure that there are things you
should know more about and definitely things we want to
learn more about. And we were so fortunate back in
twenty twenty to interview none other than the famous Oz
(00:23):
Wollution about a project called Women of Waraz. Do we
all remember this one?
Speaker 2 (00:29):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (00:29):
Yeah, sure do.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
It's an intense story and Oz is an incredibly astute
fellow in a great interview, So yeah, I'm definitely excited
to play this one again for y'all.
Speaker 3 (00:38):
And we didn't get to speak with Monica ortizer Rebe,
who's the other journalists who's working with us to create
this show, which is still available. You can find it
everywhere right now, so if you get intrigued, just listen up.
We'll tell you how to find it.
Speaker 1 (00:53):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies, history is
riddled with unexplained events. Can turn back now or learn
this stuff they don't want you to know. A production
of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 3 (01:17):
Hello, welcome back to the show.
Speaker 4 (01:18):
My name is Matt, my name is no.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
They call me Ben. We are joined As always with
our super producer Paul, mission control decands most importantly, you
are you, you are here, and that makes this stuff
they don't want you to know. Today, we are diving
into a story that may be cursorly familiar to many
(01:43):
of our fellow listeners. You may have heard in the
past the headlines of this story. You may have had,
you know, a couple of let's say, what do you
think a couple sentences length of an idea of what's happening.
Of course, in these chaotic times, we have so many headlines, right,
(02:08):
we have so many things that we will keep track of,
and many things, unfortunately get lost in the shuffle. For
decades in SiO dad Warrez in Mexico, women have been
going missing. This is something that some of our fellow
(02:29):
listeners wrote to us about in our earlier episode on
the Lost Highway in Canada, where multiple members of First
Nations in the region were being victimized, murdered, often without
any acknowledgment or assistance from law enforcement.
Speaker 2 (02:52):
Also referred to as the Highway of Tears. I believe, right,
isn't that yeah?
Speaker 1 (02:56):
That's yeah, that's correct now, and we are not diving
into this case. This ongoing tragedy alone today Today we
are joined by the Emmy and Peabody Award winning producer
and writer and executive producer of one of our newest
(03:18):
peer podcasts, Forgotten Women of War. As we'd like to
welcome to the show, Oz Willoshan. Oz, thank you so
much for coming on the air today.
Speaker 5 (03:29):
Thank you so much for having me. It's an honest
to be having this conversation with you.
Speaker 4 (03:32):
Guys.
Speaker 3 (03:34):
We're very much glad that you're here to talk about this,
and we're also glad that you're making this show that
you're making. All three of us have been listening to
the show again, Forgotten Women of Wars. You can find
it right now. I think we've all been personally very
affected by the stories that you're telling and that you're
(03:54):
giving voice not only to you know, the families and
the people who've been affected by this, but the reporters
who've been working on this for so long. You know,
before we jump into all of that, could you just
tell us who you are and why you wanted to
talk about this story.
Speaker 5 (04:13):
Yeah, my name is Oz, and I've been living in
the States for ten years on various different immigrant visas
and now a Green card, and so you know, despite
being a white man and having all the privilege that
comes with that, I've had this unusual experience of kind
(04:34):
of immigration difficulties. And there's something called secondary screening, where
you know, when you arrive in the United States, you
get taken into this kind of prison esque area in
the airport and often have to wait for a couple
of hours, will various you know, checks have performed, and
so you know, despite fitting in and feeling very comfortable
(04:56):
always in the United States, I've always also had this
consciousness like what does it mean to be an immigrant
in the US? What does it mean to live in
the US without being from the US. And that's also
something which is part of my family background. My grandfather
was a refugee from Ukraine to Britain in after the
Second World War. So I've always been very interested in
stories about migration and stories about how we define us
(05:20):
and them, stories about you know, who gets to be
part of the club and who gets excluded from the club.
The price of being excluded from the club, which you know,
goes from lack of economic opportunity unfortunately to murder. And
so I was just very fascinated by this El Paso
Juarez border area, because you have these two big cities,
(05:43):
el Paso six hundred thousand, Huarez a million, in two
different countries, separated by a river which is now dry
and a steel fence. And El Paso, Texas, up until
the terrible shooting at Walmart, was frequently considered one of
america The safest cities of its size.
Speaker 4 (06:02):
And Juarez, as.
Speaker 5 (06:03):
People know from movies like Sicario and you know other narcos,
the Marcos Mexico is one of the world's the most
dangerous and bloody and violent and frightening cities. So I
was just curious that how does that happen? Why is that?
And I first went down to the border to elt
Passo after I read a series of stories in The
(06:25):
New Yorker called Faces from the Border, and one of
the articles was profiling Hispanic border patrol agents. And I'd
never really considered that border patrol agents were majority Hispanic,
in fact, eighty percent Hispanic. And so you know, twenty sixteen,
and there was all of this rhetoric coming out of
the White House about Mexican bad hombres and rapists and
(06:49):
increasing militarization of the border. What I found fascinating was
the people on the front lines of enforcing it were themselves,
usually Hispanic, often with family in Juarez, often with cousins
or even brothers and sisters who didn't speak to them
anymore or turn them away from church or whatever it
may be because of what they were doing. And yet
it was a federal job and came with perks in
(07:10):
an area with you know, not as many employment opportunities,
to say, as New York or Los Angeles or Atlanta.
So I was kind of fascinated by this paradox, and
I went down there to work on a documentary series
about that, which.
Speaker 4 (07:23):
Hasn't hasn't yet been released.
Speaker 5 (07:25):
But while I was there, one of the producers on
the documentary series started telling me about this, this story
of the murders of the women in Huarez, and I
didn't know about it. I mean, it was something I
couldn't believe he was telling me. They were not tens,
but hundreds of women who had been murdered seemingly in
a characteristic way, you know, left in strange positions, with
(07:48):
strange symbols in some cases left on their bodies, that
had been going on for decades that various investigators had
looked into it, but that no one knew for sure
what was happening. And I thought, what a what a
your main topic for a podcast, giving people's interest in
the true crime genre, but also what an interesting way
to tell what is effectively a tale of two cities.
Speaker 1 (08:10):
Yeah. I massively appreciate the way you phrase it a
tale of two cities and your reference to the August
twenty nineteen mass shooting there in El Paso. I believe
that's when it occurred. One thing that I think will
baffle a lot of people, and I want to make
sure we don't bury the lead here, Oz, is what
(08:31):
you just said about the nature of these murders. Because
we know that in various various countries in Central and
South America there is an ongoing crisis of femicide and
violence against women. This was true even when I was
(08:55):
living in Guatemala in the mid two thousands. But what's
different here. One of the things that's different here is
that there appears to be some sort of methodical system
or application to these homicides. And you know, it's something
(09:18):
that I personally was I was not aware of the
extent of this. I knew that many women were being
murdered and then later found and I knew that there
were allegations that the police or law enforcement were somewhere
on the spectrum between incompetent to willfully negligent. With that
(09:46):
in mind, how did you and your co hosts first
start exploring the intersection of law enforcement here, or I
should say law enforcement's role. Were was the US side
of law enforcement interested or involved with any cases here?
Speaker 5 (10:10):
So that's a very interesting question. And my co host
who's not with us today is Monica Ortiz Orribe, who
has been a reporter in El Paso for fifteen years,
reports the NPR for the BBC, contributes to the New
York Times, and she's been covering the femicides for fifteen
(10:31):
years with a very strong focus on the experience of
the families, on the economic realities that make these women
vulnerable in the first place, and with less of a
sort of procedural focus on law and order, on law enforcement,
on the who, more on the why and the what.
Speaker 4 (10:53):
So Funny enough.
Speaker 5 (10:56):
US law enforcement have been very interested in what's happening
to the women in Huares. I mentioned that quote about
the President talking about murderers, rapists and bad hombres coming
from Mexico and Central America into the US. In fact,
the FBI in the nineties were very concerned that an
American serial killer might be traveling south into Mexico to
(11:18):
take advantage of vulnerable population and a less strictly enforced.
Speaker 4 (11:26):
Laws to basically prey.
Speaker 5 (11:28):
On vulnerable women in Juarez, and in fact, Huaires has
long been a place where things that America wants to
have access to but not have responsibility for, happen. So
in the twenties, during Prohibition, there was a bourbon distillery
(11:49):
in Kentucky that was disassembled part by part and sent
by rail to Juarez, where it was promptly reassembled started
making Kentucky boars again and smuggling it straight into the
United States. And so the most famous bar in Huaires
is called the Kentucky Club for that reason.
Speaker 4 (12:08):
So so, and then in the sixties.
Speaker 5 (12:12):
After this a long way to answer your question, but
in the Second World War there was a lot of
male labor was in Europe fighting, and so there was
a shortage of farm labor and industrial labor in the
United States, and the United States started this thing called
the Brassero program where they would allow Mexican laborers to
(12:33):
come into the United States.
Speaker 4 (12:34):
Easily work cross back and forth.
Speaker 5 (12:37):
And in the sixties there was this political pressure to say,
you know, these people are taking our jobs, let's send
them back. So millions of Mexicans were you know, basically
sent home, and many of them found themselves in Huarez,
and so there was both a concern of thinking, well, gosh,
there are all these people on the border, you know,
who are who don't come from there, but who kind
(12:59):
of may want to come back to the United States. How
can we make things slightly more appealing for them to
stay there. And so basically this duty free zone begins
in Huaires where it's much you know, you can assemble
goods and re export them to the US and only
pay duty on the value added. And so Huires becomes
this manufacturing hub, competing with Singapore and Taiwan at the
(13:21):
time to create cheap consumer goods, which is still the
engine of the economy. There on behalf of American corporations,
but using cheap Mexican labor with no labor protections. So
fast forward to the nineties and you have Robert Wrestler,
who was the man who invented the Psychological Profiling Department
of the FBI and on whom the show mind Hunter
(13:43):
is based. And he is one of the people credited
with coining the term serial killer. And one of the
things which he pioneered was data driven serial killer apprehension,
so looking for commonalities at crime scenes and using a
commonalities to try and apprehend killers, and what he quickly
(14:04):
was called the VISCAP, the Violent Criminal Apprehension Program. And
what he quickly realized was that if you didn't include
southern Canada and northern Mexico in VISCAP, you could be
missing a great deal of what was happening. So Wrestler
was basically convinced that there were American serial at least
one American serial killer acting in Juarez, and so he
went down there to try and learn more about the
(14:26):
patterns behind the crimes, to see if they connected to
other crimes in the US.
Speaker 1 (14:31):
Will return and dive deeper into the story of the
women of war as after a word from our sponsor,
and we're back.
Speaker 3 (14:46):
So this.
Speaker 1 (14:48):
Timeline here, I think you've done a fantastic job of
filling in the context because so often in mainstream news
reports or someone will you know, with the best of
intentions read about something and not understand that there are
(15:09):
decades of intervening forces and institutions leading to that news
story that we read. This leads us to one of
the other important pieces of context that I think we
need to establish here, Oz, which is that when you
(15:29):
and Monica and your team are when you were investigating this,
when you are when you're chasing this story, you were
going to areas of Mexico and areas of the world
that are well, there's no way to say, there's no
other way to say it. They are dangerous. Did you yeah,
(15:52):
did you ever feel that you or your cohort were
were in danger in the course of creating this?
Speaker 5 (16:02):
I mean it's in short, yes, I mean in Juarez
is a dangerous city which has you know, thousands of
homicides a year, most of which go unpunished. Mexico is
the world's most dangerous country for journalists. I think there
have been almost thirty journalists murdered in the last ten years.
(16:25):
They're more dangerous than Syria for journalists. And so there's
one particular area in downtown Juarez where many of the
women were last seen, called Mina Street, which is the
central bus exchange in the city, so factory employees basically
go from their houses in the outskirts change downtown take
another bus to work. And that happens to be a
(16:47):
part of town which is controlled closely by a gang
called the ballyo Azteca, and so journalists are really not
welcomed there. But it's also how Muchnica describes it as
ground zero for missing women. And if you walk around
that area, you'll see missing posters on almost every lamp post,
and you'll see these black crosses painted on pink squares,
(17:10):
also on lamp posts, which is where the logo of
our show Forgotten took its inspiration from. And so we're
walking around it and Monica said on the way, look,
we need a cover story because people don't want us
to be asking questions about what happens to the women here.
So we said, oh, we're reporting on the migrant caravan,
and people that come up and ask us, and at
(17:32):
a certain point someone sort of made this gun gesture
and shouted pat like that at us. And you know,
in most cities that might happen it's a bit disconcerting,
or maybe somebody's having a bit of a joke, But
in a place where you know that most crimes go
unpunished and the price of life is very low, it
is more scary. And we went after that to go
and meet Sandra Rodriguez Nieto, who's the editor of one
(17:56):
of the editors at the local newspaper. And she said, yeah,
that place where you go where I don't let my
reporters go there. It's too dangerous and her colleague. The
desk outside her office was empty and had been for
ten years since her colleague, Armando Rodriguez was assassinated while
he was taking his daughter to school. So I don't
want to overplay the state danger that we felt ourselves
(18:18):
in person. I think Monica living in the area takes
more risk than I did. Who can return to New
York City, But certainly being on the ground in Juarez
is not a comfortable experience. If you're asking these kinds
of questions.
Speaker 3 (18:32):
Well, well, you know, I think we just have a
at least right here in the rooms. The people you're
speaking to right now have a great respect for you,
and especially I think for Monica and for Diana Diana
Washington eld Is. So I want to give our listeners
(18:55):
the way you do in your show a specific example
of what the experience living and working in Juarez at
one of these factories was like, and maybe the vulnerability
that existed within the lives of a lot of these
women simply because of transportation needs, which you know does
(19:18):
speak to a larger economic issue. So in the show,
in episode one you talk about Sigario, can you tell
us a little bit about her life, what it was
like in what she was doing when she went missing?
Speaker 5 (19:34):
Yes, by all means, So, Ben, you mentioned historical context.
The factory started in Huares in the sixties, but it
was in the mid nineties after NAFTA was signed that
they really boomed, and you had just this tremendous demand
for labor and a bit like during the Grapes of
Wrath time. There were recruiters going into the interior and saying,
(19:56):
come to Huire is going to be fantastic. There are
even reports of empty seven four seven's flying to rural
and mining states in Mexico and coming back full of workers.
So there was this sense that Juarez was a place
of opportunity, a place particularly for women to work outside
of the home, which wasn't always the case in some
(20:17):
other parts of Mexico, and so this one family, the
Flores family, in nineteen ninety five they decided to move
from El salto in Durango, where Jesus, the father was
a lumberjack, and he went ahead with their son and
he wrote a letter home to Paula, his wife, and
(20:38):
their six daughters, and said, you guys are.
Speaker 4 (20:41):
Going to come.
Speaker 5 (20:41):
We found work, We found what we're looking for is
going to be fantastic. And Paula replied, well, I've heard
they kill women there and we have six daughters. You're sure,
And he just said, yes, there's no bad people here.
Everyone's starting out. Come and join us. So they did,
so they moved there. That the mother and the six daughters,
(21:03):
including Cigario, joined and they moved to this squatter community
on the outskirts of Juarez where they have to build
their own house above their heads, no running water, no electricity,
and to build their house they forage scrap from an
American dump on the other side of the border. And
just this image of these, you know, people who've moved
(21:25):
from elsewhere crossing over under with a kind of wink
and a nod from border patrol to go and get
our trash, to go back and build their houses, you know,
is very haunting. There's one story about Cigario being there
at the dump with her mother and an American man
coming to throw some stuff away and seeing that she's
cold and offering him his coat, and Sigario said, no,
(21:45):
I can't take it. I'm embarrassed, and her mother says,
take the coat, so she does. So anyway, they find
what they're looking for, they find work, and they're all
working together in a macula dora making I think refrigerated
parts in one of these factories. But Sigario is under
eighteen and the factory find out and they say, you
can't work the night shift with the rest of your
(22:06):
family when need used to the day shift, So she
has to start traveling to work alone all of a sudden,
and her mother begs her. She says, look, we can
survive without the money you bring in. Please don't do this,
and Sigorio says, look how we're living.
Speaker 4 (22:19):
I need to.
Speaker 5 (22:20):
Help, And within two months of her shift changing, she's
disappeared and is found dead in the desert two weeks later.
With all of the characteristics of the abduction in broad daylight,
the disappearance and certain types of trauma that are characteristic
(22:40):
of tens, if not hundreds of other young women who
meet the same fate.
Speaker 2 (22:45):
I want to bring up just the idea of a
border town Inuarez, in particular, the cartels, the drug cartels
and warres had been particularly powerful in the nineties, and
I think there may be a little less so, but
a lot of the stories we would hear about Wuares
were cartel war murders. And can you speak a little
(23:07):
bit about that kind of proximity to the United States
and the relationship between the drug trade and your story
if any exists, and just kind of you know what
you took away from that?
Speaker 5 (23:21):
Yeah, by all means, so, I mean the same reasons
why the factories want to be in Juarez is why
the drug traffickers want to be in the In Huarez, it's.
Speaker 4 (23:30):
Very close to the US.
Speaker 5 (23:32):
You have millions of people crossing the border north, millions
of vehicles, tons of freight, and so it's one of
the most lucrative drug smuggling corridors in the world. And
so what happened was in the nineties. Up until the nineties,
there was obviously organized crime in Mexico, but the cartel
(23:54):
was a relatively stable organization a bit like the mafia,
and so although there was organized crime, there wasn't a
huge amount of violence against members of the community. Like
once you were under the protection of the cartel, you
were basically safe. But what happened was the cartel started splintering,
(24:14):
actually under pressure from the US who were doing various
you know, raids and arrests and putting pressure on the
Mexican government. And when the cartel splintered, basically a cartel
civil war start.
Speaker 4 (24:26):
And this was likely later in the.
Speaker 5 (24:27):
Nineties, this was the early two thousands, And what happened
is El Chappo's seen a lower cartel were coming in
from the west because they wanted to take over the
Huara smuggling corridor from from the local cartel, and so
this began. This that's why you see these terrible images
of Huires of you know, men hanging from bridges and
with slogans written on their dead bodies and wearing pig masks.
(24:51):
I mean, it was really the most disgusting and symbolic
violence playing out in Huarez in a battle for contry,
which actually I think probably you can draw a line
forward from that to isis and how they weaponize the
imagery of violence to be part of their very effective
social media campaign. And so this issue of the women
(25:13):
being murdered and the cartel in Juarez, it's one of
the questions of the podcast, and it's another reason why
the FBI tried to get involved to find out what
the answers are. But in the early nineties or the
mid nineties and the early two thousands, in a sense,
it's not clear at that stage just how entrenched the
cartel is. So everyone's on the hunt for a serial killer.
(25:37):
And then as the podcast goes on and as history
moves forward, it becomes clear that it's harder and harder
to separate the murders of women from the cancer of
cartel violence spreading.
Speaker 1 (25:50):
M Yeah, and that's something that has I think historically
bedeviled multiple cities in Mexico as well as other countries
in South America. And you know, a couple of times,
(26:10):
a couple of times here as already we've used the
phrase serial killer. And you know, for everyone everyone familiar
with that, there are some nuts of bolts technicalities, but
long story short, uh, serial killer is defined by having
(26:32):
a type of victim, having a method of murder, and
having a pattern in terms of you know, their timeline,
their chronology. One thing that one thing that I think
stood out to us here that that differentiates these these
(26:54):
specific comicides from so many other tragic comicides in the
in the area, is that there did seem to be
there does seem to be a fairly consistent method applied here.
Speaker 5 (27:11):
Right.
Speaker 1 (27:11):
There are people who are perhaps being shot due to
crime or due to you know, or being stabbed in
a fight, but these these are different. One thing that
stood out to me is early on in the story,
you explore how one of the victims seemed to have
(27:35):
been kept alive for some time after being abducted. I believe,
I believe investigators were able to verify that this victim
appeared to have been fed, so they were around long
enough to be fed. And then explore a little bit
about you explore the method of possibly finding or or
(27:57):
you know, determining these victims and choosing them. It seems
like I think one of the most disturbing things is
how premeditated. Dare I say, how organized it seems. Could
you tell us a little bit about what appears to
be this method of determination?
Speaker 5 (28:20):
Yeah, I think you picked up on something which which
was important for us to communicate in the podcast. The
reporter who's done the most work on this story is
called Diana Washington Valdez, and she wrote a book called
The Killing Field Harvest of Women, and her big point was,
these are not random victims. These are not victims of
(28:42):
random violence in a violent place. These are women who
have been specifically selected for certain characteristics, young, poor, from
immigrant families, often migrant families, who disappear, usually during the
day to and from work, and who when they're discovered
later either their body left alone or in four cases
(29:06):
in Huias, there have been mass graves of women discovered bare,
characteristic types of trauma, often a broken neck, often hands
bound by shoelaces. And in this particular case of Lillie Alejandra,
you mentioned an autoposy that revealed she'd been kept alive
and fed for several days between disappearing and being murdered.
(29:28):
And so this is there's clearly something going on here.
This is not random violence. And that's why there were
so many people like Wrestler from the FBI theorizing there
must be a serial killer, because as a type, there's
a method of selection and one of the most chilling
methods of selection was this, according to Diana's reporting, computer
(29:52):
school in downtown Huires called Echo. And again this is
the early two thousands. These are women who have come
with their families in search for opportunity to a new city.
And there's a computer school which apparently offers the type
of skills that needed to participate in the new economy
and perhaps get a better job than a factory job.
And in Dinah's reporting, I think at least ten victims
(30:18):
were registered at the computer school before they were taken
and murdered. And the suspicion is that this computer school
was basically a catalog of victims in Diana's phrase, for
somebody on the other end who wanted to know, Okay,
I want a picture of the woman, I want to
know where they live, I want to know who their
family are, and then using that to select the most
(30:40):
vulnerable because these crimes were also sexually motivated for murder.
Speaker 3 (30:45):
Wow. And in episode two of the show and we
don't want to you know, obviously give away too much.
We want to talk about this, but we don't want
we want you to go listen to the show. In
episode two, there are witnesses who have seen things. In
(31:08):
a lot of these cases, it appears that there are
witnesses to seeing something because, like we said, this is
broad daylight, you're in a a large metropolitan area where
these kidnappings are occurring, or even if it's on the
edges of them, it seems like there would be more
people talking. But it also seems like there is a
(31:32):
very real danger for these witnesses because and correct me
if I'm wrong here, but I believe it was known
that someone or some group were posing as agents from
the FBI and seeking answers from witnesses or getting intel
(31:54):
from witnesses. Could you tell us about that?
Speaker 4 (31:57):
Yeah, you're right.
Speaker 5 (31:58):
So the women often disappear at these moments of maximum vulnerability.
So in Sigario Flores's case, it was right after she
changed shift and was traveling alone to and from work.
There's another young woman called Claudia Vett Gonzalez who arrives
for work late and so she'sn't allowed into the factory,
and that very day she disappears and is later found dead.
(32:19):
So there's this sense that somebody is watching and somebody
is taking note of vulnerability. But the peculiar thing is
then there are never any witnesses. But then in two
thousand and one, this case comes along and there aren't
witnesses to the abduction, but witnesses see Lily Alejandra struggling
in a car with a man a few days after
(32:41):
she's taken, and so this is also a break because
they identify the car.
Speaker 4 (32:47):
It's a for Thunderbird.
Speaker 5 (32:49):
It's a relatively common make of car, but it's the
beginning of the kind of lead that might normally, you know.
Speaker 4 (32:55):
Resolve these types of cases.
Speaker 5 (32:58):
The witnesses, Dinah Washington Valders goes to interview them, and
they say, oh gosh, how funny. You're not the first
person who's been here to ask us questions. The FBI
were here as well, and Dinah says what he says, Yeah,
the FBI came, and that they came to ask us
what we've seen and what we knew, and so we
gave them all the information. Dinah calls her sources in
(33:20):
the FBI and El Paso, and they never did that.
So somebody has come to lead their own parallel investigation,
either to find out what these witnesses know or to
intimidate them and to make sure that the information they
have doesn't make it into the right channel. So that's
one of the big challenges of this story and why
so many people have approached it and struggled to get
(33:43):
to answer this is because, unlike a normal crime in
the US, people are often scared for good reason to
come forward and share what they know.
Speaker 3 (33:53):
And I bring this up, Oz, because you spoke with
at least one FBI agent that I've heard on the podcast,
Hardrick Crawford Jr. Who was I believe the FBI special
agent in charge of El Paso in around that two
thousand and one time and a little bit after. And
(34:14):
you know, he says some things in the show that
at least that I've heard thus far that are really disturbing,
specifically talking about how easy it is to kill someone
and bury them and hide a body in Warrez in
the surrounding areas. But you know, just listening to him
talk about these murders and what's happening, and knowing that
(34:38):
the FBI is involved and does breach across the border
there for a lot of different cases, but in this
one in particular, they were at least doing some work
on it. I guess my big question to you is
how much of a hand did the FBI have in
investigations here if I mean, we know they had, but
(35:00):
how large of a role did the FBI play?
Speaker 4 (35:04):
Well.
Speaker 5 (35:05):
They were actually three attempts the FBI made to involve
themselves in solving these crimes. The first time was in
the mid nineties when Robert Wrestler, the serial killer expert,
came down and he came motivated in large part by
wanting to get more data for his VISCAP Violent Criminal
(35:25):
Apprehension program. He came because he wanted to do a
better job of solving crimes in the US. Then you
had Frank Evans, who ran an operation called Operation Plaza
Sweep in the late nineties that was a full on
FBI operation in Mexico to exsume bodies male bodies from
(35:47):
the deserts surrounding Huarez believed to be American citizens in
order to secure an indictment against the cartel leader Coreofuentes,
in order to get an extradition request, which they were
successful in doing. Evans said, at that point, we offer
the local quire's police assistance with solving the murders of women.
(36:07):
But he was very explicit in saying that the FBI
made that offer because they wanted to test out how
trustworthy the local police were, and it turned out they weren't.
Then you have Hardrick Crawford, who comes along in the
early two thousands, and, unlike Wrestler and Evans, who had
a clear United States interest motivated reason to engage themselves,
(36:31):
in this case, Hardrick says, I had a mission from God.
I had a higher calling than the US Constitution. I
have my own daughters. It was my moral duty to
find out what was happening to these women. And his
story is one of the most interesting plot lines in
the podcast. We come to it later on, but safe
(36:55):
to say when law enforcement officials start to follow something
that they view as being high than the constitution, chaos
sometimes ensues.
Speaker 2 (37:05):
Okay, we're going to talk more with Oz, but first
a quick word from our sponsor, right, and we're back
with oswall lotionan of Forgotten Women of Warez. Back to
a specific point about the story, and this is all
(37:26):
None of this is spoiler territory. It's all covered pretty
quickly in the first episode. But I think it's fascinating
how little was known at the time about the cartels.
Speaker 4 (37:38):
Kind of oh gosh.
Speaker 2 (37:41):
Trademark, I guess, or signature for a lot of this
violence that we maybe now take for granted. But some
of the methods of the killings and some of the
kind of calling cards really did have almost an occulted
kind of you know, feel about them, or some sort
of ritualist stick, you know, qualities. Can you speak to
(38:03):
that a little bit about it and about how that
in particular maybe muddy the waters and then made it,
you know, be a big part of that search for
a serial killer as opposed to realizing perhaps that this
might be something else.
Speaker 4 (38:16):
Yeah, it's a great question.
Speaker 5 (38:17):
I mean, bear in mind, you know, these crimes in
the nineties, this is not long after the Satanic panic
in the US, and so you know, I think there's
a tendency in any case to read on to unsolved
murders and horrific murders some kind of satanic or ritual element.
(38:39):
But in fact, in the case of these murders, it
does seem like they were ritualized. There were strange marks
left on the bodies of the victims. There was this
use of shoelaces to bind the wrists, and the way
in which the women's bodies were left was not random,
(39:01):
They were arranged in certain dehumanizing ways. And so one
of the early hypotheses was indeed that there was some
kind of satanic or ritual cult killing these women. And
one of the phenomena in Mexico has been the rise
of this interest in Santauerte the Holy Death, which is
(39:25):
a sort of religion esque which sort of worships death.
And people were wondering, you know, is it possible these
are human sacrifices that most of our sources dismissed fairly quickly.
But the idea of ritual killings, ritual killings for the
purposes of hazing or bonding, or creating loyalty or creating
(39:48):
codes of silence, that was considered to be a much
more realistic avenue of investigation. And in fact, when Wrestler
was there from the FBI, he was there with another
forensic criminology called Candyscropic, and it came at one of
these crime scenes, this woman left in an utterly dehumanizing way,
and she turned to restaurant and said, have you ever
(40:09):
seen anything like this in your career?
Speaker 4 (40:11):
And he said no.
Speaker 5 (40:12):
And what they started to speculate was that these women
were being sacrificed by some kind of group in order
to achieve purposes which at the time weren't clear.
Speaker 2 (40:23):
Because there were things like markings, triangles and various symbols
carved into the bodies that have this you know, feel
of some sort of ritual or some sort of blood
sacrifice or what have you. And again don't want to
get into spoiler territories about the story, but when did
it become clear that it was something different, or at
least when you know, in your coverage of the story,
(40:45):
in your following these folks that have lived this literally
on the ground and in research and reporting for years,
when did it become clear to you that what was
really going on or that maybe that was barking up
the wrong tree a little bit.
Speaker 5 (40:58):
Well, so I think it's the mass graves that really
clarify for people what's going on, because you know, young
women are going missing apparently following a pattern being found
in the desert on the outskirts of Huarez with characteristic trauma.
But nineteen ninety five, nineteen ninety six, two thousand and one,
and twenty twelve, these mass graves of women who have
(41:21):
been killed in the same way are discovered and at
that point it becomes impossible for anybody to argue that
these crimes are connected. These are not victims of random violence.
And each of these times there's been a great hope that, okay,
the authorities have to acknowledge there's something going on here
which is connected, and a belief in the community that
(41:44):
although this is terrible, we must have hit rock bottom
after this, no more, this can't continue. We will find
the real culprits. And indeed, after each of the mass
graves were discovered, somebody took the fall. In nineteen ninety five,
it was an a chemist called Abdel Latif Sharif Sharif
who had self deported from the United States under threat
(42:06):
of being actually deported to Egypt, and had decided to
go and live in Juarez where he could continue working
for his US employer but not be subject to the
US law. And so he was a big partier in
downtown Huarez, and he had these rape charges against him
in the US. When the first mass grave of women
is discovered, he's taken in and declared as the serial killer.
Speaker 4 (42:28):
There's one problem.
Speaker 5 (42:29):
In nineteen ninety six, another mass grave of women is discovered,
so as briefly a bit of a concern for the authorities. Well,
how do we explain this? And what they come up
with is that a gang called the Rebels is being
paid by Sharif to murder women on his behalf in
order to attest his innocence, and that he's demanding their
(42:50):
underwear as evidence from his jail cell. This sounds pretty
preposterous and lurid, but I mean this was the official line.
Two thousand and one comes along, another mass grave is discovered.
A journalist to ask the Attorney General at a press
conference is it possible Sharif is behind these crimes as well?
And the Attorney General says it's something we're looking into.
(43:11):
That's not the line they end up going with. In fact,
two bus drivers take the fall this time. It turns
out they've been tortured with cattle prods, suffocation, beatings into
confessing to the crimes. And it's actually this scapegoating, this
third scapegoating that sets off this process where a lawyer
(43:33):
takes on their case.
Speaker 4 (43:36):
And through his investigation.
Speaker 5 (43:38):
We start to get some answers about what's really happening,
But it leaves another trail of death in its wake,
and not just of women.
Speaker 4 (43:45):
Of men as well.
Speaker 1 (43:48):
And while we are on the subject of mass graves,
one very important and I think profoundly disturbing thing here
is if we do not ultimately know.
Speaker 4 (44:04):
The group or the people.
Speaker 1 (44:06):
Responsible for these murders, and we do not ultimately know
their motive, that it means we also do not ultimately
know how many victims exist. And the pattern that you're
describing of finding mass graves and then you know, this
(44:27):
rush to find some I hesitate to say necessarily scapegoat
because Abdul Latif Sharif was a horrible person, clearly a
horrible person, but there's this pattern on law enforcements. Part
of Okay, we found a grave, let's find a way
(44:48):
to explain it. Oh, we found another grave. Let's find
a way to explain it. And what I think is,
you know, most troubling here and something that I feel
obligated to ask you about, is is it possible that
there are more mass grave sites out there that have
yet to be discovered? I mean, is is that like
(45:10):
within the realm of probability, is it within the realm
of plausibility? Or where does this leave us?
Speaker 5 (45:17):
I mean to the early part of your question about culpability. Actually,
there is a witness to these murders who tells an
American journalist called Alfredo Corcallo.
Speaker 4 (45:30):
What he's seen, why these women are being killed.
Speaker 5 (45:34):
And so we do get to that reveal in the podcast,
and that kind of sets off the second half of
the podcast. So there are some answers, but they're not
answers which the officials ever take seriously. In Huirez and
so your question is a very good one. Are there
more mass graves in the desert?
Speaker 4 (45:51):
Very likely?
Speaker 5 (45:52):
Yes, certainly, many many more bodies that were never found.
One of the most interesting things for me about this
reporting slightly adjacent to the story in two thousand and one,
After the mass grave is discovered, the authorities fail to
identify the victims before they declare the case is closed,
(46:15):
and so the families never have closure. They never really believe, Okay,
was this my daughter? Was not my daughter? So Gario Flores,
who we mentioned, she gets exhumed three times because there's
no clarity ever for the family on whether it's her.
Once the grave next to her is incorrectly exhumed and
(46:38):
a man's body is brought in for analysis.
Speaker 4 (46:40):
I mean, this is a.
Speaker 5 (46:41):
Level of either incompetence or corruption, which is quite quite staggering.
So a team called the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team come
in two thousand and one at the request of various activists.
They have experience in identifying bodies from the end of
the regime in Argentina when there were many mass graves
(47:03):
and many families looking for answers, and this woman, Mercedes Dorretti,
who's a MacArthur Genius grant holder, basically founded this team
of anthropologists to identify bodies. They go to Huaire's in
two thousand and one to try and finally, using DNA techniques,
answer who these eight women definitively in this grave are.
(47:24):
And as part of their work they start analyzing other bodies.
And what Mercedes Doretti told me was this is the
first time in her career that she would analyze bodies
and there would be no matches from the local area
of people who had missing persons in their family, so
she had to In the end, often the missing person
(47:46):
would be found in Huias, the body would be found
in Ahuires, but the family would be eight hundred miles
away because the person was a migrant. And of course
in the early two thousands in Huires. This was the
first time she'd ever seen that in her career, and
now it's common their bodies all along the US Mexico
border from Central America belonging to people from Central America
(48:07):
other places in the world whose family maybe thousands of
miles away.
Speaker 4 (48:11):
But this.
Speaker 5 (48:13):
That the technique of identifying bodies and matching them to
people a long way away began in Huarez because there
was so much migrant labor into the factory jobs, and
so that really has foreshadowed what's happening now on the
border with all of these tragic deaths and families who
don't get closure, who may live thousands of miles away.
Speaker 3 (48:33):
You know, we're talking about the lives of these women.
A lot of it is a gruesome end that their
lives met. But this show, I think is pretty firmly
set on the life lived by these women and what
they were going to survive for themselves and their families.
And in an early episode in the show, there's a
(48:58):
moment where I believe it's Sigaria's mother is talking about
when her daughter came home excited to tell her mom
that the company has taken out life insurance on her
and if anything happens to her, the family, you mom,
will will get money. The family will get a lot
of money if something happens to me. And you know
(49:23):
she's she and her father and her other siblings are
all working in this factory, and they're living in this
small town where their home was, you know, originally built
by the trash, like you said, from across the border,
and I believe it is five family members working in
this factory at that point. Just imagining that five of
(49:48):
your family members could be working at a factory and
you can still barely afford to live while you're making
goods that are going to be shipped across the borders.
It's a tough thing for me personally too to understand,
because of my privileged life that I live here in
the United States, and because of who I am and
what I look like. I wonder if these families have
(50:14):
you know, they obviously haven't been able to find full
closure because of everything you just talked about, Oz, but
I wonder if they're being taken care of in any
way by these companies that you know, maybe a lot
of these victims were a part of or by some
other groups, like what are what are there. What are
their lives like now, the families who have had such
(50:35):
loss in their lives.
Speaker 5 (50:37):
I'm sorry to say that they're difficult. They're very difficult.
Often that often the mothers become tireless advocates for for justice.
There's an amazing energy and passion in the protest movement
in Huaires led by mothers and and and indeed, you
(51:00):
know those demands for justice. Although they haven't always answered
individual questions, there is some sense of the power of
collective action, and conditions in the factories and in those
communities have improved under pressure from the mother's Paola Flora's
Sagaria's mother founded a kindergarten in their neighborhood so that
(51:23):
the local children could get more of an education. It's
called a Saguaria of Flora's Kindergarten, and so she told us,
it makes me happy that every child in the neighborhood
graduates with my daughter's name on their diploma. And it's
tempting to find a lot of solace in the individual's
struggle against their circumstances. But the reality is the conditions
(51:44):
are very poor. There still these factories which manufactured goods
that we will use continue to pay people less than
ten dollars a day, when the similar job on the
two miles away on the other side of the border
would bring in eight to ten dollars an hour, And
that in itself creates the conditions of vulnerability and violence.
(52:05):
And in fact, during the COVID crisis, the American ambassador
put great pressure on Mexico not to close the factories
the Meculadoras because they're creating things like blood pressure cuffs
and medical gloves and supplies. We needed to keep our
citizens safe during COVID, And of course there were outbreaks
(52:25):
and deaths which ravaged these factories, but the workers were
being told they have to keep coming to work. And
so people often say, other murders still going, and the
answer is, well, you know, the last mass grave of
women was discovered in twenty twelve, which is eight years ago.
But the people who work in these factories remain very
(52:47):
vulnerable and the conditions haven't improved very much. And in fact,
there's a second generation of women who were born in
Juarez and who are perhaps more politically conscious than their
parents were. There's one protest group called the Daughters of
the Maquilla Workers, and one of the young women who
was part of that protest group, and a local artist
called Isabelle Cabagnes de Latore. She was cycling through downtown
(53:10):
Juarez in January twenty twenty and she was shot in
the head and her murder is unsolved. And so this
place of vulnerability and gender violence, and you know, a
locus really of rapacious consumption. I mean refrigerator parts, steering wheels,
you know, medical gloves, their manufacturing huaires and of course
(53:33):
it's where cocaine and other drugs come through. So unfortunately
our consumption habits have a price, and often it's thousands
of miles away. But what makes Huairez so arresting as
a place is that you can see it from the
United States. You can see the consequences of certain choices
we make playing out within sight of where you stand.
(53:56):
And that's really coming back to the beginning of your
question about why going interest in this story. I think
it's a place where you can understand the consequences of
institutions and choices and borders in a very very very
very immediate way.
Speaker 2 (54:10):
No, it's a really really good point because people think about, oh,
if I choose to do cocaine, that's a personal choice.
If I choose to contribute to capitalism, that's a personal choice,
and that's not affecting anybody but me. It's something that
I'm doing. But no, it shows there are ripple effects
to the choices that we make, and this is part
(54:30):
of that. And I think you do a fantastic job
of I mean, it's not like a it's not a
political show, but it is a show about experience and
about the lives of the folks that are caught up
in these systems, and I think that's what makes it
all the more powerful.
Speaker 4 (54:43):
Yeah, definitely.
Speaker 5 (54:44):
But I also, I mean there's a big, you know,
ethical consumerism movement in the US, and I think that's
very valuable and important. But really these are like systems
and policy problems, not individual choice problems. I mean, of
course we can all be more at in our actions,
but a lot of the responsibility for you know, cartel violence,
(55:05):
the drug problems in Latin America, working conditions in huires
that they come from very conscious policy decisions, and one
of them interesting We had a very interesting interview with
a historian called Oscar Martinez who said, in the sixties,
and you know, there were factories in Singapore and Taiwan
doing the same thing which happens in Huaires, but the
(55:27):
wage increases in those places has have been multiples in Huaires,
they say the same. Why is that was because Mexico
is close to the United States, so the United States
can enforce intellectual property and patent infringements much more effectively,
and so the wealth creation of you know, basically what
we always get angry for China of doing of basically
(55:47):
manufacturing and then copying the ip that never happened in Mexico.
So there's this kind of poverty trap which comes with proximity,
which is very interesting as well.
Speaker 1 (55:55):
Yeah, and this is I mean, at this point we're
also talking about the power of systems, right, the power
of institutions, which which affect us profoundly. One one thing
that I don't want to lose in our conversation here
(56:18):
is the the concept of the news cycle. To Matt,
I believe earlier you would ask the question at some
point about what happens to these to the survivors, right,
the people left behind after these unspeakable tragedies, which I
(56:39):
don't think it's hyperbolic to call them that. After these tragedies, Uh,
what happens to the people who are still living their lives,
you know, after the news crew and the and the
cameras cut and the van drives away to the next story.
That's that's something that I think is profound and is
(57:07):
tremendously important us because we're talking a lot about things
that have developed in the nineteen nineties, in the early
two thousands. Right now, as I'm sure you're aware, many
of our listeners may not be aware, war as murders
(57:28):
and war as just overall are up forty two percent
in March over May. Without you know, I know, we're
interviewing you in the midst of forgotten women of war
as coming out and coming to the public eye, but
(57:48):
or the public ear, I should say, I guess, But
could you tell us a little bit about the current
state of war as applied to homicides, as applied to
this case ibe, what happened after all of the investigations
(58:10):
over the nineties, in.
Speaker 5 (58:11):
The two thousands, Well, so when Monica began reporting in Juarez,
she grew up in al Paso, but she began reporting
in Juarez on the drug war in two thousand and eight,
and this was that period when the Sinaloa cartel were
trying to move in on Juarez, and there was basically
a civil war and people were being butchered and left
(58:32):
in the most disgusting ways. And it was in that
context that Monica cut her teeth as a reporter in Juarez.
And the reporter who introduced me to Monica is called
Angela Cochega, and she told me very casually, she would
drive over the border to do a day of reporting,
come back to the US, arrive at Starbucks, take off
her shoes and abandon them because they were so soaked
(58:54):
in blood. And this idea of a war zone in
your backyard is just very, very hard to get your
head around. So eight twenty eleven, the drug violence was
at its absolute height, and homicides were, you know, in
the three and a half thousand a year, you know area.
After twenty eleven, things got a bit quieter. In twenty sixteen,
(59:15):
there was the Choir's tourist board. We're trying to sort
of encourage travel to Wires again because it was historically
a place where Americans, much like Havana and Cuba, went
to go and have fun, to go and drink and
bring when they're underage and you know, gamble and maybe
you know all things which are worse than that as well,
(59:36):
the sex trade. But the Quires was kind of rebuilding
its reputation and its tourism industry in twenty fifteen, twenty sixteen. Unfortunately,
the homicide rate is starting to approach, you know, the
three thousand number again based on monthly averages of two
(59:56):
hundred and fifty people being murdered now, and that's really
really frightening because it basically indicates that it's happening again.
Why it's happening is not clear, but generally when there
are power shifts in the cartels, for example, twenty sixteen
or twenty seventeen, L Chapo gets extradited to the US
(01:00:17):
and is now in ADX Florence Supermax in Colorado. He
was the most powerful cartel leader in Mexico and now
he's gone. And similar to what happened after the Iraq
War with the formation of ISIS, or when you disturb
the leadership of these organizations, it comes with splinter groups,
(01:00:37):
and splinter groups bring violence, and I think right now
there is a civil war in Huarez, which it doesn't
have the same spectacular violence as the two thousand and
eight twenty eleven period. But the numbers are approaching the
same height, and that's bad news for all vulnerable people.
Monica said that the last mass grave was discovered in
(01:00:57):
twenty twelve, and she would not be surprised if if
another one was discovered soon.
Speaker 1 (01:01:03):
And this is the again, as you said, Odds, this
is the modern day. We are recording this episode for
Peepe behind the Curtain here, folks. We're recording this episode
on June twelfth, twenty twenty. As at this point, I
(01:01:24):
believe that the best way for our listeners to understand
more of this story, to learn more about it, is
to honestly to stop our podcasts right now and to
head over to whatever their podcast platform of choice is
and check out Forgotten Women of Warres, which is available now.
(01:01:47):
We want to thank you profoundly for being so generous
with your time on our show here, but more importantly,
much more importantly for the time that you and Monica
have dedicated to bringing to shedding light on this because
it's I am attempting not to be emotional about this,
(01:02:10):
but it is it is reprehensible that these that this
is this is occurring. As you said, you know, at
the very beginning you said a tale of two cities.
It's it's offensive that this sort of mass homicide continued,
(01:02:30):
that it continues today, that it seems like the systems
that were created to vouchsafe people are broken have failed.
And on my end, I'm wondering what would you, if
you would recommend next steps? If you if you would,
(01:02:54):
if you, for instance, were able to dictate to law
enforcement in the community, what they should be doing about this,
about this ongoing horrific activity, what would you say?
Speaker 5 (01:03:11):
Well, firstly, thanks for your kind words about our time,
and I would like to emphasize my role in Forgotten
was to come in as the naive outsider and ask,
you know, framing questions and frankly obvious questions. You know,
why is this happening? What's going on? And Monica is
(01:03:32):
the person who's devoted years of her life and her
career and taken risks that I haven't, as our other
sources did, in particular Dinah Washington Valdez. And so what
makes me proudest about this project is to have used
it as a as a frame for their stories and
their reporting to reach a wide audience.
Speaker 4 (01:03:53):
And so that that's been.
Speaker 5 (01:03:56):
That, that's been you know something, I'm personally proud of
your second question about what can we do? I mean,
there was an American journalist who went to Huaires in
the nineties called Chuck Bowden, who called Huires a laboratory
of our future. And you're basically taking the women's murders
as a starting point, said, well, what happens when you
(01:04:17):
basically create a permanent underclass. What happens when law enforcement
aren't trusted by the community, What happens when there's state
sponsored violence against people who seek the truth? What happens
when journalists gets murdered? What happens when the imperatives of
profit are put above the imperatives of human life. And
(01:04:38):
that's not a conversation which is unique to Huaire's anymore.
That's a conversation we're having right now at the United States.
And Sandra Rodriguez Nieto, one of the editors at Eldario
and Huarez, said, Huires wasn't always like this, Like it's
always been a tough city. It's always been a gritty
border city. But thousands of unsolved murders every year, you know,
(01:05:00):
institutions are fragile and be careful in the US. Be careful,
don't fall asleep, because it can happen faster than you think.
And so you know, I don't want to overemphasize the
connection of this podcast to what's happening with the protest
movement in the United States right now. But when you
(01:05:20):
have injustice ongoing in justice, when you have lack of
trust between law enforcement and citizens, and when you have
a tax on independent judiciary and the media, you can
find yourself in a pretty hellish situation pretty quickly.
Speaker 3 (01:05:36):
Thank you for that, Oz, and then you thank you
for making the show with these amazing women who have
been working on this story for so long. Just prepare
yourself when you're listening to the show, because they are
tragic stories, but they are very important to hear.
Speaker 1 (01:05:55):
Agreed, one hundred percent. This concludes today's episode, But this
does not conclude our show, and it does not conclude
the story of the podcast Forgotten Women of War, as
we want to hear from you, We want your perspective.
As we often say, you are the most important part
(01:06:18):
of this show, specifically you, so write to us. You
can find us on Facebook, you can find us on Twitter,
you can find us on Instagram. We're frankly like many
people in too many places on the Internet nowadays. But
before you do any of that, check out this podcast.
(01:06:39):
It's available now wherever you find your favorite shows. As
we say, it's free to listen to. And this is
an important story that is has not and is not
receiving the attention and the analysis it deserves. And while
(01:07:03):
you were listening to that, if you have any thoughts,
if you have feedback, you want to talk to us,
but you hate social media, we of all people get it.
You can contact us a number of other ways. We
have a phone number.
Speaker 2 (01:07:18):
Yes, you can give us a call at one eight
three three std WYTK where you can leave messages for
us in audio form in three minute increments. I know
it's not ideal, but hey, if you need more time
than that, you just call back and then we'll stitch
them together for when we inevitably do another listener mail
episode where we field questions from you. You also might
(01:07:41):
be one of the lucky ones that gets a true
callback from Matt Frederick himself. I also would like to
start being a little more conscient just about participating that too.
But man, that talk about the Golden Ticket of conspiracy
listener mails that when you get that call from Matt,
wish you all the best of luck, because you will
(01:08:02):
definitely do it.
Speaker 3 (01:08:03):
If you don't want to do any of that stuff,
we still have one of those old fashioned emails. You
can email us.
Speaker 1 (01:08:08):
We are conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 3 (01:08:30):
Stuff they don't want you to know is a production
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Philom conspiracy realist. Every so often we do interviews in
place of our episodes, and we always put a lot
of time into making sure that there are things you
should know more about and definitely things we want to
learn more about. And we were so fortunate back in
twenty twenty to interview none other than the famous Oz
(00:23):
Wollution about a project called Women of Waraz. Do we
all remember this one?
Speaker 2 (00:29):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (00:29):
Yeah, sure do.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
It's an intense story and Oz is an incredibly astute
fellow in a great interview, So yeah, I'm definitely excited
to play this one again for y'all.
Speaker 3 (00:38):
And we didn't get to speak with Monica ortizer Rebe,
who's the other journalists who's working with us to create
this show, which is still available. You can find it
everywhere right now, so if you get intrigued, just listen up.
We'll tell you how to find it.
Speaker 1 (00:53):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies, history is
riddled with unexplained events. Can turn back now or learn
this stuff they don't want you to know. A production
of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 3 (01:17):
Hello, welcome back to the show.
Speaker 4 (01:18):
My name is Matt, my name is no.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
They call me Ben. We are joined As always with
our super producer Paul, mission control decands most importantly, you
are you, you are here, and that makes this stuff
they don't want you to know. Today, we are diving
into a story that may be cursorly familiar to many
(01:43):
of our fellow listeners. You may have heard in the
past the headlines of this story. You may have had,
you know, a couple of let's say, what do you
think a couple sentences length of an idea of what's happening.
Of course, in these chaotic times, we have so many headlines, right,
(02:08):
we have so many things that we will keep track of,
and many things, unfortunately get lost in the shuffle. For
decades in SiO dad Warrez in Mexico, women have been
going missing. This is something that some of our fellow
(02:29):
listeners wrote to us about in our earlier episode on
the Lost Highway in Canada, where multiple members of First
Nations in the region were being victimized, murdered, often without
any acknowledgment or assistance from law enforcement.
Speaker 2 (02:52):
Also referred to as the Highway of Tears. I believe, right,
isn't that yeah?
Speaker 1 (02:56):
That's yeah, that's correct now, and we are not diving
into this case. This ongoing tragedy alone today Today we
are joined by the Emmy and Peabody Award winning producer
and writer and executive producer of one of our newest
(03:18):
peer podcasts, Forgotten Women of War. As we'd like to
welcome to the show, Oz Willoshan. Oz, thank you so
much for coming on the air today.
Speaker 5 (03:29):
Thank you so much for having me. It's an honest
to be having this conversation with you.
Speaker 4 (03:32):
Guys.
Speaker 3 (03:34):
We're very much glad that you're here to talk about this,
and we're also glad that you're making this show that
you're making. All three of us have been listening to
the show again, Forgotten Women of Wars. You can find
it right now. I think we've all been personally very
affected by the stories that you're telling and that you're
(03:54):
giving voice not only to you know, the families and
the people who've been affected by this, but the reporters
who've been working on this for so long. You know,
before we jump into all of that, could you just
tell us who you are and why you wanted to
talk about this story.
Speaker 5 (04:13):
Yeah, my name is Oz, and I've been living in
the States for ten years on various different immigrant visas
and now a Green card, and so you know, despite
being a white man and having all the privilege that
comes with that, I've had this unusual experience of kind
(04:34):
of immigration difficulties. And there's something called secondary screening, where
you know, when you arrive in the United States, you
get taken into this kind of prison esque area in
the airport and often have to wait for a couple
of hours, will various you know, checks have performed, and
so you know, despite fitting in and feeling very comfortable
(04:56):
always in the United States, I've always also had this
consciousness like what does it mean to be an immigrant
in the US? What does it mean to live in
the US without being from the US. And that's also
something which is part of my family background. My grandfather
was a refugee from Ukraine to Britain in after the
Second World War. So I've always been very interested in
stories about migration and stories about how we define us
(05:20):
and them, stories about you know, who gets to be
part of the club and who gets excluded from the club.
The price of being excluded from the club, which you know,
goes from lack of economic opportunity unfortunately to murder. And
so I was just very fascinated by this El Paso
Juarez border area, because you have these two big cities,
(05:43):
el Paso six hundred thousand, Huarez a million, in two
different countries, separated by a river which is now dry
and a steel fence. And El Paso, Texas, up until
the terrible shooting at Walmart, was frequently considered one of
america The safest cities of its size.
Speaker 4 (06:02):
And Juarez, as.
Speaker 5 (06:03):
People know from movies like Sicario and you know other narcos,
the Marcos Mexico is one of the world's the most
dangerous and bloody and violent and frightening cities. So I
was just curious that how does that happen? Why is that?
And I first went down to the border to elt
Passo after I read a series of stories in The
(06:25):
New Yorker called Faces from the Border, and one of
the articles was profiling Hispanic border patrol agents. And I'd
never really considered that border patrol agents were majority Hispanic,
in fact, eighty percent Hispanic. And so you know, twenty sixteen,
and there was all of this rhetoric coming out of
the White House about Mexican bad hombres and rapists and
(06:49):
increasing militarization of the border. What I found fascinating was
the people on the front lines of enforcing it were themselves,
usually Hispanic, often with family in Juarez, often with cousins
or even brothers and sisters who didn't speak to them
anymore or turn them away from church or whatever it
may be because of what they were doing. And yet
it was a federal job and came with perks in
(07:10):
an area with you know, not as many employment opportunities,
to say, as New York or Los Angeles or Atlanta.
So I was kind of fascinated by this paradox, and
I went down there to work on a documentary series
about that, which.
Speaker 4 (07:23):
Hasn't hasn't yet been released.
Speaker 5 (07:25):
But while I was there, one of the producers on
the documentary series started telling me about this, this story
of the murders of the women in Huarez, and I
didn't know about it. I mean, it was something I
couldn't believe he was telling me. They were not tens,
but hundreds of women who had been murdered seemingly in
a characteristic way, you know, left in strange positions, with
(07:48):
strange symbols in some cases left on their bodies, that
had been going on for decades that various investigators had
looked into it, but that no one knew for sure
what was happening. And I thought, what a what a
your main topic for a podcast, giving people's interest in
the true crime genre, but also what an interesting way
to tell what is effectively a tale of two cities.
Speaker 1 (08:10):
Yeah. I massively appreciate the way you phrase it a
tale of two cities and your reference to the August
twenty nineteen mass shooting there in El Paso. I believe
that's when it occurred. One thing that I think will
baffle a lot of people, and I want to make
sure we don't bury the lead here, Oz, is what
(08:31):
you just said about the nature of these murders. Because
we know that in various various countries in Central and
South America there is an ongoing crisis of femicide and
violence against women. This was true even when I was
(08:55):
living in Guatemala in the mid two thousands. But what's
different here. One of the things that's different here is
that there appears to be some sort of methodical system
or application to these homicides. And you know, it's something
(09:18):
that I personally was I was not aware of the
extent of this. I knew that many women were being
murdered and then later found and I knew that there
were allegations that the police or law enforcement were somewhere
on the spectrum between incompetent to willfully negligent. With that
(09:46):
in mind, how did you and your co hosts first
start exploring the intersection of law enforcement here, or I
should say law enforcement's role. Were was the US side
of law enforcement interested or involved with any cases here?
Speaker 5 (10:10):
So that's a very interesting question. And my co host
who's not with us today is Monica Ortiz Orribe, who
has been a reporter in El Paso for fifteen years,
reports the NPR for the BBC, contributes to the New
York Times, and she's been covering the femicides for fifteen
(10:31):
years with a very strong focus on the experience of
the families, on the economic realities that make these women
vulnerable in the first place, and with less of a
sort of procedural focus on law and order, on law enforcement,
on the who, more on the why and the what.
Speaker 4 (10:53):
So Funny enough.
Speaker 5 (10:56):
US law enforcement have been very interested in what's happening
to the women in Huares. I mentioned that quote about
the President talking about murderers, rapists and bad hombres coming
from Mexico and Central America into the US. In fact,
the FBI in the nineties were very concerned that an
American serial killer might be traveling south into Mexico to
(11:18):
take advantage of vulnerable population and a less strictly enforced.
Speaker 4 (11:26):
Laws to basically prey.
Speaker 5 (11:28):
On vulnerable women in Juarez, and in fact, Huaires has
long been a place where things that America wants to
have access to but not have responsibility for, happen. So
in the twenties, during Prohibition, there was a bourbon distillery
(11:49):
in Kentucky that was disassembled part by part and sent
by rail to Juarez, where it was promptly reassembled started
making Kentucky boars again and smuggling it straight into the
United States. And so the most famous bar in Huaires
is called the Kentucky Club for that reason.
Speaker 4 (12:08):
So so, and then in the sixties.
Speaker 5 (12:12):
After this a long way to answer your question, but
in the Second World War there was a lot of
male labor was in Europe fighting, and so there was
a shortage of farm labor and industrial labor in the
United States, and the United States started this thing called
the Brassero program where they would allow Mexican laborers to
(12:33):
come into the United States.
Speaker 4 (12:34):
Easily work cross back and forth.
Speaker 5 (12:37):
And in the sixties there was this political pressure to say,
you know, these people are taking our jobs, let's send
them back. So millions of Mexicans were you know, basically
sent home, and many of them found themselves in Huarez,
and so there was both a concern of thinking, well, gosh,
there are all these people on the border, you know,
who are who don't come from there, but who kind
(12:59):
of may want to come back to the United States. How
can we make things slightly more appealing for them to
stay there. And so basically this duty free zone begins
in Huaires where it's much you know, you can assemble
goods and re export them to the US and only
pay duty on the value added. And so Huires becomes
this manufacturing hub, competing with Singapore and Taiwan at the
(13:21):
time to create cheap consumer goods, which is still the
engine of the economy. There on behalf of American corporations,
but using cheap Mexican labor with no labor protections. So
fast forward to the nineties and you have Robert Wrestler,
who was the man who invented the Psychological Profiling Department
of the FBI and on whom the show mind Hunter
(13:43):
is based. And he is one of the people credited
with coining the term serial killer. And one of the
things which he pioneered was data driven serial killer apprehension,
so looking for commonalities at crime scenes and using a
commonalities to try and apprehend killers, and what he quickly
(14:04):
was called the VISCAP, the Violent Criminal Apprehension Program. And
what he quickly realized was that if you didn't include
southern Canada and northern Mexico in VISCAP, you could be
missing a great deal of what was happening. So Wrestler
was basically convinced that there were American serial at least
one American serial killer acting in Juarez, and so he
went down there to try and learn more about the
(14:26):
patterns behind the crimes, to see if they connected to
other crimes in the US.
Speaker 1 (14:31):
Will return and dive deeper into the story of the
women of war as after a word from our sponsor,
and we're back.
Speaker 3 (14:46):
So this.
Speaker 1 (14:48):
Timeline here, I think you've done a fantastic job of
filling in the context because so often in mainstream news
reports or someone will you know, with the best of
intentions read about something and not understand that there are
(15:09):
decades of intervening forces and institutions leading to that news
story that we read. This leads us to one of
the other important pieces of context that I think we
need to establish here, Oz, which is that when you
(15:29):
and Monica and your team are when you were investigating this,
when you are when you're chasing this story, you were
going to areas of Mexico and areas of the world
that are well, there's no way to say, there's no
other way to say it. They are dangerous. Did you yeah,
(15:52):
did you ever feel that you or your cohort were
were in danger in the course of creating this?
Speaker 5 (16:02):
I mean it's in short, yes, I mean in Juarez
is a dangerous city which has you know, thousands of
homicides a year, most of which go unpunished. Mexico is
the world's most dangerous country for journalists. I think there
have been almost thirty journalists murdered in the last ten years.
(16:25):
They're more dangerous than Syria for journalists. And so there's
one particular area in downtown Juarez where many of the
women were last seen, called Mina Street, which is the
central bus exchange in the city, so factory employees basically
go from their houses in the outskirts change downtown take
another bus to work. And that happens to be a
(16:47):
part of town which is controlled closely by a gang
called the ballyo Azteca, and so journalists are really not
welcomed there. But it's also how Muchnica describes it as
ground zero for missing women. And if you walk around
that area, you'll see missing posters on almost every lamp post,
and you'll see these black crosses painted on pink squares,
(17:10):
also on lamp posts, which is where the logo of
our show Forgotten took its inspiration from. And so we're
walking around it and Monica said on the way, look,
we need a cover story because people don't want us
to be asking questions about what happens to the women here.
So we said, oh, we're reporting on the migrant caravan,
and people that come up and ask us, and at
(17:32):
a certain point someone sort of made this gun gesture
and shouted pat like that at us. And you know,
in most cities that might happen it's a bit disconcerting,
or maybe somebody's having a bit of a joke, But
in a place where you know that most crimes go
unpunished and the price of life is very low, it
is more scary. And we went after that to go
and meet Sandra Rodriguez Nieto, who's the editor of one
(17:56):
of the editors at the local newspaper. And she said, yeah,
that place where you go where I don't let my
reporters go there. It's too dangerous and her colleague. The
desk outside her office was empty and had been for
ten years since her colleague, Armando Rodriguez was assassinated while
he was taking his daughter to school. So I don't
want to overplay the state danger that we felt ourselves
(18:18):
in person. I think Monica living in the area takes
more risk than I did. Who can return to New
York City, But certainly being on the ground in Juarez
is not a comfortable experience. If you're asking these kinds
of questions.
Speaker 3 (18:32):
Well, well, you know, I think we just have a
at least right here in the rooms. The people you're
speaking to right now have a great respect for you,
and especially I think for Monica and for Diana Diana
Washington eld Is. So I want to give our listeners
(18:55):
the way you do in your show a specific example
of what the experience living and working in Juarez at
one of these factories was like, and maybe the vulnerability
that existed within the lives of a lot of these
women simply because of transportation needs, which you know does
(19:18):
speak to a larger economic issue. So in the show,
in episode one you talk about Sigario, can you tell
us a little bit about her life, what it was
like in what she was doing when she went missing?
Speaker 5 (19:34):
Yes, by all means, So, Ben, you mentioned historical context.
The factory started in Huares in the sixties, but it
was in the mid nineties after NAFTA was signed that
they really boomed, and you had just this tremendous demand
for labor and a bit like during the Grapes of
Wrath time. There were recruiters going into the interior and saying,
(19:56):
come to Huire is going to be fantastic. There are
even reports of empty seven four seven's flying to rural
and mining states in Mexico and coming back full of workers.
So there was this sense that Juarez was a place
of opportunity, a place particularly for women to work outside
of the home, which wasn't always the case in some
(20:17):
other parts of Mexico, and so this one family, the
Flores family, in nineteen ninety five they decided to move
from El salto in Durango, where Jesus, the father was
a lumberjack, and he went ahead with their son and
he wrote a letter home to Paula, his wife, and
(20:38):
their six daughters, and said, you guys are.
Speaker 4 (20:41):
Going to come.
Speaker 5 (20:41):
We found work, We found what we're looking for is
going to be fantastic. And Paula replied, well, I've heard
they kill women there and we have six daughters. You're sure,
And he just said, yes, there's no bad people here.
Everyone's starting out. Come and join us. So they did,
so they moved there. That the mother and the six daughters,
(21:03):
including Cigario, joined and they moved to this squatter community
on the outskirts of Juarez where they have to build
their own house above their heads, no running water, no electricity,
and to build their house they forage scrap from an
American dump on the other side of the border. And
just this image of these, you know, people who've moved
(21:25):
from elsewhere crossing over under with a kind of wink
and a nod from border patrol to go and get
our trash, to go back and build their houses, you know,
is very haunting. There's one story about Cigario being there
at the dump with her mother and an American man
coming to throw some stuff away and seeing that she's
cold and offering him his coat, and Sigario said, no,
(21:45):
I can't take it. I'm embarrassed, and her mother says,
take the coat, so she does. So anyway, they find
what they're looking for, they find work, and they're all
working together in a macula dora making I think refrigerated
parts in one of these factories. But Sigario is under
eighteen and the factory find out and they say, you
can't work the night shift with the rest of your
(22:06):
family when need used to the day shift, So she
has to start traveling to work alone all of a sudden,
and her mother begs her. She says, look, we can
survive without the money you bring in. Please don't do this,
and Sigorio says, look how we're living.
Speaker 4 (22:19):
I need to.
Speaker 5 (22:20):
Help, And within two months of her shift changing, she's
disappeared and is found dead in the desert two weeks later.
With all of the characteristics of the abduction in broad daylight,
the disappearance and certain types of trauma that are characteristic
(22:40):
of tens, if not hundreds of other young women who
meet the same fate.
Speaker 2 (22:45):
I want to bring up just the idea of a
border town Inuarez, in particular, the cartels, the drug cartels
and warres had been particularly powerful in the nineties, and
I think there may be a little less so, but
a lot of the stories we would hear about Wuares
were cartel war murders. And can you speak a little
(23:07):
bit about that kind of proximity to the United States
and the relationship between the drug trade and your story
if any exists, and just kind of you know what
you took away from that?
Speaker 5 (23:21):
Yeah, by all means, so, I mean the same reasons
why the factories want to be in Juarez is why
the drug traffickers want to be in the In Huarez, it's.
Speaker 4 (23:30):
Very close to the US.
Speaker 5 (23:32):
You have millions of people crossing the border north, millions
of vehicles, tons of freight, and so it's one of
the most lucrative drug smuggling corridors in the world. And
so what happened was in the nineties. Up until the nineties,
there was obviously organized crime in Mexico, but the cartel
(23:54):
was a relatively stable organization a bit like the mafia,
and so although there was organized crime, there wasn't a
huge amount of violence against members of the community. Like
once you were under the protection of the cartel, you
were basically safe. But what happened was the cartel started splintering,
(24:14):
actually under pressure from the US who were doing various
you know, raids and arrests and putting pressure on the
Mexican government. And when the cartel splintered, basically a cartel
civil war start.
Speaker 4 (24:26):
And this was likely later in the.
Speaker 5 (24:27):
Nineties, this was the early two thousands, And what happened
is El Chappo's seen a lower cartel were coming in
from the west because they wanted to take over the
Huara smuggling corridor from from the local cartel, and so
this began. This that's why you see these terrible images
of Huires of you know, men hanging from bridges and
with slogans written on their dead bodies and wearing pig masks.
(24:51):
I mean, it was really the most disgusting and symbolic
violence playing out in Huarez in a battle for contry,
which actually I think probably you can draw a line
forward from that to isis and how they weaponize the
imagery of violence to be part of their very effective
social media campaign. And so this issue of the women
(25:13):
being murdered and the cartel in Juarez, it's one of
the questions of the podcast, and it's another reason why
the FBI tried to get involved to find out what
the answers are. But in the early nineties or the
mid nineties and the early two thousands, in a sense,
it's not clear at that stage just how entrenched the
cartel is. So everyone's on the hunt for a serial killer.
(25:37):
And then as the podcast goes on and as history
moves forward, it becomes clear that it's harder and harder
to separate the murders of women from the cancer of
cartel violence spreading.
Speaker 1 (25:50):
M Yeah, and that's something that has I think historically
bedeviled multiple cities in Mexico as well as other countries
in South America. And you know, a couple of times,
(26:10):
a couple of times here as already we've used the
phrase serial killer. And you know, for everyone everyone familiar
with that, there are some nuts of bolts technicalities, but
long story short, uh, serial killer is defined by having
(26:32):
a type of victim, having a method of murder, and
having a pattern in terms of you know, their timeline,
their chronology. One thing that one thing that I think
stood out to us here that that differentiates these these
(26:54):
specific comicides from so many other tragic comicides in the
in the area, is that there did seem to be
there does seem to be a fairly consistent method applied here.
Speaker 5 (27:11):
Right.
Speaker 1 (27:11):
There are people who are perhaps being shot due to
crime or due to you know, or being stabbed in
a fight, but these these are different. One thing that
stood out to me is early on in the story,
you explore how one of the victims seemed to have
(27:35):
been kept alive for some time after being abducted. I believe,
I believe investigators were able to verify that this victim
appeared to have been fed, so they were around long
enough to be fed. And then explore a little bit
about you explore the method of possibly finding or or
(27:57):
you know, determining these victims and choosing them. It seems
like I think one of the most disturbing things is
how premeditated. Dare I say, how organized it seems. Could
you tell us a little bit about what appears to
be this method of determination?
Speaker 5 (28:20):
Yeah, I think you picked up on something which which
was important for us to communicate in the podcast. The
reporter who's done the most work on this story is
called Diana Washington Valdez, and she wrote a book called
The Killing Field Harvest of Women, and her big point was,
these are not random victims. These are not victims of
(28:42):
random violence in a violent place. These are women who
have been specifically selected for certain characteristics, young, poor, from
immigrant families, often migrant families, who disappear, usually during the
day to and from work, and who when they're discovered
later either their body left alone or in four cases
(29:06):
in Huias, there have been mass graves of women discovered bare,
characteristic types of trauma, often a broken neck, often hands
bound by shoelaces. And in this particular case of Lillie Alejandra,
you mentioned an autoposy that revealed she'd been kept alive
and fed for several days between disappearing and being murdered.
(29:28):
And so this is there's clearly something going on here.
This is not random violence. And that's why there were
so many people like Wrestler from the FBI theorizing there
must be a serial killer, because as a type, there's
a method of selection and one of the most chilling
methods of selection was this, according to Diana's reporting, computer
(29:52):
school in downtown Huires called Echo. And again this is
the early two thousands. These are women who have come
with their families in search for opportunity to a new city.
And there's a computer school which apparently offers the type
of skills that needed to participate in the new economy
and perhaps get a better job than a factory job.
And in Dinah's reporting, I think at least ten victims
(30:18):
were registered at the computer school before they were taken
and murdered. And the suspicion is that this computer school
was basically a catalog of victims in Diana's phrase, for
somebody on the other end who wanted to know, Okay,
I want a picture of the woman, I want to
know where they live, I want to know who their
family are, and then using that to select the most
(30:40):
vulnerable because these crimes were also sexually motivated for murder.
Speaker 3 (30:45):
Wow. And in episode two of the show and we
don't want to you know, obviously give away too much.
We want to talk about this, but we don't want
we want you to go listen to the show. In
episode two, there are witnesses who have seen things. In
(31:08):
a lot of these cases, it appears that there are
witnesses to seeing something because, like we said, this is
broad daylight, you're in a a large metropolitan area where
these kidnappings are occurring, or even if it's on the
edges of them, it seems like there would be more
people talking. But it also seems like there is a
(31:32):
very real danger for these witnesses because and correct me
if I'm wrong here, but I believe it was known
that someone or some group were posing as agents from
the FBI and seeking answers from witnesses or getting intel
(31:54):
from witnesses. Could you tell us about that?
Speaker 4 (31:57):
Yeah, you're right.
Speaker 5 (31:58):
So the women often disappear at these moments of maximum vulnerability.
So in Sigario Flores's case, it was right after she
changed shift and was traveling alone to and from work.
There's another young woman called Claudia Vett Gonzalez who arrives
for work late and so she'sn't allowed into the factory,
and that very day she disappears and is later found dead.
(32:19):
So there's this sense that somebody is watching and somebody
is taking note of vulnerability. But the peculiar thing is
then there are never any witnesses. But then in two
thousand and one, this case comes along and there aren't
witnesses to the abduction, but witnesses see Lily Alejandra struggling
in a car with a man a few days after
(32:41):
she's taken, and so this is also a break because
they identify the car.
Speaker 4 (32:47):
It's a for Thunderbird.
Speaker 5 (32:49):
It's a relatively common make of car, but it's the
beginning of the kind of lead that might normally, you know.
Speaker 4 (32:55):
Resolve these types of cases.
Speaker 5 (32:58):
The witnesses, Dinah Washington Valders goes to interview them, and
they say, oh gosh, how funny. You're not the first
person who's been here to ask us questions. The FBI
were here as well, and Dinah says what he says, Yeah,
the FBI came, and that they came to ask us
what we've seen and what we knew, and so we
gave them all the information. Dinah calls her sources in
(33:20):
the FBI and El Paso, and they never did that.
So somebody has come to lead their own parallel investigation,
either to find out what these witnesses know or to
intimidate them and to make sure that the information they
have doesn't make it into the right channel. So that's
one of the big challenges of this story and why
so many people have approached it and struggled to get
(33:43):
to answer this is because, unlike a normal crime in
the US, people are often scared for good reason to
come forward and share what they know.
Speaker 3 (33:53):
And I bring this up, Oz, because you spoke with
at least one FBI agent that I've heard on the podcast,
Hardrick Crawford Jr. Who was I believe the FBI special
agent in charge of El Paso in around that two
thousand and one time and a little bit after. And
(34:14):
you know, he says some things in the show that
at least that I've heard thus far that are really disturbing,
specifically talking about how easy it is to kill someone
and bury them and hide a body in Warrez in
the surrounding areas. But you know, just listening to him
talk about these murders and what's happening, and knowing that
(34:38):
the FBI is involved and does breach across the border
there for a lot of different cases, but in this
one in particular, they were at least doing some work
on it. I guess my big question to you is
how much of a hand did the FBI have in
investigations here if I mean, we know they had, but
(35:00):
how large of a role did the FBI play?
Speaker 4 (35:04):
Well.
Speaker 5 (35:05):
They were actually three attempts the FBI made to involve
themselves in solving these crimes. The first time was in
the mid nineties when Robert Wrestler, the serial killer expert,
came down and he came motivated in large part by
wanting to get more data for his VISCAP Violent Criminal
(35:25):
Apprehension program. He came because he wanted to do a
better job of solving crimes in the US. Then you
had Frank Evans, who ran an operation called Operation Plaza
Sweep in the late nineties that was a full on
FBI operation in Mexico to exsume bodies male bodies from
(35:47):
the deserts surrounding Huarez believed to be American citizens in
order to secure an indictment against the cartel leader Coreofuentes,
in order to get an extradition request, which they were
successful in doing. Evans said, at that point, we offer
the local quire's police assistance with solving the murders of women.
(36:07):
But he was very explicit in saying that the FBI
made that offer because they wanted to test out how
trustworthy the local police were, and it turned out they weren't.
Then you have Hardrick Crawford, who comes along in the
early two thousands, and, unlike Wrestler and Evans, who had
a clear United States interest motivated reason to engage themselves,
(36:31):
in this case, Hardrick says, I had a mission from God.
I had a higher calling than the US Constitution. I
have my own daughters. It was my moral duty to
find out what was happening to these women. And his
story is one of the most interesting plot lines in
the podcast. We come to it later on, but safe
(36:55):
to say when law enforcement officials start to follow something
that they view as being high than the constitution, chaos
sometimes ensues.
Speaker 2 (37:05):
Okay, we're going to talk more with Oz, but first
a quick word from our sponsor, right, and we're back
with oswall lotionan of Forgotten Women of Warez. Back to
a specific point about the story, and this is all
(37:26):
None of this is spoiler territory. It's all covered pretty
quickly in the first episode. But I think it's fascinating
how little was known at the time about the cartels.
Speaker 4 (37:38):
Kind of oh gosh.
Speaker 2 (37:41):
Trademark, I guess, or signature for a lot of this
violence that we maybe now take for granted. But some
of the methods of the killings and some of the
kind of calling cards really did have almost an occulted
kind of you know, feel about them, or some sort
of ritualist stick, you know, qualities. Can you speak to
(38:03):
that a little bit about it and about how that
in particular maybe muddy the waters and then made it,
you know, be a big part of that search for
a serial killer as opposed to realizing perhaps that this
might be something else.
Speaker 4 (38:16):
Yeah, it's a great question.
Speaker 5 (38:17):
I mean, bear in mind, you know, these crimes in
the nineties, this is not long after the Satanic panic
in the US, and so you know, I think there's
a tendency in any case to read on to unsolved
murders and horrific murders some kind of satanic or ritual element.
(38:39):
But in fact, in the case of these murders, it
does seem like they were ritualized. There were strange marks
left on the bodies of the victims. There was this
use of shoelaces to bind the wrists, and the way
in which the women's bodies were left was not random,
(39:01):
They were arranged in certain dehumanizing ways. And so one
of the early hypotheses was indeed that there was some
kind of satanic or ritual cult killing these women. And
one of the phenomena in Mexico has been the rise
of this interest in Santauerte the Holy Death, which is
(39:25):
a sort of religion esque which sort of worships death.
And people were wondering, you know, is it possible these
are human sacrifices that most of our sources dismissed fairly quickly.
But the idea of ritual killings, ritual killings for the
purposes of hazing or bonding, or creating loyalty or creating
(39:48):
codes of silence, that was considered to be a much
more realistic avenue of investigation. And in fact, when Wrestler
was there from the FBI, he was there with another
forensic criminology called Candyscropic, and it came at one of
these crime scenes, this woman left in an utterly dehumanizing way,
and she turned to restaurant and said, have you ever
(40:09):
seen anything like this in your career?
Speaker 4 (40:11):
And he said no.
Speaker 5 (40:12):
And what they started to speculate was that these women
were being sacrificed by some kind of group in order
to achieve purposes which at the time weren't clear.
Speaker 2 (40:23):
Because there were things like markings, triangles and various symbols
carved into the bodies that have this you know, feel
of some sort of ritual or some sort of blood
sacrifice or what have you. And again don't want to
get into spoiler territories about the story, but when did
it become clear that it was something different, or at
least when you know, in your coverage of the story,
(40:45):
in your following these folks that have lived this literally
on the ground and in research and reporting for years,
when did it become clear to you that what was
really going on or that maybe that was barking up
the wrong tree a little bit.
Speaker 5 (40:58):
Well, so I think it's the mass graves that really
clarify for people what's going on, because you know, young
women are going missing apparently following a pattern being found
in the desert on the outskirts of Huarez with characteristic trauma.
But nineteen ninety five, nineteen ninety six, two thousand and one,
and twenty twelve, these mass graves of women who have
(41:21):
been killed in the same way are discovered and at
that point it becomes impossible for anybody to argue that
these crimes are connected. These are not victims of random violence.
And each of these times there's been a great hope that, okay,
the authorities have to acknowledge there's something going on here
which is connected, and a belief in the community that
(41:44):
although this is terrible, we must have hit rock bottom
after this, no more, this can't continue. We will find
the real culprits. And indeed, after each of the mass
graves were discovered, somebody took the fall. In nineteen ninety five,
it was an a chemist called Abdel Latif Sharif Sharif
who had self deported from the United States under threat
(42:06):
of being actually deported to Egypt, and had decided to
go and live in Juarez where he could continue working
for his US employer but not be subject to the
US law. And so he was a big partier in
downtown Huarez, and he had these rape charges against him
in the US. When the first mass grave of women
is discovered, he's taken in and declared as the serial killer.
Speaker 4 (42:28):
There's one problem.
Speaker 5 (42:29):
In nineteen ninety six, another mass grave of women is discovered,
so as briefly a bit of a concern for the authorities. Well,
how do we explain this? And what they come up
with is that a gang called the Rebels is being
paid by Sharif to murder women on his behalf in
order to attest his innocence, and that he's demanding their
(42:50):
underwear as evidence from his jail cell. This sounds pretty
preposterous and lurid, but I mean this was the official line.
Two thousand and one comes along, another mass grave is discovered.
A journalist to ask the Attorney General at a press
conference is it possible Sharif is behind these crimes as well?
And the Attorney General says it's something we're looking into.
(43:11):
That's not the line they end up going with. In fact,
two bus drivers take the fall this time. It turns
out they've been tortured with cattle prods, suffocation, beatings into
confessing to the crimes. And it's actually this scapegoating, this
third scapegoating that sets off this process where a lawyer
(43:33):
takes on their case.
Speaker 4 (43:36):
And through his investigation.
Speaker 5 (43:38):
We start to get some answers about what's really happening,
But it leaves another trail of death in its wake,
and not just of women.
Speaker 4 (43:45):
Of men as well.
Speaker 1 (43:48):
And while we are on the subject of mass graves,
one very important and I think profoundly disturbing thing here
is if we do not ultimately know.
Speaker 4 (44:04):
The group or the people.
Speaker 1 (44:06):
Responsible for these murders, and we do not ultimately know
their motive, that it means we also do not ultimately
know how many victims exist. And the pattern that you're
describing of finding mass graves and then you know, this
(44:27):
rush to find some I hesitate to say necessarily scapegoat
because Abdul Latif Sharif was a horrible person, clearly a
horrible person, but there's this pattern on law enforcements. Part
of Okay, we found a grave, let's find a way
(44:48):
to explain it. Oh, we found another grave. Let's find
a way to explain it. And what I think is,
you know, most troubling here and something that I feel
obligated to ask you about, is is it possible that
there are more mass grave sites out there that have
yet to be discovered? I mean, is is that like
(45:10):
within the realm of probability, is it within the realm
of plausibility? Or where does this leave us?
Speaker 5 (45:17):
I mean to the early part of your question about culpability. Actually,
there is a witness to these murders who tells an
American journalist called Alfredo Corcallo.
Speaker 4 (45:30):
What he's seen, why these women are being killed.
Speaker 5 (45:34):
And so we do get to that reveal in the podcast,
and that kind of sets off the second half of
the podcast. So there are some answers, but they're not
answers which the officials ever take seriously. In Huirez and
so your question is a very good one. Are there
more mass graves in the desert?
Speaker 4 (45:51):
Very likely?
Speaker 5 (45:52):
Yes, certainly, many many more bodies that were never found.
One of the most interesting things for me about this
reporting slightly adjacent to the story in two thousand and one,
After the mass grave is discovered, the authorities fail to
identify the victims before they declare the case is closed,
(46:15):
and so the families never have closure. They never really believe, Okay,
was this my daughter? Was not my daughter? So Gario Flores,
who we mentioned, she gets exhumed three times because there's
no clarity ever for the family on whether it's her.
Once the grave next to her is incorrectly exhumed and
(46:38):
a man's body is brought in for analysis.
Speaker 4 (46:40):
I mean, this is a.
Speaker 5 (46:41):
Level of either incompetence or corruption, which is quite quite staggering.
So a team called the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team come
in two thousand and one at the request of various activists.
They have experience in identifying bodies from the end of
the regime in Argentina when there were many mass graves
(47:03):
and many families looking for answers, and this woman, Mercedes Dorretti,
who's a MacArthur Genius grant holder, basically founded this team
of anthropologists to identify bodies. They go to Huaire's in
two thousand and one to try and finally, using DNA techniques,
answer who these eight women definitively in this grave are.
(47:24):
And as part of their work they start analyzing other bodies.
And what Mercedes Doretti told me was this is the
first time in her career that she would analyze bodies
and there would be no matches from the local area
of people who had missing persons in their family, so
she had to In the end, often the missing person
(47:46):
would be found in Huias, the body would be found
in Ahuires, but the family would be eight hundred miles
away because the person was a migrant. And of course
in the early two thousands in Huires. This was the
first time she'd ever seen that in her career, and
now it's common their bodies all along the US Mexico
border from Central America belonging to people from Central America
(48:07):
other places in the world whose family maybe thousands of
miles away.
Speaker 4 (48:11):
But this.
Speaker 5 (48:13):
That the technique of identifying bodies and matching them to
people a long way away began in Huarez because there
was so much migrant labor into the factory jobs, and
so that really has foreshadowed what's happening now on the
border with all of these tragic deaths and families who
don't get closure, who may live thousands of miles away.
Speaker 3 (48:33):
You know, we're talking about the lives of these women.
A lot of it is a gruesome end that their
lives met. But this show, I think is pretty firmly
set on the life lived by these women and what
they were going to survive for themselves and their families.
And in an early episode in the show, there's a
(48:58):
moment where I believe it's Sigaria's mother is talking about
when her daughter came home excited to tell her mom
that the company has taken out life insurance on her
and if anything happens to her, the family, you mom,
will will get money. The family will get a lot
of money if something happens to me. And you know
(49:23):
she's she and her father and her other siblings are
all working in this factory, and they're living in this
small town where their home was, you know, originally built
by the trash, like you said, from across the border,
and I believe it is five family members working in
this factory at that point. Just imagining that five of
(49:48):
your family members could be working at a factory and
you can still barely afford to live while you're making
goods that are going to be shipped across the borders.
It's a tough thing for me personally too to understand,
because of my privileged life that I live here in
the United States, and because of who I am and
what I look like. I wonder if these families have
(50:14):
you know, they obviously haven't been able to find full
closure because of everything you just talked about, Oz, but
I wonder if they're being taken care of in any
way by these companies that you know, maybe a lot
of these victims were a part of or by some
other groups, like what are what are there. What are
their lives like now, the families who have had such
(50:35):
loss in their lives.
Speaker 5 (50:37):
I'm sorry to say that they're difficult. They're very difficult.
Often that often the mothers become tireless advocates for for justice.
There's an amazing energy and passion in the protest movement
in Huaires led by mothers and and and indeed, you
(51:00):
know those demands for justice. Although they haven't always answered
individual questions, there is some sense of the power of
collective action, and conditions in the factories and in those
communities have improved under pressure from the mother's Paola Flora's
Sagaria's mother founded a kindergarten in their neighborhood so that
(51:23):
the local children could get more of an education. It's
called a Saguaria of Flora's Kindergarten, and so she told us,
it makes me happy that every child in the neighborhood
graduates with my daughter's name on their diploma. And it's
tempting to find a lot of solace in the individual's
struggle against their circumstances. But the reality is the conditions
(51:44):
are very poor. There still these factories which manufactured goods
that we will use continue to pay people less than
ten dollars a day, when the similar job on the
two miles away on the other side of the border
would bring in eight to ten dollars an hour, And
that in itself creates the conditions of vulnerability and violence.
(52:05):
And in fact, during the COVID crisis, the American ambassador
put great pressure on Mexico not to close the factories
the Meculadoras because they're creating things like blood pressure cuffs
and medical gloves and supplies. We needed to keep our
citizens safe during COVID, And of course there were outbreaks
(52:25):
and deaths which ravaged these factories, but the workers were
being told they have to keep coming to work. And
so people often say, other murders still going, and the
answer is, well, you know, the last mass grave of
women was discovered in twenty twelve, which is eight years ago.
But the people who work in these factories remain very
(52:47):
vulnerable and the conditions haven't improved very much. And in fact,
there's a second generation of women who were born in
Juarez and who are perhaps more politically conscious than their
parents were. There's one protest group called the Daughters of
the Maquilla Workers, and one of the young women who
was part of that protest group, and a local artist
called Isabelle Cabagnes de Latore. She was cycling through downtown
(53:10):
Juarez in January twenty twenty and she was shot in
the head and her murder is unsolved. And so this
place of vulnerability and gender violence, and you know, a
locus really of rapacious consumption. I mean refrigerator parts, steering wheels,
you know, medical gloves, their manufacturing huaires and of course
(53:33):
it's where cocaine and other drugs come through. So unfortunately
our consumption habits have a price, and often it's thousands
of miles away. But what makes Huairez so arresting as
a place is that you can see it from the
United States. You can see the consequences of certain choices
we make playing out within sight of where you stand.
(53:56):
And that's really coming back to the beginning of your
question about why going interest in this story. I think
it's a place where you can understand the consequences of
institutions and choices and borders in a very very very
very immediate way.
Speaker 2 (54:10):
No, it's a really really good point because people think about, oh,
if I choose to do cocaine, that's a personal choice.
If I choose to contribute to capitalism, that's a personal choice,
and that's not affecting anybody but me. It's something that
I'm doing. But no, it shows there are ripple effects
to the choices that we make, and this is part
(54:30):
of that. And I think you do a fantastic job
of I mean, it's not like a it's not a
political show, but it is a show about experience and
about the lives of the folks that are caught up
in these systems, and I think that's what makes it
all the more powerful.
Speaker 4 (54:43):
Yeah, definitely.
Speaker 5 (54:44):
But I also, I mean there's a big, you know,
ethical consumerism movement in the US, and I think that's
very valuable and important. But really these are like systems
and policy problems, not individual choice problems. I mean, of
course we can all be more at in our actions,
but a lot of the responsibility for you know, cartel violence,
(55:05):
the drug problems in Latin America, working conditions in huires
that they come from very conscious policy decisions, and one
of them interesting We had a very interesting interview with
a historian called Oscar Martinez who said, in the sixties,
and you know, there were factories in Singapore and Taiwan
doing the same thing which happens in Huaires, but the
(55:27):
wage increases in those places has have been multiples in Huaires,
they say the same. Why is that was because Mexico
is close to the United States, so the United States
can enforce intellectual property and patent infringements much more effectively,
and so the wealth creation of you know, basically what
we always get angry for China of doing of basically
(55:47):
manufacturing and then copying the ip that never happened in Mexico.
So there's this kind of poverty trap which comes with proximity,
which is very interesting as well.
Speaker 1 (55:55):
Yeah, and this is I mean, at this point we're
also talking about the power of systems, right, the power
of institutions, which which affect us profoundly. One one thing
that I don't want to lose in our conversation here
(56:18):
is the the concept of the news cycle. To Matt,
I believe earlier you would ask the question at some
point about what happens to these to the survivors, right,
the people left behind after these unspeakable tragedies, which I
(56:39):
don't think it's hyperbolic to call them that. After these tragedies, Uh,
what happens to the people who are still living their lives,
you know, after the news crew and the and the
cameras cut and the van drives away to the next story.
That's that's something that I think is profound and is
(57:07):
tremendously important us because we're talking a lot about things
that have developed in the nineteen nineties, in the early
two thousands. Right now, as I'm sure you're aware, many
of our listeners may not be aware, war as murders
(57:28):
and war as just overall are up forty two percent
in March over May. Without you know, I know, we're
interviewing you in the midst of forgotten women of war
as coming out and coming to the public eye, but
(57:48):
or the public ear, I should say, I guess, But
could you tell us a little bit about the current
state of war as applied to homicides, as applied to
this case ibe, what happened after all of the investigations
(58:10):
over the nineties, in.
Speaker 5 (58:11):
The two thousands, Well, so when Monica began reporting in Juarez,
she grew up in al Paso, but she began reporting
in Juarez on the drug war in two thousand and eight,
and this was that period when the Sinaloa cartel were
trying to move in on Juarez, and there was basically
a civil war and people were being butchered and left
(58:32):
in the most disgusting ways. And it was in that
context that Monica cut her teeth as a reporter in Juarez.
And the reporter who introduced me to Monica is called
Angela Cochega, and she told me very casually, she would
drive over the border to do a day of reporting,
come back to the US, arrive at Starbucks, take off
her shoes and abandon them because they were so soaked
(58:54):
in blood. And this idea of a war zone in
your backyard is just very, very hard to get your
head around. So eight twenty eleven, the drug violence was
at its absolute height, and homicides were, you know, in
the three and a half thousand a year, you know area.
After twenty eleven, things got a bit quieter. In twenty sixteen,
(59:15):
there was the Choir's tourist board. We're trying to sort
of encourage travel to Wires again because it was historically
a place where Americans, much like Havana and Cuba, went
to go and have fun, to go and drink and
bring when they're underage and you know, gamble and maybe
you know all things which are worse than that as well,
(59:36):
the sex trade. But the Quires was kind of rebuilding
its reputation and its tourism industry in twenty fifteen, twenty sixteen. Unfortunately,
the homicide rate is starting to approach, you know, the
three thousand number again based on monthly averages of two
(59:56):
hundred and fifty people being murdered now, and that's really
really frightening because it basically indicates that it's happening again.
Why it's happening is not clear, but generally when there
are power shifts in the cartels, for example, twenty sixteen
or twenty seventeen, L Chapo gets extradited to the US
(01:00:17):
and is now in ADX Florence Supermax in Colorado. He
was the most powerful cartel leader in Mexico and now
he's gone. And similar to what happened after the Iraq
War with the formation of ISIS, or when you disturb
the leadership of these organizations, it comes with splinter groups,
(01:00:37):
and splinter groups bring violence, and I think right now
there is a civil war in Huarez, which it doesn't
have the same spectacular violence as the two thousand and
eight twenty eleven period. But the numbers are approaching the
same height, and that's bad news for all vulnerable people.
Monica said that the last mass grave was discovered in
(01:00:57):
twenty twelve, and she would not be surprised if if
another one was discovered soon.
Speaker 1 (01:01:03):
And this is the again, as you said, Odds, this
is the modern day. We are recording this episode for
Peepe behind the Curtain here, folks. We're recording this episode
on June twelfth, twenty twenty. As at this point, I
(01:01:24):
believe that the best way for our listeners to understand
more of this story, to learn more about it, is
to honestly to stop our podcasts right now and to
head over to whatever their podcast platform of choice is
and check out Forgotten Women of Warres, which is available now.
(01:01:47):
We want to thank you profoundly for being so generous
with your time on our show here, but more importantly,
much more importantly for the time that you and Monica
have dedicated to bringing to shedding light on this because
it's I am attempting not to be emotional about this,
(01:02:10):
but it is it is reprehensible that these that this
is this is occurring. As you said, you know, at
the very beginning you said a tale of two cities.
It's it's offensive that this sort of mass homicide continued,
(01:02:30):
that it continues today, that it seems like the systems
that were created to vouchsafe people are broken have failed.
And on my end, I'm wondering what would you, if
you would recommend next steps? If you if you would,
(01:02:54):
if you, for instance, were able to dictate to law
enforcement in the community, what they should be doing about this,
about this ongoing horrific activity, what would you say?
Speaker 5 (01:03:11):
Well, firstly, thanks for your kind words about our time,
and I would like to emphasize my role in Forgotten
was to come in as the naive outsider and ask,
you know, framing questions and frankly obvious questions. You know,
why is this happening? What's going on? And Monica is
(01:03:32):
the person who's devoted years of her life and her
career and taken risks that I haven't, as our other
sources did, in particular Dinah Washington Valdez. And so what
makes me proudest about this project is to have used
it as a as a frame for their stories and
their reporting to reach a wide audience.
Speaker 4 (01:03:53):
And so that that's been.
Speaker 5 (01:03:56):
That, that's been you know something, I'm personally proud of
your second question about what can we do? I mean,
there was an American journalist who went to Huaires in
the nineties called Chuck Bowden, who called Huires a laboratory
of our future. And you're basically taking the women's murders
as a starting point, said, well, what happens when you
(01:04:17):
basically create a permanent underclass. What happens when law enforcement
aren't trusted by the community, What happens when there's state
sponsored violence against people who seek the truth? What happens
when journalists gets murdered? What happens when the imperatives of
profit are put above the imperatives of human life. And
(01:04:38):
that's not a conversation which is unique to Huaire's anymore.
That's a conversation we're having right now at the United States.
And Sandra Rodriguez Nieto, one of the editors at Eldario
and Huarez, said, Huires wasn't always like this, Like it's
always been a tough city. It's always been a gritty
border city. But thousands of unsolved murders every year, you know,
(01:05:00):
institutions are fragile and be careful in the US. Be careful,
don't fall asleep, because it can happen faster than you think.
And so you know, I don't want to overemphasize the
connection of this podcast to what's happening with the protest
movement in the United States right now. But when you
(01:05:20):
have injustice ongoing in justice, when you have lack of
trust between law enforcement and citizens, and when you have
a tax on independent judiciary and the media, you can
find yourself in a pretty hellish situation pretty quickly.
Speaker 3 (01:05:36):
Thank you for that, Oz, and then you thank you
for making the show with these amazing women who have
been working on this story for so long. Just prepare
yourself when you're listening to the show, because they are
tragic stories, but they are very important to hear.
Speaker 1 (01:05:55):
Agreed, one hundred percent. This concludes today's episode, But this
does not conclude our show, and it does not conclude
the story of the podcast Forgotten Women of War, as
we want to hear from you, We want your perspective.
As we often say, you are the most important part
(01:06:18):
of this show, specifically you, so write to us. You
can find us on Facebook, you can find us on Twitter,
you can find us on Instagram. We're frankly like many
people in too many places on the Internet nowadays. But
before you do any of that, check out this podcast.
(01:06:39):
It's available now wherever you find your favorite shows. As
we say, it's free to listen to. And this is
an important story that is has not and is not
receiving the attention and the analysis it deserves. And while
(01:07:03):
you were listening to that, if you have any thoughts,
if you have feedback, you want to talk to us,
but you hate social media, we of all people get it.
You can contact us a number of other ways. We
have a phone number.
Speaker 2 (01:07:18):
Yes, you can give us a call at one eight
three three std WYTK where you can leave messages for
us in audio form in three minute increments. I know
it's not ideal, but hey, if you need more time
than that, you just call back and then we'll stitch
them together for when we inevitably do another listener mail
episode where we field questions from you. You also might
(01:07:41):
be one of the lucky ones that gets a true
callback from Matt Frederick himself. I also would like to
start being a little more conscient just about participating that too.
But man, that talk about the Golden Ticket of conspiracy
listener mails that when you get that call from Matt,
wish you all the best of luck, because you will
(01:08:02):
definitely do it.
Speaker 3 (01:08:03):
If you don't want to do any of that stuff,
we still have one of those old fashioned emails. You
can email us.
Speaker 1 (01:08:08):
We are conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 3 (01:08:30):
Stuff they don't want you to know is a production
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Stuff They Don't Want You To Know News
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Matt Frederick
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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