June 15, 2020 • 38 mins
Episode 5 - Doubts about the bus drivers' guilt in the Cotton Field murders inspire two prominent lawyers to come to their defense. The lawyers question the police investigation and start to receive threats. Dante Almarez, the "Devil's Lawyer," is on a personal mission to uncover the truth of who is responsible for the murders of the women.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
During the month of April. Shop the buy one, get
one fifty percent off personal care sale happening now in
the health and beauty aisles. It's Safeway. Shop select products
like dub Deep Moisture Gel handwash. Trust them a rich
moisture shampoo with Vitamin E, Simple kind of Skin, facial
cleansing wipes, or in Nexus Color and shore Conditioner salon
haircare and get them buy one, get one fifty percent
(00:22):
off at Safeway. Visit Safeway dot com or head into
your local Safeway store for more great deals in the
health and beauty aisles. We just went to Ross and
found tons of savings on brand name clothes like Yeah,
at prices as low as Oh yeah, I'm trying to
tell them how they can save on versatile spring books
that go from days and nights. Oh sorry, I just
didn't know Ross had all these brands yes for less.
(00:45):
Hi there, I'm doctor John White, WebMD's chief medical officer
and host of the spotlight on series from our Health
Discovered podcast. In this special episode, we'll hear about living
a fulfilling life with chronic card failure, a condition that
dozen have to be as scary as it sounds. I
was outside shoveling snow, and I noticed I was coughing
(01:06):
up flem. Unbeknownst to me, I left a trail of
blood behind me, and I was one sign. Now. Of course,
prior to I was excessively gaining weight, I had issues breathing, sleep, apna,
I had a lot of those classic signs. My legs
were beginning to retain fluid, and I was having heart
palt patients. My heart would be really excessively fast and so.
(01:30):
But ultimately it was when that occurred that I thought
something was seriously wrong. Listen to Health Discovered on the
iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. Forgotten is
a production of iHeart Media and Unusual Productions Before we start.
(01:52):
This podcast contains accounts which some listeners will find disturbing,
but without them, the story can't be fully under stood.
Please take care while listening. Last time on Forgotten, I said,
what are those around circle marks? Burn marks? They said,
(02:13):
that's cattle Browde's boss. So forget those confessions. If you
see the file, the original file, there is not a
single evidence that connects the bus drivers to their crime.
I protected the file when I said to a Josh,
I quit I resigned. They were probably the first lawyers
to be so open about, you know, what they understood
(02:35):
about the femicides in Wais and they started to mention
that there were people getting away with murder, getting away
with murder, killing without consequences, impunity. It was two thousand
and one and eight women's bodies have been discovered in
(02:57):
a well traffic part of Wirez called the cotton Field.
Rather than pursuing a real investigation, authorities had apparently tortured
two bus drivers into confessing. They claimed that the men
abducted women will high on cocaine and marijuana, but as
commercial bus drivers, they were routinely tested for drugs and
(03:17):
they'd never failed. The police also alleged that the bus
drivers used a van to abduct the women, but there
was no evidence to connect the dead women to the van,
and in fact, the van didn't even work. This was
the third time a mass grave of women had been
discovered in Juarez, and the third time that scapegoats had
taken the fall. But who were the real killers and
(03:40):
how did they keep getting away with it? Those are
questions that continued to haunt Oscar Minez, the city's former
chief forensics officer. At they beginning, I thought it was
a typical case of a serial killer, but as more
evidence came in for me at Lisi, there was highly
organ to group acting on behalf of someone. So someone
(04:04):
would have dug, someone would retain the victim for a while,
and then someone would rape and kill and probably an
arguable disposal of the bodies. The thing is, the people
who did this, they have power to remain free to
not being investigated. So there's money and power behind these middles,
(04:24):
I believe. So, Oscar, if you had been allowed to
do your job to the end, do you think that
your team would have come up with enough evidence and
information that might have helped There were a lot of
lines of investigation that you could have developed if you
stuck to the case. But I mean, they don't care.
(04:45):
Poor women are disposable, so they decided to shut the
case to present this image of having a fishing police department.
Protecting the image of the police department is a more
charity table explanation for the scapegoating around the women's murders.
A more chilling explanation is that somebody was protecting the
(05:07):
identity of the true killers. But Olsco refused to participate
in the cover up. In fact, he tried to hamper
the state's case by refusing to plant evidence that connected
the bus drivers to the crimes. This kept alive the
possibility that the true killers could finally be exposed, especially
when some prominent lawyers picked up where Oscar left off,
(05:30):
defending the bus drivers and publicly alleging a miscarriage of justice.
I'm Ozvoloshi and I'm this is forgotten the women of
Guarrasa Felicia. The discovery of the mass grave at the
(06:21):
cotton field, followed by the scapegoating of the bus drivers,
ignited a spark around the world. The protest movement in
Juarez was already being led by mothers like Paula Flores
and activists like Esther Chawazcano, but this time it seemed
like real change might be possible. It was in this
context that some prominent lawyers decided to take on the
(06:42):
bus drivers as clients. So these two bus drivers have
given an improbable confession to eight murders. But Monica, how
do they end up being represented after that confession? So
eight bodies are discovered in the car field four days later,
(07:02):
the police parade these two innocent bus drivers before the press,
and a couple attorneys come out to be their defenders.
Mario Escobedo Junior had a law practice with his father,
Mario Escobedo Senior in downtown Houatis. Mario Junior was twenty
(07:26):
nine years old. He was born and raised in Huadis,
and he took on the bus drivers case pro bono,
and he told the Fort Worth Star Telegram that he
wanted the police to find the true killers because he
had two young daughters himself, ages seven and nine, just
like Diana, just like Oscar, just like the families, the
(07:51):
mothers and the wives of the bus drivers. They wanted
to expose the truth and put it dagger in the
lies they believed were being told by the people who
were supposed to protect them, the authorities. So they're stepping up.
How did they go about defending the bus drivers? What
(08:12):
was that case based on? Their case was largely based
off of these allegations and the evidence of torture present
on the bus drivers' bodies. After the bus drivers were
taken to jail, the warden organized a press conference for
these two suspects, and it was during that press conference
(08:33):
that the bus drivers lifted up their shirts and showed
the burn marks on their belly. And so these two
attorneys were very vocal in the press, both foreign and local,
about all these holes that they were punching in the
police's investigation into the cotton fields. Dinah Washington Valdez knew
(08:59):
the escabas we asked her what they were revealed about
who was really behind the murders. They were defending people
they had been scapegoaded by the authorities. They were very
efficient at their jobs. They were considered competent lawyers, and
they also had a lot of experience in defending police
officers who had been accused of irregularities and wrongdoing, so
(09:23):
they had a lot of connections with the police community.
In twitis, authorities may have felt like they could stonewall
the mothers and intimidate journalists, but now they had opponents
with real influence. This was the first instance in which
someone with credibility, you know, a lawyer who's pointing out
this investigation as irregular for these reasons. Images of the
(09:47):
tortured bus drivers circulated, but the authorities maintained that they
had not coesced the bus drivers that the burnmarks were
from the drivers' own cigarettes. The lawyers had their first challenge.
So all of these new kinds of side issues, like
coming to prove torture and then holding the police accountable
(10:08):
for that torture became thorn's in the sides of the authorities.
And that's when this whole story begins to take another
turn into the darkness. It was the evening of February fifth,
two thousand and two, almost exactly three months after the
bus drivers had been arrested. Mario Escobado Junior had left
(10:30):
the law office he shared with his father and was
driving in his pickup truck to meet a client when
he noticed something strange. Mdio became aware that he was
being followed. Mario drove faster and faster, hoping to lose
his tail, but he couldn't, so he did the only
thing he could think of. He called his father on
(10:53):
the cell phone and said to help me, help me,
and then he crashed crashed into a tree. All Mario's
sor had heard was the police for help and a
loud crash, so he feared the worst when he rushed
to the scene, and when he arrived, the police told
(11:14):
him that his son had died in a car accident.
Later they admitted to shooting him, but claimed a case
of mistaken identity. Then they changed the story again and
said Mario Junior had been shooting at them, so they
shot back. According to Diana, they even peppered a police
car with bullet holes after the fact to make it
(11:37):
look like they'd been a shootout. Well, you have to
call it a murder, because what else can it be.
According to witnesses, Imrio Scobro was driving. He was driving
this truck. He crashes the policeman, jumps in the back
of the pickup truck, breaks the window behind the driver's seat,
(11:57):
and then shoots him in the head. That's murder. Can
you tell us about the community response in Huades to
Mario's death and what the family did to call attention
to it. Mario Scobido's death is important for this reason.
It created terror in the community because it's like a
(12:20):
big warning to everybody. Back off. Everybody back off. The
families got scared for a while. Everybody got scared, but
they didn't stay scared for long. There was an outcry, yes,
you know. Mario Scobido's family knew or suspected that his
murder was committed by a state police officer. But beyond that,
(12:41):
the family suspected that this was a state authorized, state
ordered execution, okay, And so in order to drive that
point home, the family took his casket and placed it
in front of the Chihuahua State Attorney General's offices in Huadis.
It's sort of like a public display of I accuse
(13:01):
you of having killed my son, this young man. The
fact that a lawyer is murdered in such a public way,
or should we call an execution, indicates that we're talking
about something very big behind these murders. And that's frightening
because we're dealing with levels of power that beyond the
(13:23):
regular people in the community. It's a very big thing.
Within a year of Mario Escobado Junior's assassination, a newspaper
in Mexico City called La Ronala published an abstract of
Diana's book, The Killing Field Harvest of Women. It was
then that the pitch of threats against Diana reached boiling point.
(13:44):
My book was not written well, It was not a
literary effort. It was not the nest I felt. I
had a very short time in which to get it out,
and there were moments when I would pray, Oh God,
give me enough time, enough life to finish this, because
this may be all I ever can do for the
victims is to document what has happened to them. And
(14:08):
now I don't go over there. I can't go over there.
The US Consulate's office warming nut to step over, and
Diana's avoided tours since two thousand and three. When we
come back, we hear about the chain of events set
off by Mario Escobado Junior's assassination and how it led
to first hand testimony about what was happening to the women.
(14:35):
There's no sign of identity theft slowing down, and why
should it. More Than fourteen billion dollars were stolen from
identity theft victims last year alone. To cyber criminals, it's
a success story. To the rest of us, it's a
wake up call. Your personal info is in more places
now than ever, and all that exposure can make it
dangerously easy to steal your identity. LifeLock by Norton makes
(14:58):
it easy to help protect yourself by monitoring your identity
and alerting you to threats you could miss on your
own if you become a victim of identity theft. A
US based LifeLock restoration specialist will be dedicated to your
case and work to fix it. No one can prevent
all identity theft or monitor all transactions at all businesses,
but LifeLock by Norton makes it easy to help protect yourself.
(15:20):
Save up to twenty five percent off your first year
by going to LifeLock dot com slash iHeart. That's LifeLock
dot com slash iHeart for twenty five percent off during
the month of April. Shop the buy one, get one
fifty percent off personal care sale happening now in the
health and beauty aisles. It's Safeway. Shop select products like
Dove Deep Moisture Gel handwash. Trust them a rich moisture
(15:42):
shampoo with Vitamin E, Simple Kind of Skin, facial cleansing wipes,
or in Nexus Color and Shore Conditioner Salon haircare and
get them Buy one, get one fifty percent off at Safeway.
Visit Safeway dot com or head into your local Safeway
store for more great deals in the health and beauty aisles.
Digital currency is helping to form the base layer for
(16:02):
a new global commerce infrastructure, and stable coins like USDC
issued by Circle help to bring faster payments at Internet
scale from merchants at the point of sale to corporations
that want to pay global suppliers and even employees more efficiently.
Visit Circle dot com slash podcast to learn more. So
(16:35):
there's this sense of escalation here. First you have vulnerable
women being murdered and the authorities refusing to really help
in the investigations. Then you have scapegoats being pinned with
the crimes, tortured into confession, and then you have a
lawyer defending one of the scapegoats who gets assassinated. Monika
(17:00):
describe this assassination and the uprule that followed as a
turning point in the femicides. Up until this point, it
had just been threats. But here we have someone who's
pushing back against the official line, against the government investigation
who gets killed. Mario had recently announced that he was
(17:23):
going to file criminal charges against the state police for
kidnapping and torture of his client, and Mario Sor calls
his son's death a cowardly assassination at the hands of police.
He and fellow attorneys take his son's casket, carry it
(17:44):
over their shoulders straight to the front door of the
State Attorney General's office in wadis, and with this very
dramatic gesture, they accuse the state of outright murder. Just
the picture of this scene is enough to send shivers
(18:05):
down your spine. That gesture is symbolic of the accumulated
anger and frustration over a decade. It's not only the
women who are being murdered, but it's the people who
are coming to the women's defense who are being targeted.
(18:26):
What about the father, What kind of risks do you
think he was taking by leading this protests? The father
was taking on tremendous risks. He's so angry, he's so
lost in grief that he comes out publicly and tells
the killers, Hey, if you're going to go after anyone next,
come after me, but don't do it at my home.
(18:48):
Do it in my office. Leave the rest of my
family out of this. A few years later, a local
newspaper in watts uncovers that the state police commander who
shot Madyo Junior was appointed to an anti corruption unit
at the federal level in Mexico City. Well, talk about
(19:09):
impunity and Mario Junior. How much did his actions end
up helping the bus drivers? His actions did play a
major role in the bus drivers eventual exoneration, and so yeah,
maybe Madia traded his life for the life of somebody else.
He's become a very powerful symbol. He's allowed us to
(19:32):
have this conversation and to expose the depths of the
corruption behind his death and behind the investigation of these
women's murders. Rather than silencing the truth, the assassination of
Mario Escobado Junior in two thousand and two began to
knock down a series of dominoes that would ultimately expose
(19:54):
what was really happening to the women. After two thousand
and three, Dina Washington Vale has stayed away from Juarez,
but that very year, another journalist plunged into the story
at the deep end, Alfredo Corcillo, and through a series
of twists and turns driven by one person's desire for revenge,
(20:14):
Alfredo was introduced to a source with firsthand knowledge of
the killings. I was able to interview him. But so
this was the first time that I might talking to
someone face to face, and he's given me an account
and I witness account. So before we hear Mormonica, who
is Alfredo? So, Alfredo Corcillo is the correspondent for the
(20:39):
Dallas Morning News, based primarily in Mexico City and along
the US Mexico border. He also wrote a book called
Midnight in Mexico Today. Alfredo is a big shot reporter,
but he comes from very humble beginnings like Paula Flores.
His family is from the Mexican state of Durango. Alfredo's
(21:03):
family immigrated to the US, where he worked alongside his
parents picking vegetables in the San Joaquin Valley of California.
Then later they moved to al Paso. He enrolls in
the local community college where he takes up journalism. It
was an incredible laboratory because you're at student journalists, did
(21:24):
you feel like a foreign correspondent. You're literally criss crossing
the border. And he started reporting at this momentous time
on the border where there was growing resistance to a
longstanding one party rule in Mexico. This was a time
that you felt like the revolution was into aquadas. This
is where it was taken off. For seventy years, Mexico
(21:47):
was ruled by a single political party, so it was
very hard to enact change and reform, and so this
is why people were out protesting in the seventies and
in the eighties people would protest wearing white in silence,
holding candles down the main streets of waters. Alfredo talks
(22:08):
about his career being shaped by this coverage because he
believed that Mexico's salvation hinged on the democratization of Mexico.
He saw so much hope, You saw the possibility of change.
It's interesting to think of Fuaras at this place that's
(22:31):
been a crucible of protests for generations. We've had a
lot about powder Flores Its protest and the Mother's protest.
But long before that, there were these pro democracy protests
in horrors in the eighties, but then they didn't come
to fruition for a while. It wasn't until almost twenty
years later that PERCENTE. Fox became president. Yeah, there was
(22:54):
this historic election finally in the year two thousand and
it happens to coincide with the US presidential election of
George W. Bush, and these two presidents are supposed to
begin a new era of unprecedented friendship and cooperation between
the US and Mexico. We consider you a friend, garcias
(23:21):
amigo Presidente de Mexico. Sur recepion, Alfelo was sent to Washington,
d C. With the idea that he would follow and
cover the relationship between these two presidents. Then September eleventh
happens and all these dreams and promises come crashing down
(23:45):
because the US is no longer focused on Mexico. It's
focused on fighting a war on terror, and it's the
beginning of a new era of militarization of the border.
So Alfredo he sees his usefulness in Washington diminishing, and
he's looking for a way to get back into Mexico.
(24:07):
His editors eventually give him that opportunity I had. It
just came back finally, Exam, we'll send you back, but
can you go through the Ahuas? Can you spend some
time in El Paso? I kept thinking, No, I meant it,
eat my mother's food for a while and go back home. Sure.
The assignment was, can you find out who's killing the
(24:28):
women ahuadis? Why were so many women either missing or
kill or disappear. As a reporter, I mean it was
one of the most difficult story because, I mean everybody
had their own agenda, or their own theory, or their
own conspiracy. It was two thousand and three. Padrick Crawford
was FBI special agents in charge of El Paso and
(24:49):
had warned of an American serial killer. Oscar Minez was
sounding alarm about an organized group, and Diana had published
stories about the Echo Computer School. In the midst of this,
Alfredo was on his way back to the border in
search of definitive answers. I mean, it just started asking people,
you know, this was that, And I hooked up with
(25:12):
the reporters and quais, people who also cover the marches
many years before. Everybody kept telling me. Talked to a
stead Chavist. A stead Chavist was a known activist and
see alas human rights activists. This was a homecoming for Alfredo.
He was coming back to al Paso and Juarez, and
(25:35):
he was coming back to cover another protest movement. At
his very center was Esther Chavez Kana. A few years previously,
she'd help Paula Flora's break into that meeting with the
Attorney General to demand help finding Sagrario, and now Alfredo
was interviewing Esther. When I was doing an interview, it
was kind of funny because I feel like all these
(25:55):
questions I'm asking her how the thing questions she gets
asked every day I mean she had an answer for everything.
Bam bam bam. I kept asking you who's behind the
women and he kept telling me, Look, I'm not an investigator.
My job is really too sort of raise the profile
and try to shame Mexico into doing something. But she
finally said, if you really want to know the underbelly
(26:20):
of what you need to talk to. I mean, that
little phrase is kind of intriguing. You know, the Devil's lawyer,
Dantel Maras. When we come back, Alfrener tells us about
the difficulty of securing an interview with the so called
Devil's lawyer and the revelations that came when he finally did.
(26:46):
During the month of April, shot the buy one, get
one fifty percent off personal care sale happening now in
the health and beauty aisles. It's Safeway shops. Elect products
like Dove Deep Moisture, Gael hand Wash, Trust them a
rich moisture shampoo with Vitamin E, Simple kind of Skin,
facial cleansing wipes, or in Nexus Color in Shore Condition
or Salon haircare and get them buy one, get one
(27:07):
fifty percent off at Safeway. Visit safeway dot com or
head into your local Safeway store for more great deals
in the health and beauty aisles. Digital currency is helping
to form the base layer for a new global commerce infrastructure,
and stable coins like USDC issued by Circle help to
bring faster payments at Internet scale, from merchants at the
(27:29):
point of sale to corporations that want to pay global
suppliers and even employees more efficiently. Visit Circle dot com
slash podcast to learn more. Now, I'd like to introduce
you to Meaningful Beauty, the famed skincare brand created by
iconic supermodel Sidney Crawford. It's her secret to absolutely gorgeous skin.
(27:49):
Meaningful Beauty makes powerful and effective skincare simple, and it's
loved by millions of women. It's formulated for all ages
and all skin tones and types, and it's designed to
work as a complete skin care system, leaving your skin
feeling soft, smooth, and nourished. I recommend starting with Cindy's
Full Regiment, which contains all five of her best selling products,
including the amazing youth activating Melon Serum. This next generation
(28:12):
serum has the power of MELANIAF stem cell technology. It's
MELANIAF stem cells encapsulated for freshness and released onto the
skin to support a visible reduction in the appearance of wrinkles.
With thousands of glowing five star reviews, why not give
it a try. Subscribe today and you can get the
amazing Meaningful Beauty System for just forty nine ninety five
That includes our introductory five piece system, free gifts, free shipping,
(28:34):
and a sixty day money back guarantee. All of that
available at meaningful beauty dot com. It's not clear why
(28:55):
Estrakana hesitated to introduce Alfredo to Dante Amarras, the so
called Devil's lawyer, but it's possible there was out of
concern for his safety. Dante was a colleague and friend
at the Escarbados and was involved in the defense of
the bus drivers at the time Marriot Junior was assassinated,
but Dante also had a reputation of being a lawyer
(29:17):
for the Juires Underworld. I thought, okay, Dante can maybe
you know what the name like dantell Malas, you know,
maybe he does know what's going on. But I kept
calling and Colin, his daughter was always very polite and
she would say, my father was very busy, but he'll
get back to you at some point, and that's how
it began. I mean, just trying to read as much
(29:40):
as I could, try to interview as many officials, authorities,
reporters who cover this esther, victims, many mothers, and try
to piece it together, hopefully waiting for Dante to call back.
Others had warned you that Dante had a dubious reputation
as a reporter. That's often something you want to stay
(30:02):
away from, but yet you really wanted to interview him.
I mean, when Escratavis told me that this was a
guy I needed to talk to. I began by asking
other colleagues what do you know about Dante? And most
of them would say or stay away from him. He's bad,
his information is bad, he's dirty. But there was one
(30:22):
editor and he would actually walk from widest Ville Passo
we meet right in downtown a Passo because he felt
more comfortable on the uside. But he said, you should
totally talk to Dante. I said, well, what about all
these things? He says, that's why you need to talk
to Dante, because he's in the underworld. He knows everyone.
(30:44):
The very reason why journalists would normally have reservations about
someone like Dante made him the perfect source. For this story,
so afraid who keeps cooling? Finally, after three months of hounding,
Dante called me back and the Devil's lawyer tells Alfredo
Biensquirez tomorrow morning, Aten he'd give Alfredo the exact location
(31:09):
fifteen minutes before the meeting. Let's talk about Dante's backstory.
One of the more intriguing parts is that he represented
the other bus driver accused in the cotton Field murders.
He was actually friends with Mario Escobedo and his dad,
(31:30):
Maria scol Junior, was someone I knew. He was my
sister in law's cousin. Maria Scobel Senior told Dante what
had happened, and basically what had happened was the son.
He's calling his father and saying, hey, they're coming after me.
I think they want to kill me. He's begging the father,
you know, called the governor, called someone you know, interfeed,
(31:50):
but there was nothing Mario Escobeto's senior could do to
save his son, and this set Dante on the path
for revenge. The reasons why Dante got involves it was
his friends. The Escobelos and the Escobezo were really driven
by this because they felt that these two men, said
Io and La Foca, had been unjustly accused, and they
(32:12):
were forced into confession, and you have done there, you
know well now, as he put it to me later,
it wasn't about rule of law, It wasn't about democracy.
This was about getting either. For Dante, defending the bus
drivers was a way to honor his fallen friend, but
(32:34):
it was also a way to avenge him, because exposing
the truth of the scapegoating would obviously be very uncomfortable
to the people who killed Mario, the state police, and
in fact, Dante received threats that he would meet the
same fate as Mario, but he kept going anyway. He
went to court and MPR reports that he showed the
(32:55):
judge pictures of dried blood on the legs and bruises
around the groin where the electrodes had been attached to
the bus drivers. The judge looked at the photos and
responded that the light in the courtroom was too dim.
He couldn't see anything, so the state's case stood. In
(33:15):
this moment, Dante realized that his only path to justice
was outside the system. He had to expose the real
killers himself, and in Alfredo, he saw a means to
exact his revenge, but he was still going to make
the journalists work for the information. It takes a while
to get done there, to open up. It was like
(33:38):
little by little by little, and every time I felt
like I was about to leave and think, you know,
maybe my colleagues are right. This is just it's just
it's just going around and around in circles. And then
you began that trying to figure one on each other,
not revealing our secret I think, rent our stories, but
(34:00):
kind of trying to figure out, Okay, what are you
made of? What are you made of? That kind of stuff.
And then Dante starts to tell Alfredo this strange story
about a cicario, a hitman who had fallen foul of
his superiors in the cartel. He another group of people
have been accused of robbing drugs from the cartel. So
(34:22):
the cartel gave chase and shot a lot of these
guys because in the underworld, you don't rob from your superiors,
and if you rob, you know, you get the ultimate
because you're death. Except this young man didn't die. He
was found under this group of bodies, you know, hala
bodies who survived the shootout with cartels with people who
(34:46):
were there and say hey, you stole from us. The
young man made it back to Juarez and managed to
get in contact with Dante, who promised to protect him
in return for information. Dante, very smart, decided to hide
this guy in prison, tookment to prison under fast charges
(35:07):
under a different name. He had very good friends in quiet.
He would always leave me with the little titbit and
one of them was this guy's alive if you're interested.
Not only was he alive, but he claimed to know
(35:27):
exactly what was happening to the women, and Dante was
ready to set up the interview that's in our next episode.
I'm as Voloshin, See you next time, Ive Felicia Forgotten.
(36:27):
The Women of Juarez is co hosted by Me Monica
and me oswald Oshin. Forgotten is executive produced by Me
and mangesh Haartikula. Our producers are Julian Weller and Katrina Norvelle.
Sound editing by Julian Weller, Jacopo Penzo and Aaron Kaufman.
(36:48):
Lucas Riley is our story editor. Caitlin Thompson is our
consulting producer. Production support from Emily maronoff and Aaron Kaufman.
Our theme tune is the Each Other and simienthal As
performed by Natalie Lae. Music by Leonardo Heblum and Hakkabo Liebermann.
Additional music by Aaron Koffman. Special thanks to the reporting
(37:12):
of Karen Brooks and Scott Carrier, which contributed to this episode.
Imagine what your dog would tell you if they could talk.
More treats With Canine health Check, your dogs jeans can
speak to you. Canine health Check screens for over two
(37:35):
hundred and fifty genetic diseases and more. Just swab, send
the sample, and wait two weeks or less for results.
We offer genetic screening for dogs that has been developed
by expertly trained veterinarians and PhD geneticists, so you can
trust that your results are of the highest quality and accuracy.
Visit canine health check dot com and get thirty percent
off with code iHeart. I'm loving this cheap Caribbean dot
(37:59):
com vocation. Let's take a walk on the sand. Yes,
And I'm craving some jerk chicken. Yes, And I want
to go snort cling? Yes? And did you see those
pina coladas? I need one? Yes? And I went to Mohedo,
so you were better than one. Yes, and there's a
spot at the swim Up Bar with my name on it.
I get more food, more drinks, and more fun for
less money. Get a next level, all inclusive beach vacation
(38:21):
at Riu Hotels and Resorts. Book today at cheap Caribbean
dot com. And now the best man. I was going
to plan this speech out while I got my oil change,
but I went to take five and it was a
lot faster than I thought. So here he goes. Okay, Tim,
you were my first friend. Angela you were my first Yeah.
(38:44):
I never thought the two of you would make it,
But I guess love really is blind. No, no, no,
I mean in a good way. I take five. Your
oil change is faster than you think. Take five to
stay in your car. Ten minute oil change.
During the month of April. Shop the buy one, get
one fifty percent off personal care sale happening now in
the health and beauty aisles. It's Safeway. Shop select products
like dub Deep Moisture Gel handwash. Trust them a rich
moisture shampoo with Vitamin E, Simple kind of Skin, facial
cleansing wipes, or in Nexus Color and shore Conditioner salon
haircare and get them buy one, get one fifty percent
(00:22):
off at Safeway. Visit Safeway dot com or head into
your local Safeway store for more great deals in the
health and beauty aisles. We just went to Ross and
found tons of savings on brand name clothes like Yeah,
at prices as low as Oh yeah, I'm trying to
tell them how they can save on versatile spring books
that go from days and nights. Oh sorry, I just
didn't know Ross had all these brands yes for less.
(00:45):
Hi there, I'm doctor John White, WebMD's chief medical officer
and host of the spotlight on series from our Health
Discovered podcast. In this special episode, we'll hear about living
a fulfilling life with chronic card failure, a condition that
dozen have to be as scary as it sounds. I
was outside shoveling snow, and I noticed I was coughing
(01:06):
up flem. Unbeknownst to me, I left a trail of
blood behind me, and I was one sign. Now. Of course,
prior to I was excessively gaining weight, I had issues breathing, sleep, apna,
I had a lot of those classic signs. My legs
were beginning to retain fluid, and I was having heart
palt patients. My heart would be really excessively fast and so.
(01:30):
But ultimately it was when that occurred that I thought
something was seriously wrong. Listen to Health Discovered on the
iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. Forgotten is
a production of iHeart Media and Unusual Productions Before we start.
(01:52):
This podcast contains accounts which some listeners will find disturbing,
but without them, the story can't be fully under stood.
Please take care while listening. Last time on Forgotten, I said,
what are those around circle marks? Burn marks? They said,
(02:13):
that's cattle Browde's boss. So forget those confessions. If you
see the file, the original file, there is not a
single evidence that connects the bus drivers to their crime.
I protected the file when I said to a Josh,
I quit I resigned. They were probably the first lawyers
to be so open about, you know, what they understood
(02:35):
about the femicides in Wais and they started to mention
that there were people getting away with murder, getting away
with murder, killing without consequences, impunity. It was two thousand
and one and eight women's bodies have been discovered in
(02:57):
a well traffic part of Wirez called the cotton Field.
Rather than pursuing a real investigation, authorities had apparently tortured
two bus drivers into confessing. They claimed that the men
abducted women will high on cocaine and marijuana, but as
commercial bus drivers, they were routinely tested for drugs and
(03:17):
they'd never failed. The police also alleged that the bus
drivers used a van to abduct the women, but there
was no evidence to connect the dead women to the van,
and in fact, the van didn't even work. This was
the third time a mass grave of women had been
discovered in Juarez, and the third time that scapegoats had
taken the fall. But who were the real killers and
(03:40):
how did they keep getting away with it? Those are
questions that continued to haunt Oscar Minez, the city's former
chief forensics officer. At they beginning, I thought it was
a typical case of a serial killer, but as more
evidence came in for me at Lisi, there was highly
organ to group acting on behalf of someone. So someone
(04:04):
would have dug, someone would retain the victim for a while,
and then someone would rape and kill and probably an
arguable disposal of the bodies. The thing is, the people
who did this, they have power to remain free to
not being investigated. So there's money and power behind these middles,
(04:24):
I believe. So, Oscar, if you had been allowed to
do your job to the end, do you think that
your team would have come up with enough evidence and
information that might have helped There were a lot of
lines of investigation that you could have developed if you
stuck to the case. But I mean, they don't care.
(04:45):
Poor women are disposable, so they decided to shut the
case to present this image of having a fishing police department.
Protecting the image of the police department is a more
charity table explanation for the scapegoating around the women's murders.
A more chilling explanation is that somebody was protecting the
(05:07):
identity of the true killers. But Olsco refused to participate
in the cover up. In fact, he tried to hamper
the state's case by refusing to plant evidence that connected
the bus drivers to the crimes. This kept alive the
possibility that the true killers could finally be exposed, especially
when some prominent lawyers picked up where Oscar left off,
(05:30):
defending the bus drivers and publicly alleging a miscarriage of justice.
I'm Ozvoloshi and I'm this is forgotten the women of
Guarrasa Felicia. The discovery of the mass grave at the
(06:21):
cotton field, followed by the scapegoating of the bus drivers,
ignited a spark around the world. The protest movement in
Juarez was already being led by mothers like Paula Flores
and activists like Esther Chawazcano, but this time it seemed
like real change might be possible. It was in this
context that some prominent lawyers decided to take on the
(06:42):
bus drivers as clients. So these two bus drivers have
given an improbable confession to eight murders. But Monica, how
do they end up being represented after that confession? So
eight bodies are discovered in the car field four days later,
(07:02):
the police parade these two innocent bus drivers before the press,
and a couple attorneys come out to be their defenders.
Mario Escobedo Junior had a law practice with his father,
Mario Escobedo Senior in downtown Houatis. Mario Junior was twenty
(07:26):
nine years old. He was born and raised in Huadis,
and he took on the bus drivers case pro bono,
and he told the Fort Worth Star Telegram that he
wanted the police to find the true killers because he
had two young daughters himself, ages seven and nine, just
like Diana, just like Oscar, just like the families, the
(07:51):
mothers and the wives of the bus drivers. They wanted
to expose the truth and put it dagger in the
lies they believed were being told by the people who
were supposed to protect them, the authorities. So they're stepping up.
How did they go about defending the bus drivers? What
(08:12):
was that case based on? Their case was largely based
off of these allegations and the evidence of torture present
on the bus drivers' bodies. After the bus drivers were
taken to jail, the warden organized a press conference for
these two suspects, and it was during that press conference
(08:33):
that the bus drivers lifted up their shirts and showed
the burn marks on their belly. And so these two
attorneys were very vocal in the press, both foreign and local,
about all these holes that they were punching in the
police's investigation into the cotton fields. Dinah Washington Valdez knew
(08:59):
the escabas we asked her what they were revealed about
who was really behind the murders. They were defending people
they had been scapegoaded by the authorities. They were very
efficient at their jobs. They were considered competent lawyers, and
they also had a lot of experience in defending police
officers who had been accused of irregularities and wrongdoing, so
(09:23):
they had a lot of connections with the police community.
In twitis, authorities may have felt like they could stonewall
the mothers and intimidate journalists, but now they had opponents
with real influence. This was the first instance in which
someone with credibility, you know, a lawyer who's pointing out
this investigation as irregular for these reasons. Images of the
(09:47):
tortured bus drivers circulated, but the authorities maintained that they
had not coesced the bus drivers that the burnmarks were
from the drivers' own cigarettes. The lawyers had their first challenge.
So all of these new kinds of side issues, like
coming to prove torture and then holding the police accountable
(10:08):
for that torture became thorn's in the sides of the authorities.
And that's when this whole story begins to take another
turn into the darkness. It was the evening of February fifth,
two thousand and two, almost exactly three months after the
bus drivers had been arrested. Mario Escobado Junior had left
(10:30):
the law office he shared with his father and was
driving in his pickup truck to meet a client when
he noticed something strange. Mdio became aware that he was
being followed. Mario drove faster and faster, hoping to lose
his tail, but he couldn't, so he did the only
thing he could think of. He called his father on
(10:53):
the cell phone and said to help me, help me,
and then he crashed crashed into a tree. All Mario's
sor had heard was the police for help and a
loud crash, so he feared the worst when he rushed
to the scene, and when he arrived, the police told
(11:14):
him that his son had died in a car accident.
Later they admitted to shooting him, but claimed a case
of mistaken identity. Then they changed the story again and
said Mario Junior had been shooting at them, so they
shot back. According to Diana, they even peppered a police
car with bullet holes after the fact to make it
(11:37):
look like they'd been a shootout. Well, you have to
call it a murder, because what else can it be.
According to witnesses, Imrio Scobro was driving. He was driving
this truck. He crashes the policeman, jumps in the back
of the pickup truck, breaks the window behind the driver's seat,
(11:57):
and then shoots him in the head. That's murder. Can
you tell us about the community response in Huades to
Mario's death and what the family did to call attention
to it. Mario Scobido's death is important for this reason.
It created terror in the community because it's like a
(12:20):
big warning to everybody. Back off. Everybody back off. The
families got scared for a while. Everybody got scared, but
they didn't stay scared for long. There was an outcry, yes,
you know. Mario Scobido's family knew or suspected that his
murder was committed by a state police officer. But beyond that,
(12:41):
the family suspected that this was a state authorized, state
ordered execution, okay, And so in order to drive that
point home, the family took his casket and placed it
in front of the Chihuahua State Attorney General's offices in Huadis.
It's sort of like a public display of I accuse
(13:01):
you of having killed my son, this young man. The
fact that a lawyer is murdered in such a public way,
or should we call an execution, indicates that we're talking
about something very big behind these murders. And that's frightening
because we're dealing with levels of power that beyond the
(13:23):
regular people in the community. It's a very big thing.
Within a year of Mario Escobado Junior's assassination, a newspaper
in Mexico City called La Ronala published an abstract of
Diana's book, The Killing Field Harvest of Women. It was
then that the pitch of threats against Diana reached boiling point.
(13:44):
My book was not written well, It was not a
literary effort. It was not the nest I felt. I
had a very short time in which to get it out,
and there were moments when I would pray, Oh God,
give me enough time, enough life to finish this, because
this may be all I ever can do for the
victims is to document what has happened to them. And
(14:08):
now I don't go over there. I can't go over there.
The US Consulate's office warming nut to step over, and
Diana's avoided tours since two thousand and three. When we
come back, we hear about the chain of events set
off by Mario Escobado Junior's assassination and how it led
to first hand testimony about what was happening to the women.
(14:35):
There's no sign of identity theft slowing down, and why
should it. More Than fourteen billion dollars were stolen from
identity theft victims last year alone. To cyber criminals, it's
a success story. To the rest of us, it's a
wake up call. Your personal info is in more places
now than ever, and all that exposure can make it
dangerously easy to steal your identity. LifeLock by Norton makes
(14:58):
it easy to help protect yourself by monitoring your identity
and alerting you to threats you could miss on your
own if you become a victim of identity theft. A
US based LifeLock restoration specialist will be dedicated to your
case and work to fix it. No one can prevent
all identity theft or monitor all transactions at all businesses,
but LifeLock by Norton makes it easy to help protect yourself.
(15:20):
Save up to twenty five percent off your first year
by going to LifeLock dot com slash iHeart. That's LifeLock
dot com slash iHeart for twenty five percent off during
the month of April. Shop the buy one, get one
fifty percent off personal care sale happening now in the
health and beauty aisles. It's Safeway. Shop select products like
Dove Deep Moisture Gel handwash. Trust them a rich moisture
(15:42):
shampoo with Vitamin E, Simple Kind of Skin, facial cleansing wipes,
or in Nexus Color and Shore Conditioner Salon haircare and
get them Buy one, get one fifty percent off at Safeway.
Visit Safeway dot com or head into your local Safeway
store for more great deals in the health and beauty aisles.
Digital currency is helping to form the base layer for
(16:02):
a new global commerce infrastructure, and stable coins like USDC
issued by Circle help to bring faster payments at Internet
scale from merchants at the point of sale to corporations
that want to pay global suppliers and even employees more efficiently.
Visit Circle dot com slash podcast to learn more. So
(16:35):
there's this sense of escalation here. First you have vulnerable
women being murdered and the authorities refusing to really help
in the investigations. Then you have scapegoats being pinned with
the crimes, tortured into confession, and then you have a
lawyer defending one of the scapegoats who gets assassinated. Monika
(17:00):
describe this assassination and the uprule that followed as a
turning point in the femicides. Up until this point, it
had just been threats. But here we have someone who's
pushing back against the official line, against the government investigation
who gets killed. Mario had recently announced that he was
(17:23):
going to file criminal charges against the state police for
kidnapping and torture of his client, and Mario Sor calls
his son's death a cowardly assassination at the hands of police.
He and fellow attorneys take his son's casket, carry it
(17:44):
over their shoulders straight to the front door of the
State Attorney General's office in wadis, and with this very
dramatic gesture, they accuse the state of outright murder. Just
the picture of this scene is enough to send shivers
(18:05):
down your spine. That gesture is symbolic of the accumulated
anger and frustration over a decade. It's not only the
women who are being murdered, but it's the people who
are coming to the women's defense who are being targeted.
(18:26):
What about the father, What kind of risks do you
think he was taking by leading this protests? The father
was taking on tremendous risks. He's so angry, he's so
lost in grief that he comes out publicly and tells
the killers, Hey, if you're going to go after anyone next,
come after me, but don't do it at my home.
(18:48):
Do it in my office. Leave the rest of my
family out of this. A few years later, a local
newspaper in watts uncovers that the state police commander who
shot Madyo Junior was appointed to an anti corruption unit
at the federal level in Mexico City. Well, talk about
(19:09):
impunity and Mario Junior. How much did his actions end
up helping the bus drivers? His actions did play a
major role in the bus drivers eventual exoneration, and so yeah,
maybe Madia traded his life for the life of somebody else.
He's become a very powerful symbol. He's allowed us to
(19:32):
have this conversation and to expose the depths of the
corruption behind his death and behind the investigation of these
women's murders. Rather than silencing the truth, the assassination of
Mario Escobado Junior in two thousand and two began to
knock down a series of dominoes that would ultimately expose
(19:54):
what was really happening to the women. After two thousand
and three, Dina Washington Vale has stayed away from Juarez,
but that very year, another journalist plunged into the story
at the deep end, Alfredo Corcillo, and through a series
of twists and turns driven by one person's desire for revenge,
(20:14):
Alfredo was introduced to a source with firsthand knowledge of
the killings. I was able to interview him. But so
this was the first time that I might talking to
someone face to face, and he's given me an account
and I witness account. So before we hear Mormonica, who
is Alfredo? So, Alfredo Corcillo is the correspondent for the
(20:39):
Dallas Morning News, based primarily in Mexico City and along
the US Mexico border. He also wrote a book called
Midnight in Mexico Today. Alfredo is a big shot reporter,
but he comes from very humble beginnings like Paula Flores.
His family is from the Mexican state of Durango. Alfredo's
(21:03):
family immigrated to the US, where he worked alongside his
parents picking vegetables in the San Joaquin Valley of California.
Then later they moved to al Paso. He enrolls in
the local community college where he takes up journalism. It
was an incredible laboratory because you're at student journalists, did
(21:24):
you feel like a foreign correspondent. You're literally criss crossing
the border. And he started reporting at this momentous time
on the border where there was growing resistance to a
longstanding one party rule in Mexico. This was a time
that you felt like the revolution was into aquadas. This
is where it was taken off. For seventy years, Mexico
(21:47):
was ruled by a single political party, so it was
very hard to enact change and reform, and so this
is why people were out protesting in the seventies and
in the eighties people would protest wearing white in silence,
holding candles down the main streets of waters. Alfredo talks
(22:08):
about his career being shaped by this coverage because he
believed that Mexico's salvation hinged on the democratization of Mexico.
He saw so much hope, You saw the possibility of change.
It's interesting to think of Fuaras at this place that's
(22:31):
been a crucible of protests for generations. We've had a
lot about powder Flores Its protest and the Mother's protest.
But long before that, there were these pro democracy protests
in horrors in the eighties, but then they didn't come
to fruition for a while. It wasn't until almost twenty
years later that PERCENTE. Fox became president. Yeah, there was
(22:54):
this historic election finally in the year two thousand and
it happens to coincide with the US presidential election of
George W. Bush, and these two presidents are supposed to
begin a new era of unprecedented friendship and cooperation between
the US and Mexico. We consider you a friend, garcias
(23:21):
amigo Presidente de Mexico. Sur recepion, Alfelo was sent to Washington,
d C. With the idea that he would follow and
cover the relationship between these two presidents. Then September eleventh
happens and all these dreams and promises come crashing down
(23:45):
because the US is no longer focused on Mexico. It's
focused on fighting a war on terror, and it's the
beginning of a new era of militarization of the border.
So Alfredo he sees his usefulness in Washington diminishing, and
he's looking for a way to get back into Mexico.
(24:07):
His editors eventually give him that opportunity I had. It
just came back finally, Exam, we'll send you back, but
can you go through the Ahuas? Can you spend some
time in El Paso? I kept thinking, No, I meant it,
eat my mother's food for a while and go back home. Sure.
The assignment was, can you find out who's killing the
(24:28):
women ahuadis? Why were so many women either missing or
kill or disappear. As a reporter, I mean it was
one of the most difficult story because, I mean everybody
had their own agenda, or their own theory, or their
own conspiracy. It was two thousand and three. Padrick Crawford
was FBI special agents in charge of El Paso and
(24:49):
had warned of an American serial killer. Oscar Minez was
sounding alarm about an organized group, and Diana had published
stories about the Echo Computer School. In the midst of this,
Alfredo was on his way back to the border in
search of definitive answers. I mean, it just started asking people,
you know, this was that, And I hooked up with
(25:12):
the reporters and quais, people who also cover the marches
many years before. Everybody kept telling me. Talked to a
stead Chavist. A stead Chavist was a known activist and
see alas human rights activists. This was a homecoming for Alfredo.
He was coming back to al Paso and Juarez, and
(25:35):
he was coming back to cover another protest movement. At
his very center was Esther Chavez Kana. A few years previously,
she'd help Paula Flora's break into that meeting with the
Attorney General to demand help finding Sagrario, and now Alfredo
was interviewing Esther. When I was doing an interview, it
was kind of funny because I feel like all these
(25:55):
questions I'm asking her how the thing questions she gets
asked every day I mean she had an answer for everything.
Bam bam bam. I kept asking you who's behind the
women and he kept telling me, Look, I'm not an investigator.
My job is really too sort of raise the profile
and try to shame Mexico into doing something. But she
finally said, if you really want to know the underbelly
(26:20):
of what you need to talk to. I mean, that
little phrase is kind of intriguing. You know, the Devil's lawyer,
Dantel Maras. When we come back, Alfrener tells us about
the difficulty of securing an interview with the so called
Devil's lawyer and the revelations that came when he finally did.
(26:46):
During the month of April, shot the buy one, get
one fifty percent off personal care sale happening now in
the health and beauty aisles. It's Safeway shops. Elect products
like Dove Deep Moisture, Gael hand Wash, Trust them a
rich moisture shampoo with Vitamin E, Simple kind of Skin,
facial cleansing wipes, or in Nexus Color in Shore Condition
or Salon haircare and get them buy one, get one
(27:07):
fifty percent off at Safeway. Visit safeway dot com or
head into your local Safeway store for more great deals
in the health and beauty aisles. Digital currency is helping
to form the base layer for a new global commerce infrastructure,
and stable coins like USDC issued by Circle help to
bring faster payments at Internet scale, from merchants at the
(27:29):
point of sale to corporations that want to pay global
suppliers and even employees more efficiently. Visit Circle dot com
slash podcast to learn more. Now, I'd like to introduce
you to Meaningful Beauty, the famed skincare brand created by
iconic supermodel Sidney Crawford. It's her secret to absolutely gorgeous skin.
(27:49):
Meaningful Beauty makes powerful and effective skincare simple, and it's
loved by millions of women. It's formulated for all ages
and all skin tones and types, and it's designed to
work as a complete skin care system, leaving your skin
feeling soft, smooth, and nourished. I recommend starting with Cindy's
Full Regiment, which contains all five of her best selling products,
including the amazing youth activating Melon Serum. This next generation
(28:12):
serum has the power of MELANIAF stem cell technology. It's
MELANIAF stem cells encapsulated for freshness and released onto the
skin to support a visible reduction in the appearance of wrinkles.
With thousands of glowing five star reviews, why not give
it a try. Subscribe today and you can get the
amazing Meaningful Beauty System for just forty nine ninety five
That includes our introductory five piece system, free gifts, free shipping,
(28:34):
and a sixty day money back guarantee. All of that
available at meaningful beauty dot com. It's not clear why
(28:55):
Estrakana hesitated to introduce Alfredo to Dante Amarras, the so
called Devil's lawyer, but it's possible there was out of
concern for his safety. Dante was a colleague and friend
at the Escarbados and was involved in the defense of
the bus drivers at the time Marriot Junior was assassinated,
but Dante also had a reputation of being a lawyer
(29:17):
for the Juires Underworld. I thought, okay, Dante can maybe
you know what the name like dantell Malas, you know,
maybe he does know what's going on. But I kept
calling and Colin, his daughter was always very polite and
she would say, my father was very busy, but he'll
get back to you at some point, and that's how
it began. I mean, just trying to read as much
(29:40):
as I could, try to interview as many officials, authorities,
reporters who cover this esther, victims, many mothers, and try
to piece it together, hopefully waiting for Dante to call back.
Others had warned you that Dante had a dubious reputation
as a reporter. That's often something you want to stay
(30:02):
away from, but yet you really wanted to interview him.
I mean, when Escratavis told me that this was a
guy I needed to talk to. I began by asking
other colleagues what do you know about Dante? And most
of them would say or stay away from him. He's bad,
his information is bad, he's dirty. But there was one
(30:22):
editor and he would actually walk from widest Ville Passo
we meet right in downtown a Passo because he felt
more comfortable on the uside. But he said, you should
totally talk to Dante. I said, well, what about all
these things? He says, that's why you need to talk
to Dante, because he's in the underworld. He knows everyone.
(30:44):
The very reason why journalists would normally have reservations about
someone like Dante made him the perfect source. For this story,
so afraid who keeps cooling? Finally, after three months of hounding,
Dante called me back and the Devil's lawyer tells Alfredo
Biensquirez tomorrow morning, Aten he'd give Alfredo the exact location
(31:09):
fifteen minutes before the meeting. Let's talk about Dante's backstory.
One of the more intriguing parts is that he represented
the other bus driver accused in the cotton Field murders.
He was actually friends with Mario Escobedo and his dad,
(31:30):
Maria scol Junior, was someone I knew. He was my
sister in law's cousin. Maria Scobel Senior told Dante what
had happened, and basically what had happened was the son.
He's calling his father and saying, hey, they're coming after me.
I think they want to kill me. He's begging the father,
you know, called the governor, called someone you know, interfeed,
(31:50):
but there was nothing Mario Escobeto's senior could do to
save his son, and this set Dante on the path
for revenge. The reasons why Dante got involves it was
his friends. The Escobelos and the Escobezo were really driven
by this because they felt that these two men, said
Io and La Foca, had been unjustly accused, and they
(32:12):
were forced into confession, and you have done there, you
know well now, as he put it to me later,
it wasn't about rule of law, It wasn't about democracy.
This was about getting either. For Dante, defending the bus
drivers was a way to honor his fallen friend, but
(32:34):
it was also a way to avenge him, because exposing
the truth of the scapegoating would obviously be very uncomfortable
to the people who killed Mario, the state police, and
in fact, Dante received threats that he would meet the
same fate as Mario, but he kept going anyway. He
went to court and MPR reports that he showed the
(32:55):
judge pictures of dried blood on the legs and bruises
around the groin where the electrodes had been attached to
the bus drivers. The judge looked at the photos and
responded that the light in the courtroom was too dim.
He couldn't see anything, so the state's case stood. In
(33:15):
this moment, Dante realized that his only path to justice
was outside the system. He had to expose the real
killers himself, and in Alfredo, he saw a means to
exact his revenge, but he was still going to make
the journalists work for the information. It takes a while
to get done there, to open up. It was like
(33:38):
little by little by little, and every time I felt
like I was about to leave and think, you know,
maybe my colleagues are right. This is just it's just
it's just going around and around in circles. And then
you began that trying to figure one on each other,
not revealing our secret I think, rent our stories, but
(34:00):
kind of trying to figure out, Okay, what are you
made of? What are you made of? That kind of stuff.
And then Dante starts to tell Alfredo this strange story
about a cicario, a hitman who had fallen foul of
his superiors in the cartel. He another group of people
have been accused of robbing drugs from the cartel. So
(34:22):
the cartel gave chase and shot a lot of these
guys because in the underworld, you don't rob from your superiors,
and if you rob, you know, you get the ultimate
because you're death. Except this young man didn't die. He
was found under this group of bodies, you know, hala
bodies who survived the shootout with cartels with people who
(34:46):
were there and say hey, you stole from us. The
young man made it back to Juarez and managed to
get in contact with Dante, who promised to protect him
in return for information. Dante, very smart, decided to hide
this guy in prison, tookment to prison under fast charges
(35:07):
under a different name. He had very good friends in quiet.
He would always leave me with the little titbit and
one of them was this guy's alive if you're interested.
Not only was he alive, but he claimed to know
(35:27):
exactly what was happening to the women, and Dante was
ready to set up the interview that's in our next episode.
I'm as Voloshin, See you next time, Ive Felicia Forgotten.
(36:27):
The Women of Juarez is co hosted by Me Monica
and me oswald Oshin. Forgotten is executive produced by Me
and mangesh Haartikula. Our producers are Julian Weller and Katrina Norvelle.
Sound editing by Julian Weller, Jacopo Penzo and Aaron Kaufman.
(36:48):
Lucas Riley is our story editor. Caitlin Thompson is our
consulting producer. Production support from Emily maronoff and Aaron Kaufman.
Our theme tune is the Each Other and simienthal As
performed by Natalie Lae. Music by Leonardo Heblum and Hakkabo Liebermann.
Additional music by Aaron Koffman. Special thanks to the reporting
(37:12):
of Karen Brooks and Scott Carrier, which contributed to this episode.
Imagine what your dog would tell you if they could talk.
More treats With Canine health Check, your dogs jeans can
speak to you. Canine health Check screens for over two
(37:35):
hundred and fifty genetic diseases and more. Just swab, send
the sample, and wait two weeks or less for results.
We offer genetic screening for dogs that has been developed
by expertly trained veterinarians and PhD geneticists, so you can
trust that your results are of the highest quality and accuracy.
Visit canine health check dot com and get thirty percent
off with code iHeart. I'm loving this cheap Caribbean dot
(37:59):
com vocation. Let's take a walk on the sand. Yes,
And I'm craving some jerk chicken. Yes, And I want
to go snort cling? Yes? And did you see those
pina coladas? I need one? Yes? And I went to Mohedo,
so you were better than one. Yes, and there's a
spot at the swim Up Bar with my name on it.
I get more food, more drinks, and more fun for
less money. Get a next level, all inclusive beach vacation
(38:21):
at Riu Hotels and Resorts. Book today at cheap Caribbean
dot com. And now the best man. I was going
to plan this speech out while I got my oil change,
but I went to take five and it was a
lot faster than I thought. So here he goes. Okay, Tim,
you were my first friend. Angela you were my first Yeah.
(38:44):
I never thought the two of you would make it,
But I guess love really is blind. No, no, no,
I mean in a good way. I take five. Your
oil change is faster than you think. Take five to
stay in your car. Ten minute oil change.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.