June 1, 2020 • 47 mins
Episode 1 - For the last three decades, women have gone missing in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, right across the border from El Paso, Texas. Some are found later, bearing the telltale signs of a serial killer. Hosts Oz Woloshyn and Mónica Ortiz Uribe begin their investigation into who could be responsible for these horrific crimes. We speak with the FBI’s former top agent on the border, as well as the journalist who’s gone the farthest in investigating the killings, Diana Washington Valdez. And we visit the family of Sagrario González Flores, whose murder remains unsolved.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
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the spotlight on series from our Health Discovered podcast. In
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I was excessively gaining weight, I had issues breathing, sleep apnea,
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But ultimately it was when that occurred that I thought
(01:47):
something was seriously wrong. Listen to Health Discovered on the
iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. Forgotten is
a production of iHeartMedia and Unusual Productions. Before we start.
This podcast contains accounts which some listeners will find disturbing,
(02:12):
but without them, this story can't be fully understood. Please
take care while listening. A couple of years ago, I
went to El Paso, Texas, because I was making a
documentary about the US Mexico border. While I was there,
(02:34):
I asked one of the producers a question. I said,
if you could tell any story about this place, what
would it be. He told me that right across the
border from where we stood, there were young women who
worked in American owned factories in the Mexican city of
Silt Wires, and they were being killed with horrific brutality.
(02:57):
The victims were often found half naked, dumped in the desert,
someone found in mass graves with strange symbols left on
their bodies. The producer told me there were all kinds
of theories about what was happening to the women, but
that no one knew for sure. So I asked him
if I could interview him on the record. When he
(03:19):
thought about it and said no, it was too dangerous.
But others did speak, and it became clear that the deaths,
the disappearances of these women, they aren't random. They seem
to follow a pattern. You'd have women or girls even
fifteen seventeen, nineteen, and they have a similar look. They're
(03:42):
slem art In darker you know, which suggests they may
have been selected. All from poor families, all from mostly
poor neighborhoods. They hold the same types of jobs, usually
students factory workers, and commute regularly alone on public buses
through downtown Juarez, and then they're never seen again, at
(04:08):
least not alive. I quickly realized I'd never be able
to understand the depth and complexity of this story without
a partner. I asked a friend if they knew anyone
who might be prepared to work with me. It turned
out they knew the perfect person. In the first three
weeks of twenty twenty, there have been more murders in
(04:30):
Quaddas than days in the new year, when a crush
of Central American families has overwhelmed officials at the southern border.
We're going down to the basement where other migrants are
hanging out at this hotel. There's a horrific history of
violence against women insou thou Quads. In the last three decades,
hundreds of women have been brutally murdered here. Many of
(04:52):
their cases remain unsolved. And that's how I first got
to know my co host, Monica, a reporter from El Paso,
a regular voice on public radio and an authority on
the region. Together will explore who is responsible for the
deaths of so many women in Juarez and why the
(05:14):
crimes have remained unsold for decades. I'm as Volosha and
I'm Monica. This is forgotten the women in Juarezcano param
(05:35):
non siste la felicia. I've always been fascinated by borders,
(06:04):
and something about El Paso called to me long before
I ever went there. It was this city of several
hundred thousand people in the desert, surrounded by mountains whose
name literally means the pass right across the dry bed
of the Rio Grand River, separated by a twenty foot
metal fence, is El Paso's twin city, sued at Juarez.
(06:30):
When you drive along the highway in El Paso, the
barrier becomes a brown blur of rusted metal, but if
you stop and look, you can see right through the slats.
In Uarez, there's a cathedral originally built by Spanish colonialists.
There's the Kentucky Club, a bar that claims to have
invented the margharita and that traces its name to the
(06:52):
city's history of whiskey distilling and smuggling during prohibition. There
are huge, colorful murals celebrating local legends like the musician
Juan Gabriel. And for all the things you read about
the cartel violence, the desert landscape has a stark beauty,
and Juarez is chaotic and bustling, a city of over
(07:14):
a million people and a city of dreams. People come
here to find education, to find work. I had come
here because I wanted to know what living on this
divide meant. But then I heard about the women. Young
women who have been going missing and turning up dead
since the nineteen nineties, often dumped in the desert. At first,
(07:39):
the authorities tried to claim the murders were random and individual,
but then in nineteen ninety five, the first mass grave
was discovered in a place called Lotte Bravo. Nine women's
bodies were discovered in this deserted plot of land, not
far from the airport. The bodies were strewn around, as
(08:01):
if the killer hadn't even made an effort to hide them.
Some of the victims had their hands tied with shoelaces,
others had a severed left breast. One had a triangle
carved on her back who could be capable of this.
Speculations ran from a satanic cult to a serial killer.
(08:22):
Then in nineteen ninety six, another mass grave was discovered,
and then another, and another and another. The most recent
was in twenty and twelve. These were crimes that shopped
people in both cities, and that made it clear how
powerfully a border can shape a person's fate. I needed
(08:44):
to know more, so I sent Monica an email to
ask if she'd consider working with me, and well, I
received a cool reception. I was very guarded at the beginning, because, yeah,
this is a story that I hold close to my heart,
and I was very hesitant to work with anybody I
(09:05):
didn't know. With a stranger, I just presumed you were
a gringo, even though you're not quite a gringo. I
don't know. For us border ladies, I suppose we're naturally
suspicious of gringo's coming in from the outside. Telling the
most sensitive story of our careers. The story takes an
(09:27):
incredible emotional toll on you, and you're suffering all this
distress because of it, so much so that I was
ready to walk away. But then I get this email.
So what made you agree to work on this together. Well, honestly,
because I've got this conscience it's eating away at me
and won't let me go. When I started reporting in Wattis,
(09:50):
there was one day when I was getting into the car.
My mom followed me into the garage and got into
the passenger seat with me, and she said, if you're
going to go over there and put yourself in danger,
then I'm going to go over there and put myself
in the same danger. I can't let you go and
expose yourself alone. Wow, that moment really forced me to
(10:11):
grapple with what are you willing to give up for
this story? The hottest that I knew growing up is
not the hottest that exists today. It's really sad. But
today I think twice before I go to hottas because
of the dangers. So why did I let you pull
(10:33):
me back in? Well? Because I identify so strongly with
the victims. There are women there that look like me,
that are my same age, but confront a completely different,
horrific reality. The border between El Paso and Juarez is
(10:54):
increasingly militarized, but the line between the two cities has
always been poorous. Every year, millions of people cross back
and forth over the three bridges that connect them. For
this reason, it wasn't long before the murders of the
women in Huarez made it onto the radar of the
FBI's El Paso office. It strikes the heart when you
(11:15):
see women being left like their garbage. That's Heredrik Crawford
Junior speaking. He was the FBI Special Agent in charge
of El Paso from two thousand and one to two
thousand and three. He first learned about the crimes when
he was preparing for his assignment at the FBI's headquarters.
You look at the newspaper clips and one of the
(11:37):
things that jumped out at me was the murder of
women in wars. To me, it's a crime on the
level of the war crimes in Bosnia, in Croatia, you know,
ethnic cleansing. It hit me on a personal level, more
soul than it did on a professional level. It sounds funny,
but I thought, Okay, now I know why Gad sent
(11:57):
me to ol Perso. Was this? This was the reason
I was sent here. Nowadays, Hardrick lives in the suburbs
of Washington, d C. The day we pay him a visit,
he's taking care of his grandchildren, but he was once
one of the country's top law enforcement agents protecting the
real He spent years investigating some of the world's most
(12:18):
dangerous criminal networks, fair guys, evildoers. He went under cover
to bus Columbian organized crime at Miami while wearing a recorder.
It was kind of dacy. In nineteen ninety eight, he
set up the FBI's command post in Nairobi, Kenya, after
saw him in Laden bombed the embassy there. I was
a senior man in the continent. But the assignment that
he can't stop thinking about is El Paso, Texas just
(12:44):
a sheer number of women was alarming that The most
unsettling fact was the lack of tracking or information gathered
as to the number of women when they occurred, their
motives lap Randi, What were the women doing? No database?
The lack of official data presented Hardrick with a concrete problem.
(13:09):
In fact, at least six of the murdered women in
Huarez were US citizens. And meanwhile, there was a letter
to the editor of the El Paso Times in two
thousand and two suggesting that the number of sex offenders
paroled to the city from elsewhere had become a crisis.
Could they have been drawn by the proximity to the
border and the possibility of crossing back and forth into Mexico.
(13:32):
Well in this binational community. A big part of Hardrick's
responsibility was solving binational crimes. If you look out of
your office at the FBI, you could see warriors in
downtown El Paso. Driving you could see warriors. It's there,
it's looming large. Shortly after he arrives at the border,
(13:54):
a chilling hypothesis about who might be killing the women
begins to take hold. Is Hardrick giving an interview to
ABC News in two thousand and one, there is a
real possibility then an American or someone who is residing
on our side of the border is conducting these murders.
(14:16):
Hardrick goes on to describe Juarez as a killing field
for young women. We discussed the fact that it would
be easy for an El Paso based predator to walk
across the border every day, commit a terrible crime, and
then come back to El Paso and live a life
(14:37):
with nobody to be the wiser. I mean, if you've
ever been to warres, disposing of bodies is really easy.
You don't have to dig through hard dirt you're digging
through sand Uarez is surrounded by desert. Law enforcement is
under resourced, and you can walk that from El Paso
(14:59):
in a matter minutes. All of this was on Hadrick's
mind when he worried that it could be a hunting
ground for an American serial killer. And there was something
else too. Juarez was a city of migrants, young women
in their families who had moved from rural Mexico to
this industrial metropolis drawn by the many factories or maculadoras,
(15:22):
and they didn't always have people to look out for them.
It was like a perfect storm. You have the women
coming from southern Mexico, from Central America, desperate for work
to help their families, to come work at the micheladoras.
They're alone. The flip side of the coin is you'd
have to be a cretan if you're a serial murderer
(15:44):
or you're a psychopath not to understand. Wow, it's like
antelopes at the water hole. What a great opportunity for
a serial killer. Once you start focusing on Warrez and
El Passel, you can't miss it. Diana Aldz was written
about it. Dinah Washington Valdez is the reporter who has
(16:05):
gone deeper into this story than perhaps any other. She
wrote the defining book on the topic, called The Killing
Fields Harvest of Women, and she noticed something that Hardrick
Crawford picked up on about how the killers selected their victims.
When we come back, Dinah tells us what she pieced together.
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I was going to plan this speech out while I
got my oil change, but I went to take five.
Then 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. 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
(18:18):
than you think. Take five to stay in your car,
ten minute oil change. I didn't think about the danger
in the beginning, probably intentionally because if I focused on
the danger, then I would immediately create a barrier for
(18:41):
myself to help me back. It was not unusual to
find myself in Watti's eleven twelve am one am in
order to interview certain police officers who are getting off
their shift and had agreed to share confidentially what they knew. Simonia,
if you ask anybody from the area about these crimes,
(19:04):
the name they mentioned is Diana Washington Valdez. Who is she? Yeah, so,
Diana like me as a reporter. She was born in Mexico,
raised in al Paso, and spent most of her career
at the al Paso Times. And when I did a
college internship at the al Paso Times, Diana was one
of my first teachers in journalism. And what was your
(19:27):
first impression of Diana when you met her in the office.
I saw her as a badass, so much so that
I felt intimidated the first time I met her and
put my hand out to shake hers, and she just
laughed it off and said, no, no, don't be intimidated.
I'm here for whatever you need. I think part of
also what helped her reporting in Whatez is this stern exterior,
(19:51):
this discipline that comes with military training and what exactly
to Dina do in the minitary She served in the
Army and then the National Guard, or a total of
twenty years. Wow. And that training and the discipline that
comes with it helped her with her reporting. In the
scariest moments, she says, her training would kick in and
(20:13):
help her set her emotions aside and focus on the
mission before her. So we went to pay Diana a
visit at her home in El Paso, near the foot
of the Franklin Mountains, some distance north of the border.
(20:35):
There's your hot water for tea in the cuss. Oh wonderful,
Thank you so much. Nice. Diana welcomes us into her
home with a generosity and warmth that belies a tough exterior.
We were there to learn what her reporting on connections
between the murders in Juarez might reveal about who was
committing them. As we settled around her coffee table, I
(20:58):
was curious about what I'd made. Anna connects so deeply
to this story. When I was a young woman, I
could have been one of the victims because of my
look and the long hair and wandering around what is
naively when I was eighteen and nineteen. You know, they're
my compatriots. I'm part of them, They're part of me.
(21:19):
Never in a million years I could imagined writing about
teenage girls who were brutally murdered and whose deaths are
unsolved and always could have been prevented. You know, I
never would have imagined it. As a reporter at the
El Paso Times, Diana started to notice a pattern of
(21:41):
young women in Huirez disappearing and turning up dead. It
was a golden age of local journalism, and she had
the platform to shine a light on these unsolved murders
and perhaps, in doing so, prevent more. But first she
had to figure out exactly what was going on. We
could seeing reports about X number of bodies found another
(22:03):
woman found dead, mutilated, very horrific murders, the brutality, it
was something we've never seen here in the border, neither side.
But what I had been reading in the Mexican press
did not tell me who was killing the women and why.
So I got involved in investigating the murders. When was
the very first time when he thought there's something connecting
(22:26):
these crimes. The fact that multiple bodies were left in
specific sits, in sites where the bodies could be found.
This was unseen and unheard of. In some cases, we
had what I call a sense of overkill because we
would have a victim, for example, that was strangled, stabbed,
and shot. Also, these strangulations the medical examiners in what
(22:51):
is noted were for the purposes of sexual gratification of
the perpetrator. That women were being strangled to achieve this
kind of sexual effect. It seemed that whoever was killing
the women in Huirez was not content merely to end
their lives. It seemed they wanted to completely dehumanize them
(23:14):
in the process. But who would want to do this
and why? It seemed like whoever it was was taunting investigators,
purposefully leaving signatures of the crime scenes. Yet the symbols
that law enforcements found on some of the victims who
were very intriguing. These were linked to possible serial killers.
(23:37):
And we know that serial killers have their own rituals
in the way that they kill the victims and the
way they positioned their bodies and the trophies that might
take from them. And in several cases these triangles were
carved on the backs of the victims. Those characteristics were
terrifying to people and to the families because they were
(24:00):
look at it and say, it's not just a murderer.
There's something else going on here that's scary. Did you
ever discover what that something else was? There were no
There were just speculations. There were only speculations that the
markings might have indicated the initials of a perpetrator or representative.
Map A map? A map? What a map of murder?
(24:25):
You know, geographical map to geographical map. That's That's as
far as I was able to ascertain the information was provided.
Could this possibly be true? A map of murder left
on the bodies of the victims? And if so, where
does that map lead? Well? Despite a full plate of
(24:48):
assignments in El Paso from her editors, those questions sent
Diana into Juarez on her evenings, weekends, and even vacation
to answer. I know, just from experience that someone always
knows something. Someone knows what's going on. These murders appeared
to be taking place systematically. It's specific kinds of victims
(25:13):
or being selected and kidnapped or taken by force somehow
or lured, and then their bodies found. Diana was struck
by the profile of the victims. They were young, they
come from elsewhere in such opportunity, and they seem to
disappear into thin air without witnesses. Standing at a memorial
(25:35):
erected by the parents of one of the murdered women,
Lilia Alejandra Andrade, Diana was momentarily overwhelmed. I walked through
that field where her body had been found, and I
saw the cross Lilia Lejandrade, and it kind of just
hit me at once that this is where a young
(25:57):
lady's life was snuffed out merciless sleep. And it's just
like all the emotions that I had suppressed up to
then about the victims just uh, just the damn burst.
And then, you know, I started sobbing uncontrollably. I could
stop it. Just it just happened, and I cried and
I cried and I cried, and the people who walked by,
(26:19):
uh saw me, and you know, they thought something was wrong,
and uh, I couldn't tell them. I had a similar
momentum where the tears came and and it it was
it was something that I couldn't stop, and I was
surprised at myself and um, yeah, the grief builds up
on you. Yeah, yes, where it was m m yeah, yeah. Yeah.
(26:48):
It's like, you know, you think about the helplessness of
the victims. Look at what they were up against. Your
sixteen seventeen year old you went downtown to do or
narrant for your parents, or to try in some new shoes,
to apply for a job, and push, you know, grabbed
and lured, and you're murdered. Diana and Herdrick established a
(27:19):
clear pattern in what type of victims the killer would
target and how they would kill them. And in fact,
there are so many murders of young women in huires
that fit this pattern that the reflex can be to
retreat into statistics this many women, that cause of death.
But you can't understand the full situation without getting to
(27:41):
know some of the victims, victims like Cigario Gonzalez Flores.
Early on when we were embarking on this story together, Monica,
you mentioned Sigario Gonzalez. Sagario Gonzalez story is the story
of so many other women who were murdered into the Watts.
She was an immigrant, she was a factory worker. She
(28:05):
was a teenager. She went missing between her home and
her work, and her murderer transformed her family's life into
this fight to try to find out what happened. But
who is she? So she sang in the church choir
(28:26):
and taught Sunday school to kindergarteners. She has a boyfriend.
His name is Andres. She's got a notebook where she
writes poetry. She puts all kinds of stickers in this notebook,
like hearts and princesses and rabbits. And her handwriting is impeccable,
(28:50):
written in block print, very neat, and it's clear she's
sweet on Andres too. She's got his name and phone
number written on the front cover. And what was it
like looking into that book? Oh gosh, how do you
describe that? This is like a relic of someone who's gone.
It's the closest thing to her. I mean, it's so
(29:12):
precious just to see her name on there, her own
name written in her own handwriting. I don't have the
words for it. I don't have the words for it.
But she's the whole reason why I'm sticking around to
tell the story. Sigrio Gonzalez Flores was one of six
(29:33):
sisters and she was seventeen years old when she left
for work at four am on Thursday, April sixteenth, ninety eight.
She arrived at the factory, completed her normal work day,
and then left to take the bus home, but she
never made it. Her body was discovered two weeks later,
dumped in the desert on the other side of town
(29:53):
from where she lived. When we come back, we travel
to Quarez to meet Sugario's Mouth of Powder at a
home to learn more about her. Such for answers, what
(30:14):
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Driving into Mexico from El Paso is straightforward. Passports are
rarely checked, and most cars are way through and now
(32:24):
orders to firsthand what Hardrick meant about how easy it
would be for an American citizen to slip back and
forth across the border. The part of fire is closest
to the bridge from the United States has restaurants. When
the elected facades from the fifties, there's a strip of
nightclubs and bars, and there are billboards in English advertising
(32:45):
cosmetic dentistry. But as you drive west towards the Flora's household,
paved streets begin to give way to dirt roads and
urban infrastructure turns to desert. The Floridas family lives in
a colonia or neighborhood called Loma Zeppoleo. It's one of
(33:06):
the first communities in Mexico that isn't separated from the
US by the Rio Grande. That river travels south from
New Mexico then takes a sharp turn east when it
reaches Texas, and that's where it becomes the US Mexico border.
West of that point, the landscape is mostly desert, so
(33:29):
nothing to divide the two countries, but a series of
man made barriers, each more severe than the last. Loma
Zeppoleo began as a squatter community founded by migrant families
from other parts of Mexico, and most of them came
here to work in the Makuladouas. As we drive through
(33:52):
Lomas de Poleo, we pass house off the house, each
seemingly constructed from different materials. There are few street names
and no street lights. Powla's house is one of the
more substantial in the neighborhood, and it has a gated
dirt yard. Where we part, we had an extremely warm welcome.
(34:22):
Let me arrive at Powla's house. From dogs to neighborhood children,
to powder herself. My name is Paula. We are at
my house, which is also yours here in Lama cepole
Paula has this cascade of thick black hair almost to
(34:45):
her waist, and her wardrobe is very feminine. She carries
herself with dignity and pride. Her shoulders are back, her
head is held high. Paula is like the nucleus of
her household. She's with out of doubt, the matriarch in
the family. So she is just telling us about where
(35:13):
her family came from. Where we lived. My husband, Jesus
worked in the mountains. He was a chainsaw operator, chopping
pine trees for wood. In fact, in lud Ago, that's
what most people do for work. My sister in law
already lived here and she was the one who invited us,
saying that there was a lot of work here. We
(35:37):
didn't bring a whole lot. We had what we were
wearing and one change of clothing. The truck we were
in had a camper bed, so in the back on
top of a camper, we packed four chairs inside the
camper where my daughters who lay on a little mattress,
along with a bin of dishes. That's all we brought.
(35:58):
It was nineteen ninety five, a year after Nafter was
signed and free trade meant the factories were booming. To
this day, companies like General Electric and Johnson and Johnson
create things like medical gloves and blood pressure cuffs in
Huarez for export to the US. But Whire has had
done little to prepare for the arrival of migrants like Paula,
(36:22):
her husband Jesus, and their daughter Sagria. That's how neighborhoods
like Lomester Poleo came into existence. And to get the
materials they needed to build their life, many families salvage
scrap from US dumps across the border. This was at
a time when the border was much less harshly enforced.
(36:43):
Why not positively well, our primary need was would because
we wanted to put a roof over our heads to live. Right,
It wasn't unusual for people who lived in Lomaz de
Poleo to crawl under or jump over this barbed wire
fence it to this American landfill on the other side
(37:04):
and pick through it to find material to construct their homes.
There were a few times that Sagaradio accompanied us to
the American landfill. One of those times it was in
December and we were there and some guys came to
throw out trash. Right, so one of the guys saw
her and noticed she was cold, so he took off
(37:25):
his jacket and gave it to her. Sagaradio was pale
and her face turned bright red, and she told him no, no,
thank you, and I told her it's okay, take it,
and Sagadio was blushing. She went over and took it
even though she didn't want to, and he gave it
to her. That moment always stuck with me. Despite having
(37:53):
to build a roof above their own heads, the Flores
family did find what they'd come in search of. Jesus,
and four of his kids, including Sagardrio, worked the evening
shift at the same Makila making refrigerator parts. They traveled
as a group to and from work. Then the factory
(38:15):
found out that Sagardrio was under age. She was seventeen,
so she was told that in order to keep working,
she would have to switch to the day shift, and
if she did that, she would have to wake up
before dawn and make the two hour bus trip to
work alone. When they made the change, I told her
(38:36):
to wait instead of accepting it. April May June July.
On July thirty first, she would turn eighteen. I said
to her, when you turn eighteen, you can go with
your daddy and Gilla, right. She said no, that she
wanted to help, that she needed the money to support
her home. So every morning Sagarrio would wake up at
(39:00):
three am. She'd lower her bare feet onto a square
of loose carpet that was placed on the dirt floor
of their home. Next to the bed. There was a
chair with her clothes folded on top of it, and
twenty Mexican pistoles bus fare to get from home to work.
(39:22):
Me who Chu and a Sanshui would go and walk
her to the number ten bus and then in downtown
she would take another bus to work. When they changed
her shift, she signed an insurance policy like with beneficiaries,
in case something happens. Remember that. When she arrived with
that paperwork, she said to me, mamma, they're going to
give me life insurance and the maquila. Joking around, she
(39:45):
told me, if something happens to me, mamma, they're going
to give you a ton of money. Lea, I know,
they said, don'cle saying that, honey, why do you say
that to me? Yes, Mama, if something happens to me,
the makuila will give you lots of money. I always
remember that so vividly. I don't know if my innocent
girl had a feeling that something was going to happen
(40:06):
to her. I don't know the Flores family moved to
Juarez in nineteen ninety five, the very same year that
the first mass grave of women was discovered. Paula's husband, Jesus,
(40:26):
had moved to Huaires with their son Cheui before the
rest of the family, and Jesus sent let Us home
to Durango, encouraging Paula and their six daughters to join.
Powder read them allowed to us, my Paula, I want
to tell you the following, My love, we are in luck.
(40:46):
As soon as we arrived we found work. I asked
him how's the neighborhood, whether it was peaceful, because I'd
heard it was dangerous in Juarez, and he said, no,
it's peaceful. It's a new neighborhood. All the people are
just getting started. Lydian told him they say they kill
women there, they kill girls, and he said no, no.
(41:07):
I said, it's just that we're bringing a lot. You
have six daughters. No, no wining, and he said, no, no,
there's no danger. Within three years of arriving with big
dreams of a brighter future, Paula's worst fears has been realized.
Sigario had been brutally murdered, so people often ask me,
(41:34):
what's the most difficult story you've had to cover as
a reporter, and my answer is always the same, the
missing and murdered women of Watts. It's a story that
I've come back to throughout my career. I was once
at a gathering of activists outside a courthouse in Hottis
(41:56):
and I remember this girl no more than seven her
eight years old. She was singing a song called the
Richel Nacimiento or Birthright. It was in memory of the
slain women, women like Sagrario Gonzalez, Flores, Lilia, Alejandra Andrade
(42:18):
and Montes. I once made a silent promise to these
women that I would tell the world who they were
and why they mattered, so that they would never be forgotten.
(42:41):
In what is These crimes have gone on for so
long that this most extreme form of violence against women
has a name feminio femicide, and the crimes have been
maddeningly hard to solve. Witnesses rarely come forward, evidence goes missing,
(43:04):
police are overstretched. But then in two thousand and one,
a case came along that had all the pieces in
place to be solved and to uncover who was behind
the rest of these murders. That's in our next episode.
Imzveloshen and mon would even see you next time. You're
(43:31):
not see You're not not Illa fell Forgotten. The Women
(44:13):
of Juarez is co hosted by me Monica and me Oswaloshin.
We'd like to thank Paula Flores and all the victims families,
and thank you to Diana Washington Valez and all the
truth seekers and activists who fight for justice, and to
the many people you won't hear on tape who contributed
to this podcast. Thank you to Natalia La Furcale and
(44:37):
Gueta Calderon for their help with our theme Songio Forgotten
is executive produced by me Oswaloshin and Mangesh Hatia. Our
producers are Julian Weller and Katrina Noval. Sound editing by
Julian Weller and Jacopo Penzo. Lucas Riley is our story editor.
(44:59):
Caitlin thomps And is our consulting producer. Production support from
Emily Maronoff and Aaron Kaufman. Recording assistance this episode from
Melissa Kaplan. Music by Leonardo Hablum and Hakkabo Liberman. Additional
music by Aaron Kaufman. Karla Tassara is the voice actor
for Paula Flores. Special thanks to Angela Cocherga for introducing
(45:23):
me to Monica to Weird Moved West for exceptional production
support in El Paso, Anti Jonah Descent for executive producing
Bridging Us, the documentary series that first brought me to
the border. This podcast is dedicated to all the women
lost to senseless violence in Howadis and all around the world.
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(01:05):
the spotlight on series from our Health Discovered podcast. In
this special episode, we'll hear about living a fulfilling life
with chronic cart failure, a condition that doesn't have to
be as scary as it sounds. I was outside shoveling
snow and I noticed I was coughing up flem. Unbeknownst
to me, I left a trail of blood behind me,
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and I was one sign. Now. Of course, prior to
I was excessively gaining weight, I had issues breathing, sleep apnea,
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.
But ultimately it was when that occurred that I thought
(01:47):
something was seriously wrong. Listen to Health Discovered on the
iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. Forgotten is
a production of iHeartMedia and Unusual Productions. Before we start.
This podcast contains accounts which some listeners will find disturbing,
(02:12):
but without them, this story can't be fully understood. Please
take care while listening. A couple of years ago, I
went to El Paso, Texas, because I was making a
documentary about the US Mexico border. While I was there,
(02:34):
I asked one of the producers a question. I said,
if you could tell any story about this place, what
would it be. He told me that right across the
border from where we stood, there were young women who
worked in American owned factories in the Mexican city of
Silt Wires, and they were being killed with horrific brutality.
(02:57):
The victims were often found half naked, dumped in the desert,
someone found in mass graves with strange symbols left on
their bodies. The producer told me there were all kinds
of theories about what was happening to the women, but
that no one knew for sure. So I asked him
if I could interview him on the record. When he
(03:19):
thought about it and said no, it was too dangerous.
But others did speak, and it became clear that the deaths,
the disappearances of these women, they aren't random. They seem
to follow a pattern. You'd have women or girls even
fifteen seventeen, nineteen, and they have a similar look. They're
(03:42):
slem art In darker you know, which suggests they may
have been selected. All from poor families, all from mostly
poor neighborhoods. They hold the same types of jobs, usually
students factory workers, and commute regularly alone on public buses
through downtown Juarez, and then they're never seen again, at
(04:08):
least not alive. I quickly realized I'd never be able
to understand the depth and complexity of this story without
a partner. I asked a friend if they knew anyone
who might be prepared to work with me. It turned
out they knew the perfect person. In the first three
weeks of twenty twenty, there have been more murders in
(04:30):
Quaddas than days in the new year, when a crush
of Central American families has overwhelmed officials at the southern border.
We're going down to the basement where other migrants are
hanging out at this hotel. There's a horrific history of
violence against women insou thou Quads. In the last three decades,
hundreds of women have been brutally murdered here. Many of
(04:52):
their cases remain unsolved. And that's how I first got
to know my co host, Monica, a reporter from El Paso,
a regular voice on public radio and an authority on
the region. Together will explore who is responsible for the
deaths of so many women in Juarez and why the
(05:14):
crimes have remained unsold for decades. I'm as Volosha and
I'm Monica. This is forgotten the women in Juarezcano param
(05:35):
non siste la felicia. I've always been fascinated by borders,
(06:04):
and something about El Paso called to me long before
I ever went there. It was this city of several
hundred thousand people in the desert, surrounded by mountains whose
name literally means the pass right across the dry bed
of the Rio Grand River, separated by a twenty foot
metal fence, is El Paso's twin city, sued at Juarez.
(06:30):
When you drive along the highway in El Paso, the
barrier becomes a brown blur of rusted metal, but if
you stop and look, you can see right through the slats.
In Uarez, there's a cathedral originally built by Spanish colonialists.
There's the Kentucky Club, a bar that claims to have
invented the margharita and that traces its name to the
(06:52):
city's history of whiskey distilling and smuggling during prohibition. There
are huge, colorful murals celebrating local legends like the musician
Juan Gabriel. And for all the things you read about
the cartel violence, the desert landscape has a stark beauty,
and Juarez is chaotic and bustling, a city of over
(07:14):
a million people and a city of dreams. People come
here to find education, to find work. I had come
here because I wanted to know what living on this
divide meant. But then I heard about the women. Young
women who have been going missing and turning up dead
since the nineteen nineties, often dumped in the desert. At first,
(07:39):
the authorities tried to claim the murders were random and individual,
but then in nineteen ninety five, the first mass grave
was discovered in a place called Lotte Bravo. Nine women's
bodies were discovered in this deserted plot of land, not
far from the airport. The bodies were strewn around, as
(08:01):
if the killer hadn't even made an effort to hide them.
Some of the victims had their hands tied with shoelaces,
others had a severed left breast. One had a triangle
carved on her back who could be capable of this.
Speculations ran from a satanic cult to a serial killer.
(08:22):
Then in nineteen ninety six, another mass grave was discovered,
and then another, and another and another. The most recent
was in twenty and twelve. These were crimes that shopped
people in both cities, and that made it clear how
powerfully a border can shape a person's fate. I needed
(08:44):
to know more, so I sent Monica an email to
ask if she'd consider working with me, and well, I
received a cool reception. I was very guarded at the beginning, because, yeah,
this is a story that I hold close to my heart,
and I was very hesitant to work with anybody I
(09:05):
didn't know. With a stranger, I just presumed you were
a gringo, even though you're not quite a gringo. I
don't know. For us border ladies, I suppose we're naturally
suspicious of gringo's coming in from the outside. Telling the
most sensitive story of our careers. The story takes an
(09:27):
incredible emotional toll on you, and you're suffering all this
distress because of it, so much so that I was
ready to walk away. But then I get this email.
So what made you agree to work on this together. Well, honestly,
because I've got this conscience it's eating away at me
and won't let me go. When I started reporting in Wattis,
(09:50):
there was one day when I was getting into the car.
My mom followed me into the garage and got into
the passenger seat with me, and she said, if you're
going to go over there and put yourself in danger,
then I'm going to go over there and put myself
in the same danger. I can't let you go and
expose yourself alone. Wow, that moment really forced me to
(10:11):
grapple with what are you willing to give up for
this story? The hottest that I knew growing up is
not the hottest that exists today. It's really sad. But
today I think twice before I go to hottas because
of the dangers. So why did I let you pull
(10:33):
me back in? Well? Because I identify so strongly with
the victims. There are women there that look like me,
that are my same age, but confront a completely different,
horrific reality. The border between El Paso and Juarez is
(10:54):
increasingly militarized, but the line between the two cities has
always been poorous. Every year, millions of people cross back
and forth over the three bridges that connect them. For
this reason, it wasn't long before the murders of the
women in Huarez made it onto the radar of the
FBI's El Paso office. It strikes the heart when you
(11:15):
see women being left like their garbage. That's Heredrik Crawford
Junior speaking. He was the FBI Special Agent in charge
of El Paso from two thousand and one to two
thousand and three. He first learned about the crimes when
he was preparing for his assignment at the FBI's headquarters.
You look at the newspaper clips and one of the
(11:37):
things that jumped out at me was the murder of
women in wars. To me, it's a crime on the
level of the war crimes in Bosnia, in Croatia, you know,
ethnic cleansing. It hit me on a personal level, more
soul than it did on a professional level. It sounds funny,
but I thought, Okay, now I know why Gad sent
(11:57):
me to ol Perso. Was this? This was the reason
I was sent here. Nowadays, Hardrick lives in the suburbs
of Washington, d C. The day we pay him a visit,
he's taking care of his grandchildren, but he was once
one of the country's top law enforcement agents protecting the
real He spent years investigating some of the world's most
(12:18):
dangerous criminal networks, fair guys, evildoers. He went under cover
to bus Columbian organized crime at Miami while wearing a recorder.
It was kind of dacy. In nineteen ninety eight, he
set up the FBI's command post in Nairobi, Kenya, after
saw him in Laden bombed the embassy there. I was
a senior man in the continent. But the assignment that
he can't stop thinking about is El Paso, Texas just
(12:44):
a sheer number of women was alarming that The most
unsettling fact was the lack of tracking or information gathered
as to the number of women when they occurred, their
motives lap Randi, What were the women doing? No database?
The lack of official data presented Hardrick with a concrete problem.
(13:09):
In fact, at least six of the murdered women in
Huarez were US citizens. And meanwhile, there was a letter
to the editor of the El Paso Times in two
thousand and two suggesting that the number of sex offenders
paroled to the city from elsewhere had become a crisis.
Could they have been drawn by the proximity to the
border and the possibility of crossing back and forth into Mexico.
(13:32):
Well in this binational community. A big part of Hardrick's
responsibility was solving binational crimes. If you look out of
your office at the FBI, you could see warriors in
downtown El Paso. Driving you could see warriors. It's there,
it's looming large. Shortly after he arrives at the border,
(13:54):
a chilling hypothesis about who might be killing the women
begins to take hold. Is Hardrick giving an interview to
ABC News in two thousand and one, there is a
real possibility then an American or someone who is residing
on our side of the border is conducting these murders.
(14:16):
Hardrick goes on to describe Juarez as a killing field
for young women. We discussed the fact that it would
be easy for an El Paso based predator to walk
across the border every day, commit a terrible crime, and
then come back to El Paso and live a life
(14:37):
with nobody to be the wiser. I mean, if you've
ever been to warres, disposing of bodies is really easy.
You don't have to dig through hard dirt you're digging
through sand Uarez is surrounded by desert. Law enforcement is
under resourced, and you can walk that from El Paso
(14:59):
in a matter minutes. All of this was on Hadrick's
mind when he worried that it could be a hunting
ground for an American serial killer. And there was something
else too. Juarez was a city of migrants, young women
in their families who had moved from rural Mexico to
this industrial metropolis drawn by the many factories or maculadoras,
(15:22):
and they didn't always have people to look out for them.
It was like a perfect storm. You have the women
coming from southern Mexico, from Central America, desperate for work
to help their families, to come work at the micheladoras.
They're alone. The flip side of the coin is you'd
have to be a cretan if you're a serial murderer
(15:44):
or you're a psychopath not to understand. Wow, it's like
antelopes at the water hole. What a great opportunity for
a serial killer. Once you start focusing on Warrez and
El Passel, you can't miss it. Diana Aldz was written
about it. Dinah Washington Valdez is the reporter who has
(16:05):
gone deeper into this story than perhaps any other. She
wrote the defining book on the topic, called The Killing
Fields Harvest of Women, and she noticed something that Hardrick
Crawford picked up on about how the killers selected their victims.
When we come back, Dinah tells us what she pieced together.
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(17:56):
I was going to plan this speech out while I
got my oil change, but I went to take five.
Then 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. 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
(18:18):
than you think. Take five to stay in your car,
ten minute oil change. I didn't think about the danger
in the beginning, probably intentionally because if I focused on
the danger, then I would immediately create a barrier for
(18:41):
myself to help me back. It was not unusual to
find myself in Watti's eleven twelve am one am in
order to interview certain police officers who are getting off
their shift and had agreed to share confidentially what they knew. Simonia,
if you ask anybody from the area about these crimes,
(19:04):
the name they mentioned is Diana Washington Valdez. Who is she? Yeah, so,
Diana like me as a reporter. She was born in Mexico,
raised in al Paso, and spent most of her career
at the al Paso Times. And when I did a
college internship at the al Paso Times, Diana was one
of my first teachers in journalism. And what was your
(19:27):
first impression of Diana when you met her in the office.
I saw her as a badass, so much so that
I felt intimidated the first time I met her and
put my hand out to shake hers, and she just
laughed it off and said, no, no, don't be intimidated.
I'm here for whatever you need. I think part of
also what helped her reporting in Whatez is this stern exterior,
(19:51):
this discipline that comes with military training and what exactly
to Dina do in the minitary She served in the
Army and then the National Guard, or a total of
twenty years. Wow. And that training and the discipline that
comes with it helped her with her reporting. In the
scariest moments, she says, her training would kick in and
(20:13):
help her set her emotions aside and focus on the
mission before her. So we went to pay Diana a
visit at her home in El Paso, near the foot
of the Franklin Mountains, some distance north of the border.
(20:35):
There's your hot water for tea in the cuss. Oh wonderful,
Thank you so much. Nice. Diana welcomes us into her
home with a generosity and warmth that belies a tough exterior.
We were there to learn what her reporting on connections
between the murders in Juarez might reveal about who was
committing them. As we settled around her coffee table, I
(20:58):
was curious about what I'd made. Anna connects so deeply
to this story. When I was a young woman, I
could have been one of the victims because of my
look and the long hair and wandering around what is
naively when I was eighteen and nineteen. You know, they're
my compatriots. I'm part of them, They're part of me.
(21:19):
Never in a million years I could imagined writing about
teenage girls who were brutally murdered and whose deaths are
unsolved and always could have been prevented. You know, I
never would have imagined it. As a reporter at the
El Paso Times, Diana started to notice a pattern of
(21:41):
young women in Huirez disappearing and turning up dead. It
was a golden age of local journalism, and she had
the platform to shine a light on these unsolved murders
and perhaps, in doing so, prevent more. But first she
had to figure out exactly what was going on. We
could seeing reports about X number of bodies found another
(22:03):
woman found dead, mutilated, very horrific murders, the brutality, it
was something we've never seen here in the border, neither side.
But what I had been reading in the Mexican press
did not tell me who was killing the women and why.
So I got involved in investigating the murders. When was
the very first time when he thought there's something connecting
(22:26):
these crimes. The fact that multiple bodies were left in
specific sits, in sites where the bodies could be found.
This was unseen and unheard of. In some cases, we
had what I call a sense of overkill because we
would have a victim, for example, that was strangled, stabbed,
and shot. Also, these strangulations the medical examiners in what
(22:51):
is noted were for the purposes of sexual gratification of
the perpetrator. That women were being strangled to achieve this
kind of sexual effect. It seemed that whoever was killing
the women in Huirez was not content merely to end
their lives. It seemed they wanted to completely dehumanize them
(23:14):
in the process. But who would want to do this
and why? It seemed like whoever it was was taunting investigators,
purposefully leaving signatures of the crime scenes. Yet the symbols
that law enforcements found on some of the victims who
were very intriguing. These were linked to possible serial killers.
(23:37):
And we know that serial killers have their own rituals
in the way that they kill the victims and the
way they positioned their bodies and the trophies that might
take from them. And in several cases these triangles were
carved on the backs of the victims. Those characteristics were
terrifying to people and to the families because they were
(24:00):
look at it and say, it's not just a murderer.
There's something else going on here that's scary. Did you
ever discover what that something else was? There were no
There were just speculations. There were only speculations that the
markings might have indicated the initials of a perpetrator or representative.
Map A map? A map? What a map of murder?
(24:25):
You know, geographical map to geographical map. That's That's as
far as I was able to ascertain the information was provided.
Could this possibly be true? A map of murder left
on the bodies of the victims? And if so, where
does that map lead? Well? Despite a full plate of
(24:48):
assignments in El Paso from her editors, those questions sent
Diana into Juarez on her evenings, weekends, and even vacation
to answer. I know, just from experience that someone always
knows something. Someone knows what's going on. These murders appeared
to be taking place systematically. It's specific kinds of victims
(25:13):
or being selected and kidnapped or taken by force somehow
or lured, and then their bodies found. Diana was struck
by the profile of the victims. They were young, they
come from elsewhere in such opportunity, and they seem to
disappear into thin air without witnesses. Standing at a memorial
(25:35):
erected by the parents of one of the murdered women,
Lilia Alejandra Andrade, Diana was momentarily overwhelmed. I walked through
that field where her body had been found, and I
saw the cross Lilia Lejandrade, and it kind of just
hit me at once that this is where a young
(25:57):
lady's life was snuffed out merciless sleep. And it's just
like all the emotions that I had suppressed up to
then about the victims just uh, just the damn burst.
And then, you know, I started sobbing uncontrollably. I could
stop it. Just it just happened, and I cried and
I cried and I cried, and the people who walked by,
(26:19):
uh saw me, and you know, they thought something was wrong,
and uh, I couldn't tell them. I had a similar
momentum where the tears came and and it it was
it was something that I couldn't stop, and I was
surprised at myself and um, yeah, the grief builds up
on you. Yeah, yes, where it was m m yeah, yeah. Yeah.
(26:48):
It's like, you know, you think about the helplessness of
the victims. Look at what they were up against. Your
sixteen seventeen year old you went downtown to do or
narrant for your parents, or to try in some new shoes,
to apply for a job, and push, you know, grabbed
and lured, and you're murdered. Diana and Herdrick established a
(27:19):
clear pattern in what type of victims the killer would
target and how they would kill them. And in fact,
there are so many murders of young women in huires
that fit this pattern that the reflex can be to
retreat into statistics this many women, that cause of death.
But you can't understand the full situation without getting to
(27:41):
know some of the victims, victims like Cigario Gonzalez Flores.
Early on when we were embarking on this story together, Monica,
you mentioned Sigario Gonzalez. Sagario Gonzalez story is the story
of so many other women who were murdered into the Watts.
She was an immigrant, she was a factory worker. She
(28:05):
was a teenager. She went missing between her home and
her work, and her murderer transformed her family's life into
this fight to try to find out what happened. But
who is she? So she sang in the church choir
(28:26):
and taught Sunday school to kindergarteners. She has a boyfriend.
His name is Andres. She's got a notebook where she
writes poetry. She puts all kinds of stickers in this notebook,
like hearts and princesses and rabbits. And her handwriting is impeccable,
(28:50):
written in block print, very neat, and it's clear she's
sweet on Andres too. She's got his name and phone
number written on the front cover. And what was it
like looking into that book? Oh gosh, how do you
describe that? This is like a relic of someone who's gone.
It's the closest thing to her. I mean, it's so
(29:12):
precious just to see her name on there, her own
name written in her own handwriting. I don't have the
words for it. I don't have the words for it.
But she's the whole reason why I'm sticking around to
tell the story. Sigrio Gonzalez Flores was one of six
(29:33):
sisters and she was seventeen years old when she left
for work at four am on Thursday, April sixteenth, ninety eight.
She arrived at the factory, completed her normal work day,
and then left to take the bus home, but she
never made it. Her body was discovered two weeks later,
dumped in the desert on the other side of town
(29:53):
from where she lived. When we come back, we travel
to Quarez to meet Sugario's Mouth of Powder at a
home to learn more about her. Such for answers, what
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Driving into Mexico from El Paso is straightforward. Passports are
rarely checked, and most cars are way through and now
(32:24):
orders to firsthand what Hardrick meant about how easy it
would be for an American citizen to slip back and
forth across the border. The part of fire is closest
to the bridge from the United States has restaurants. When
the elected facades from the fifties, there's a strip of
nightclubs and bars, and there are billboards in English advertising
(32:45):
cosmetic dentistry. But as you drive west towards the Flora's household,
paved streets begin to give way to dirt roads and
urban infrastructure turns to desert. The Floridas family lives in
a colonia or neighborhood called Loma Zeppoleo. It's one of
(33:06):
the first communities in Mexico that isn't separated from the
US by the Rio Grande. That river travels south from
New Mexico then takes a sharp turn east when it
reaches Texas, and that's where it becomes the US Mexico border.
West of that point, the landscape is mostly desert, so
(33:29):
nothing to divide the two countries, but a series of
man made barriers, each more severe than the last. Loma
Zeppoleo began as a squatter community founded by migrant families
from other parts of Mexico, and most of them came
here to work in the Makuladouas. As we drive through
(33:52):
Lomas de Poleo, we pass house off the house, each
seemingly constructed from different materials. There are few street names
and no street lights. Powla's house is one of the
more substantial in the neighborhood, and it has a gated
dirt yard. Where we part, we had an extremely warm welcome.
(34:22):
Let me arrive at Powla's house. From dogs to neighborhood children,
to powder herself. My name is Paula. We are at
my house, which is also yours here in Lama cepole
Paula has this cascade of thick black hair almost to
(34:45):
her waist, and her wardrobe is very feminine. She carries
herself with dignity and pride. Her shoulders are back, her
head is held high. Paula is like the nucleus of
her household. She's with out of doubt, the matriarch in
the family. So she is just telling us about where
(35:13):
her family came from. Where we lived. My husband, Jesus
worked in the mountains. He was a chainsaw operator, chopping
pine trees for wood. In fact, in lud Ago, that's
what most people do for work. My sister in law
already lived here and she was the one who invited us,
saying that there was a lot of work here. We
(35:37):
didn't bring a whole lot. We had what we were
wearing and one change of clothing. The truck we were
in had a camper bed, so in the back on
top of a camper, we packed four chairs inside the
camper where my daughters who lay on a little mattress,
along with a bin of dishes. That's all we brought.
(35:58):
It was nineteen ninety five, a year after Nafter was
signed and free trade meant the factories were booming. To
this day, companies like General Electric and Johnson and Johnson
create things like medical gloves and blood pressure cuffs in
Huarez for export to the US. But Whire has had
done little to prepare for the arrival of migrants like Paula,
(36:22):
her husband Jesus, and their daughter Sagria. That's how neighborhoods
like Lomester Poleo came into existence. And to get the
materials they needed to build their life, many families salvage
scrap from US dumps across the border. This was at
a time when the border was much less harshly enforced.
(36:43):
Why not positively well, our primary need was would because
we wanted to put a roof over our heads to live. Right,
It wasn't unusual for people who lived in Lomaz de
Poleo to crawl under or jump over this barbed wire
fence it to this American landfill on the other side
(37:04):
and pick through it to find material to construct their homes.
There were a few times that Sagaradio accompanied us to
the American landfill. One of those times it was in
December and we were there and some guys came to
throw out trash. Right, so one of the guys saw
her and noticed she was cold, so he took off
(37:25):
his jacket and gave it to her. Sagaradio was pale
and her face turned bright red, and she told him no, no,
thank you, and I told her it's okay, take it,
and Sagadio was blushing. She went over and took it
even though she didn't want to, and he gave it
to her. That moment always stuck with me. Despite having
(37:53):
to build a roof above their own heads, the Flores
family did find what they'd come in search of. Jesus,
and four of his kids, including Sagardrio, worked the evening
shift at the same Makila making refrigerator parts. They traveled
as a group to and from work. Then the factory
(38:15):
found out that Sagardrio was under age. She was seventeen,
so she was told that in order to keep working,
she would have to switch to the day shift, and
if she did that, she would have to wake up
before dawn and make the two hour bus trip to
work alone. When they made the change, I told her
(38:36):
to wait instead of accepting it. April May June July.
On July thirty first, she would turn eighteen. I said
to her, when you turn eighteen, you can go with
your daddy and Gilla, right. She said no, that she
wanted to help, that she needed the money to support
her home. So every morning Sagarrio would wake up at
(39:00):
three am. She'd lower her bare feet onto a square
of loose carpet that was placed on the dirt floor
of their home. Next to the bed. There was a
chair with her clothes folded on top of it, and
twenty Mexican pistoles bus fare to get from home to work.
(39:22):
Me who Chu and a Sanshui would go and walk
her to the number ten bus and then in downtown
she would take another bus to work. When they changed
her shift, she signed an insurance policy like with beneficiaries,
in case something happens. Remember that. When she arrived with
that paperwork, she said to me, mamma, they're going to
give me life insurance and the maquila. Joking around, she
(39:45):
told me, if something happens to me, mamma, they're going
to give you a ton of money. Lea, I know,
they said, don'cle saying that, honey, why do you say
that to me? Yes, Mama, if something happens to me,
the makuila will give you lots of money. I always
remember that so vividly. I don't know if my innocent
girl had a feeling that something was going to happen
(40:06):
to her. I don't know the Flores family moved to
Juarez in nineteen ninety five, the very same year that
the first mass grave of women was discovered. Paula's husband, Jesus,
(40:26):
had moved to Huaires with their son Cheui before the
rest of the family, and Jesus sent let Us home
to Durango, encouraging Paula and their six daughters to join.
Powder read them allowed to us, my Paula, I want
to tell you the following, My love, we are in luck.
(40:46):
As soon as we arrived we found work. I asked
him how's the neighborhood, whether it was peaceful, because I'd
heard it was dangerous in Juarez, and he said, no,
it's peaceful. It's a new neighborhood. All the people are
just getting started. Lydian told him they say they kill
women there, they kill girls, and he said no, no.
(41:07):
I said, it's just that we're bringing a lot. You
have six daughters. No, no wining, and he said, no, no,
there's no danger. Within three years of arriving with big
dreams of a brighter future, Paula's worst fears has been realized.
Sigario had been brutally murdered, so people often ask me,
(41:34):
what's the most difficult story you've had to cover as
a reporter, and my answer is always the same, the
missing and murdered women of Watts. It's a story that
I've come back to throughout my career. I was once
at a gathering of activists outside a courthouse in Hottis
(41:56):
and I remember this girl no more than seven her
eight years old. She was singing a song called the
Richel Nacimiento or Birthright. It was in memory of the
slain women, women like Sagrario Gonzalez, Flores, Lilia, Alejandra Andrade
(42:18):
and Montes. I once made a silent promise to these
women that I would tell the world who they were
and why they mattered, so that they would never be forgotten.
(42:41):
In what is These crimes have gone on for so
long that this most extreme form of violence against women
has a name feminio femicide, and the crimes have been
maddeningly hard to solve. Witnesses rarely come forward, evidence goes missing,
(43:04):
police are overstretched. But then in two thousand and one,
a case came along that had all the pieces in
place to be solved and to uncover who was behind
the rest of these murders. That's in our next episode.
Imzveloshen and mon would even see you next time. You're
(43:31):
not see You're not not Illa fell Forgotten. The Women
(44:13):
of Juarez is co hosted by me Monica and me Oswaloshin.
We'd like to thank Paula Flores and all the victims families,
and thank you to Diana Washington Valez and all the
truth seekers and activists who fight for justice, and to
the many people you won't hear on tape who contributed
to this podcast. Thank you to Natalia La Furcale and
(44:37):
Gueta Calderon for their help with our theme Songio Forgotten
is executive produced by me Oswaloshin and Mangesh Hatia. Our
producers are Julian Weller and Katrina Noval. Sound editing by
Julian Weller and Jacopo Penzo. Lucas Riley is our story editor.
(44:59):
Caitlin thomps And is our consulting producer. Production support from
Emily Maronoff and Aaron Kaufman. Recording assistance this episode from
Melissa Kaplan. Music by Leonardo Hablum and Hakkabo Liberman. Additional
music by Aaron Kaufman. Karla Tassara is the voice actor
for Paula Flores. Special thanks to Angela Cocherga for introducing
(45:23):
me to Monica to Weird Moved West for exceptional production
support in El Paso, Anti Jonah Descent for executive producing
Bridging Us, the documentary series that first brought me to
the border. This podcast is dedicated to all the women
lost to senseless violence in Howadis and all around the world.
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