June 29, 2020 • 51 mins
Episode 6 - Journalist Alfredo Corchado interviews an eyewitness from the Juárez underworld, who claims to know what's happening to the murdered women. A suspect is arrested in Sagrario Gonzalez's case. And the FBI begins a secret cross-border operation.
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dot CEO. Forgotten is a production of ihont Media and
Unusual Productions. Before we start. This podcast contains accounts which
some listeners will find disturbing, but without them, the story
can't be fully understood. Please take care while listening last
(01:50):
time on Forgotten. At the beginning, I thought it was
a typical case of a Serra killer, but it appeared
so highly organized group. The fact that a lawyer is
murdered in such a public way or should we call
ourn execution, indicates that we're talking about something very big
(02:12):
behind these murders. If you really want to know the
underbelly of what, you need to talk to the Devil's lawyer,
Dante Dante, very smart decided to hide this guy too
coment to present under false charges under a different name.
He would always leave me with a little titbit, and
(02:34):
one of them was this guy's alive if you're interested.
It was two thousand and three and Alfredo Coccado was
in Juarez with an assignment from the Dallas Morning News
find out who is kidding the women and why? Alfredo,
who had been asking everyone he could think of, but
(02:55):
no one seemed able to give him answers. Finally, Estas
Kanda introduced him to Dante almaras, the so called Devil's lawyer,
and Dante did not disappoint. He had a drug dealer
on the run hidden in the Horre's prison, who claimed
firsthand knowledge of the killings. The fact that you had
(03:16):
an eye witness was incredibly important, he alleged, and I
had no reason to not beloon, but it alleged to
be part of the why scottel And it finally worked
out where I was able to visit this person under
what as m was an alias. But we talked long
and long, and I kept asking, so why are these
(03:37):
women being killed? Alfreda was apparently on the verge of
getting the story, but just like Dante, the source didn't
give up all his information at once, and the thing
that really kind of cut my eyeway said, you know,
these are women who are coming from other parts of
the country, who if they go miss him for a
day or two or a week, no one's going to
(04:00):
miss him immediately. And so you know, little things started clicking.
So here was Alfredo sitting in a jail cell in
Juarez when, to his surprise, this alleged cartel member started
giving him specifics. I had a night witness who alleged
that he had been at these parties or these women
(04:22):
would be brought into and I mean they would turn
into orgies or rapes, and eventually the women would be
killed because they knew too much. Alfredo was shocked, although
more so when the witness went on to explain that
the women were taken off the streets to celebrate successful
drug runs to the US. So this was the first
(04:45):
time that I might talking to someone facebook face and
he's given me an account, a night witness account, and
we're like, there's no way we can report that unless
we really get as much evidence as possible. Alfredo had
a shocking but potentially plausible explanation for what was happening
(05:08):
to the women in Huires, But could he trust the information.
After all, he had heard the account from a drug
dealer who wants to save his own skin, who he
met through an underworld lawyer, himself openly on a quest
for revenge. At times, you feel like an American Joey.
I feel like everybody's sort of playing you, you know.
(05:28):
But if it was true, it opened up all kinds
of new questions. How could the men act with such
brutality and impunity? Who else knew what Alfredo had just
been told and who might be complicit in covering it up.
I'm as Voloshi and I'm this is forgotten. The women
(05:50):
are by you know, do you know? Hala Felicia. So
(06:31):
just months earlier, Monica Alfredo's in DC interviewing presidents and ambassadors,
and now he's in a jail cell in Juarez, interviewing
a drug dealer with Dante by his side. How does
he get here? Something to remember here is that Alfredo
ended up in this jail cell out of naivety more
(06:55):
so than astute planning. He's convinced that all of Mexico's
problems will disappear now that it has free and fair elections,
and he's on his way to Mexico City to cover
this progress. Wattis was only supposed to be a pit stop.
He's now waited into the nether world and Dante was
(07:18):
his link. And how do you make sense of this
nether world where Dante of a Dandie operates and where
he's did Alfredo, Well, that's a big question. In Mexico.
There are these two parallel universes that coexist, the one
that's visible on the surface and the one that's not.
(07:39):
And it's that invisible universe that operates completely outside the
rule of law. It's the one everyone knows exists, but
nobody talks about. To talk about it openly is to
ask for trouble because this realm is ruled by organized crime,
(07:59):
and this is where Alfredo's witness operates. But Alfredo's mission
is to find out who is killing the women of
Hottas and to answer that question, you really have no
choice but to tread into the Hottis underworld as a
reporter who's been relentlessly asking who's doing this, who's behind
(08:20):
the murders, who's responsible. What do you think Alfredo's thinking
when he was hearing this testimony. Well, I'm certain that
Alfredo was feeling a mix of giddiness and fear because
you're starting to tread past an invisible line where you
go from the traditional, reliable sources into this grayer world.
(08:47):
And I mean, as you might imagine, he's blown away
by this account, but he knows that as a good journalist,
he just can't take this account and put it in
the newspaper. Everyone you interview will have an agenda, probably
most especially a drug trafficker, So you can't just take
a witness account at face value. You have to get
(09:09):
confirmation from multiple sources. Alfredo had a potentially huge break
about the connection between the women's murders and organized crime
in Huirez, but he couldn't go to print without verifying
the information was true. And in that sense, Alfredo's journey
was just beginning. And meanwhile, he wasn't the only person
(09:31):
who was still asking questions about who was responsible for
the murders of women in Huirez. By this point, Paula
Flores had been trying to establish who was responsible for
her daughter's murder for five years, and they've been long years.
Paula was prepared to tell Sir Glorio's story again and
again to keep her memory alive and in the hope
(09:52):
it might bring her closer to the answer she craved.
She got increasingly involved in activism with the mothers of
other victims. But back when Sagario first went missing, Paula
told us her son Chewi took it very hard. Before
she disappeared, she had bought a cassette of Los Demidradios
(10:13):
and we had a van an arrow Star that they
bought between themselves. In those days, she would insist that
Julie play the cassette in the van because she didn't
know how to work it, and she would tell Julie
play the cassette, play that the Meidandios cassette, and Juie
would say, quit being a pest, I'll put it on
in a second. He would stall and not do it.
(10:35):
After she disappeared, my son would lock himself in that
van with the cassette and he would play that music
and just cry because it reminded him of her. Before
moving to Juarez, Paula has sent letters to her husband Jesus,
(10:57):
asking if the city was safe for their six daughters.
She'd heard about the murders there and was concerned about
cholos or gang members in the neighborhood. Jesus replied that
there weren't any just a boy who hung around with
his sister. And after the family moved to Juarez, they
got to know this boy, he was called Mamuelo, was
(11:19):
a boy about sixteen years old. Actually felt sorry for
him because he had no family. He had nothing here.
He was abandoned by his mother when he was very young.
Mamuilio became friends with paulas son Cheui and started to
spend time with the family, even sharing meals with them.
My son and he'd known us since we moved here.
(11:42):
Always noticed that he liked Sa Gradio. But mamue Leo
was far from being a desirable suitor. He was what's
known as a coyote. We arrived here at ninety five.
He was working smuggling people into the United States. Only
did he cross people, but he also cross drugs and all.
Paula and her family lived in Lomas de Puleo, which
(12:04):
at the time was only separated from the US by
a barbed wire fence, so smuggling was an appealing line
of business in the area. For a teenager like Manuelio.
It seemed to offer better prospects than working in a
factory for less than seven dollars a day. Yea often
came to my house asking for water because he was
(12:25):
crossing the US border. Never refused to give him water.
While Paula was concerned about Manuelio's connections to the Huire's underworld,
she also understood his circumstances. He was as poor as
the Flores family, and even more vulnerable because he didn't
have any family of his own, so Paula helped him
(12:46):
out where she could. A few weeks after Sir Garrio's
body was discovered, Manuelio paid her a visit. Paula was
at home grieving, tending to an altar commemorating her daughter,
flowers letters we need the Pooh stuffed toy from the mikiler,
and something about this visit seemed off. Maybe asked me
(13:12):
for water. I told him go ahead fill the gallon.
That time he saw me crying and he said, you
cried too much, stopped crying for her. These were words
that did not seem appropriate to the situation, and the
angered Paula tugging at a suspicion she already felt. Yes.
They turned around and said, you know what, I'll always
(13:33):
curse my daughter's killers, because she didn't deserve to die
that way. And he told me nervously, don't say that,
and they said, yes, that's what I asked all the time.
I curse them. After a few tense moments, Mamoeleo left
with his gallon of water, and Paula returned to the altar.
(13:56):
By this point, she and her family had searched frantically
through the night, posting flies and trying to track down
any leads. She'd yelled to Grio's name desperately into the night.
She'd even broken into a government meeting and begged the
Attorney General on her knees for help, and she'd prayed
and prayed. I would ask God to let my daughter
(14:20):
come to me and tell me who had harmed her,
who had taken her. At night in bed, I would
turn my back to my husband and face the corner
looking for my daughter. You was go on speaking to God.
I told him I'm not good enough to see my daughter,
but allow her to come to me, even if it's
in my dreams. Let her tell me in my dreams.
(14:43):
But I don't know if I was asleep or awake,
but I heard a voice, or you have voice talking
to me softly like yeah, yeah, called me Baula. She
said baola one day yeah, when she spoke without moving,
not knowing if I was asleep, I asked her, is
that you said at you? But as a very clear voice,
(15:05):
she told me yes. I started dreaming of her. In
Durango was a place where water trickles out of stones,
and we collected water to drink from there. And I
saw her kneeling down washing some clothes there. I went
(15:29):
down to her and the first thing I did was
caress her hair and moved it off her face. Her
hair was long, black and wavy. The first thing I
told her was who took you? My daughter? Who hurt you?
Who took you? Tell me who took you? She told
me it was Manueliyo. In the depths of her grief,
(16:00):
after weeks of searching for Cigario with no answers and
no help from the authorities, it seemed to Paula like
her prayers had been answered. She had a name, and
even though it came from a dream, it seemed plausible.
Mammoilio's life as a coyote brought him into contact with
dangerous criminals, but he was someone who Paula knew who
(16:22):
Sigario had known. They'd invited him into their home and
thought of him as a friend, so the next time
he showed up in search of water, Paula challenged him.
At first, Mamoilio denied all knowledge, but Paula had a
relentless conviction in her dream, and ultimately Mammoilio confessed that
he did know something about her daughter's fate. He told me,
(16:47):
you know what the narcos from Elvayo did it, asked him,
what could the narcos from Elvalio have to do with
my daughter? Told me, when they're like a girl, they
find her, no matter the cost. Paula's dreams seemed to
have revealed something to her that she already felt. Mamulio
(17:09):
knew something about Cigario's murder. But who are these other
narcos drug traffickers from Elvaie? How are they involved? When
we come back? Mamuelio appears poised to answer those questions.
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(19:26):
the break, Manuelo told Paula that narcos were responsible for
Sagario's murder. Paula now felt she had something to go on.
The authorities had been unhelpful even after her protest before
the Attorney General, but now she had new information to
share with them, and so she went to the Special
Prosecutor's office in Juarez to ask them for help. At first,
(19:50):
Paula was treated with the usual dismissive attitude, especially when
she told them that the lead began with a dream.
But Paula persisted and ultimately Manuelie was arrested and he
gave the authorities some more details about his part in
so Gloria's fate. In the third class normal statement, he
names two other people. He states that he was paid
(20:11):
five hundred U S. Dollars for taking them to my
daughter's workplace. They brought him people to cross illegally, but
he also crossed drugs for them. This all seemed to
be taking Paula closer and closer to the answer she craved.
But then Manuelo retracted his statement, and in fact, he
entered a new testimony before he was sentenced, saying that
(20:34):
he had acted completely alone. Paula, Jesus, and two of
their children went to the sentencing hearing to challenge him.
I faced him, I told him, tell the truth once
and for all. You didn't act alone. Julie approached him
and said how many times did you stab her? At least?
And then he got scared and he said nod. He
(20:57):
went quiet and said like three, I believe my daughter
had six. Mamoilio didn't even know how many times Sagrario
had been stabbed, and Paula didn't believe a word he
was saying in front of everyone. She pressed him him.
(21:17):
I used to feed you along with my daughters due
to meet with my children. I said, why don't you
tell us the truth at once? Who are you covering
up for? That's how he called the state police. He said,
it's just that they told me that I should just
accuse myself for all of this to be over. Why
(21:41):
would Mamoilio paint himself as a murderer when in fact
he was likely a scout. Why would he be prepared
to take the fall for these other smugglers, and why
would the authorities pressure him to do so? The process
of scapegoating was familiar Sharif the so called Rebelde's gang,
the bus drivers Manuelio. Except Manuelio likely wasn't innocent in
(22:06):
Sagario's disappearance. He had initially confessed that he was an
accessory to a larger crime. Since two thousand and five,
he has served a twenty nine years sentence. You've always
told the authorities if he's getting other people involved, he
didn't just make them up. They said that the emblematic
case of Sagardo has been solved. Murderer was in jail already,
(22:28):
and all I've always said the opposite. But he's not
the only one, and that the authors of the crime
are still free, Gail Minona, Who are the authors of
the crime and how do they remain free? These are
questions Paulett is asking twenty years after her daughter's murder.
(22:50):
But the suspicions and hints we'd heard that there was
a network of scouts in Juarez identifying women to be
murdered by other men were starting to seem more more
plausible to me. Hearing about Paula's dream why she sees
Sagrario again in their hometown in Durango is one of
(23:11):
the moments in our reporting the sticks with me the most.
But Monica, you told me that hearing these kinds of
dreams from family members is something I've experienced before. Yes.
So it was the aunt of a young woman who
went missing in twenty ten, and she also describes a
dream very similar to Paula's dream, in which she's invoking
(23:36):
her missing niece and imploring her to please tell her
where are you? Who did this to? You? Help me
solve this crime. And I think those dreams are born
out of desperation, just the sheer desperation and impotence that
these families feel not being able to rely on the
(24:01):
authorities whose job it is to find those responsible. And
yet even if the authorities don't want to acknowledge it,
once you hear this story about Manuelio alongside Alfredo's story,
the connections seem hard to dispute. I mean, there's these
chilling parallels between what Manuelio tells Paula and what this
(24:23):
drug dealer witness tells Alfredo. Manuelio was just an adolescent,
a young man, and really, I mean, the way these
drug traffickers recruit young men like him is they say, hey, look,
this is all you have to do. They make it
seem very simple. Here's what you have to do, and
here's what we're going to pay you. And for a
lot of these immigrants in what is who don't necessarily
(24:46):
have the family ties that they used to back in
their hometowns in the interior of Mexico, joining a gang
or the drug cartel offers that connection of family that
they may have lost. But the tradeoff is he has
to then answer to the underworld. There's no justice system
(25:06):
in drug trafficking. If you run a foul of the cartel,
that's typically a death sentence. Manuelio most certainly knew this,
so when he got orders, he knew that his choice
was either to follow those orders or kiss his life goodbye.
And of all people, it feels like Paula Flores understood this.
(25:29):
That was something very remarkable to me, is that there's
a part of her that pities him, that feels sympathy
for him being in this impossible situation. As of today,
Manuelio is in jail, and his official confession states that
he acted alone, that as a sixteen year old, he
(25:49):
abducted and killed Sagrio, the daughter of the family who
gave him water as he smuggled people through the desert.
The authorities never followed up on his initial confession to
Power about the narticles from Elvae. Rather than acknowledging a
potential network, they preferred to blame individuals, and despite mounting
(26:09):
evidence pointing to organization behind the murders, there was an
enduring suspicion on both sides of the border that a
serial killer was at work in Huirez. That's what brought
candiscrophic there in the nineteen nineties. She's a forensic criminologist
at Fresno State University. I was trained by FBI profilers
(26:32):
in Quantico, Virginia as a psychologist. My background is consistent
with the kinds of things that the agents are learning
about mental disorders, various forms of psychopathology, and how they
may leave clues at crime scenes. But basically it was
drilling down case after case trying to identify patterns of
(26:54):
behavior that could be reflective of the kind of person
that would perpetrate that kind of crime. Candice went to
Huirez with her friend and colleague, Robert Wrestler. He was
a retired FBI agent who had helped create the bureau's
Behavioral Science unit. He was one of the world's top
experts on serial killers. In fact, he's credited with coining
(27:17):
the term. Candice and Wrestler were in Juarez at the
invitation of an American public safety advisor to the Huire's authorities,
so Candice got access to the case files. I saw
the homicide photographs, I went through all the autopsy reports
and things, and without doubt in my mind, there was
(27:37):
one serial murderer operating who was getting the little girls
and the young adolescent girls in terms of patterns of behavior.
As Candice reviewed the case files, it became clear to
her that there was a serial killer operating in Huires,
someone praying on very young victims, but the murders of
Cigarrio and Lilie Lejandra didn't match that patter and noted
(28:01):
many others. What stun Candice was that there was clearly
something else biker going on in the city as well,
something on a scale she'd never seen before. Were most
of these hundreds of murders where they attributed to serial killers,
while not in the traditional sense. There was one crime
scene in particular that Candice examined which confirmed to her
(28:24):
that what was happening in Juarez was unlike anything else
she'd ever encountered, and as a warning, her description is
very upsetting. Well. One of the bodies was left on
the outskirts of Warez, and they had clearly driven her.
They because of the numbers of footprints, they had abducted her,
driven her, got out of the truck and made her
(28:47):
walk without her shoes into the semi desert area where
presumably they raped her repeatedly and strangled her and just
left her exposed nude legs spread open, just showing their
(29:12):
their disgust of her. So the first person that would
walk upon the crime scene as it were, would be
met with her legs open. Candice was deeply shocked despite
(29:37):
her years of experience investigating serial killing and sexual crime.
In fact, even Robert Wrestler was taken aback. I asked
Agent Wrestler about that, because he has more experience and
homicide and his little finger than I have in my
whole body. And I said, Bob, have you ever seen
anything like this in your career when your experience And
(30:00):
he said no, I haven't. The men that I study
mostly they operate alone. I mean, I think about it.
If I were intent upon killing a number of people
as long as I could, I don't think i'd want
anybody watching me do it. Certainly they could turn me in.
How would I know I could trust them with this?
(30:20):
So I started thinking, how could all of these men
trust each other? What if one of them goes to
the bar and start shooting his mouth off about their
latest victim. And then I realized he's not going to
be doing that, because there is a pact. If it's
not spoken, it's certainly unspoken that if you start turning
(30:44):
any of us in, pointing any fingers in any of us,
we think you love your family, and we'll kill them first.
What Candice was describing went beyond killing for pleasure. It
was killing as a bonding ritual, a new definition of
(31:04):
serial killing. According to our analysis, one of the key
reasons why so many women were murdered in Juarez was
to create a code of loyalty and silence. The murders
were not a side effect of cartel violence. They were
a crucial part of how it worked. But if this
was apparent from the crime scenes and even from the
(31:27):
testimony of lower level cartel affiliates, why didn't the authorities
not take more decisive action? While Candice and Robert Wrestler
traveled to Juarez as private individuals, but not long after
their trip, the FBI launched an official operation in Juarez
to learn more about how the cartel operated. It was
(31:49):
led by Frank Evans, who was assistant Special Agent in
charge of the FBI's El Paso office from nineteen ninety
eight the Sagrario went missing to two thousand. My name's
Frank Evans, and while I was in the FBI, I
had the opportunity to work violent crimes, kidnappings, extortions, organized crime,
(32:12):
of course, drug investigations or what ultimately brought me to
the FBI office in El Paso. So what interested the
El Paso FBI in the hottest cartel well at that time. Obviously,
the Warrest cartel was a major mover of contraband in
the United States, any kind of drug that could be moved, marijuana, cocaine.
The cartel controlled they called the Warres Corridor. Wires's position
(32:37):
across the border from El Paso made it one of
the world's most sought after drug trafficking routs, and the
cartel acted with extraordinary violence to protect that turf. And
this violence didn't respect nationality. So in nineteen ninety nine,
the FBI received a tip that a number of American
men had been killed by the cartel in Mexico. If
(32:59):
they could prove of these murders of American citizens, they
could secure an indictment for the leader of the Juires cartel,
the Sente Gario Fuentes. The FBI wanted to have him
arrested and extradited for trial in the US, and they
were given unprecedented jurisdiction by the Mexican government to cross
the border to recover and analyze the bodies. The mission
(33:19):
was called Operation Plaza Sweep. I mean we crossed in
with food, water, portable toilets, heavy machinery, forensic equipment. We
actually had an entire forensic morgue in the FBI space
here in El Paso, and the scale of the investigation
(33:42):
was extremely large. You know, the cartel didn't have taco
stands waiting for us, and you know called drink stands.
They were truly shocked that you now have one hundred
and twenty FBI agents with equipment coming into Mexico. How
did you know there were shock on their behalf? You know,
Bertie's told us listening. You know, potentially one of Frank's
(34:12):
goals when he arrived in Juarez was to evaluate how
evidence was connected and stalled, and he discovered some fundamental problems.
Many of the crime scenes were contaminated. In some cases,
the bodies were discovered and you know, okay, guys, when
you discover one, don't touch it. Let your forensics people
(34:35):
come in. Well, then the forensics people come in, they
turn the body over and there's fresh cigarette butts under
the body. Well, when you check into it and you
find out the cigarette butts belonged to the detective that
was there first, Well, wait a minute, you didn't touch
the body. No, no, I didn't touch the body. Well,
how did your cigarette butts get under the body? Oh,
(34:55):
you know, the media wanted to take some pictures, so
I rolled the body over and it must have happened that.
How does this occur, Well, it doesn't occur by accident,
it occurs by design. If you have a contaminated crime scene,
you can't tie it successfully to a subject or subjects.
(35:16):
To Frank, it appeared the crime scenes were being purposely
disturbed by the very people whose job it was to
preserve them. When you don't follow your established protocols, you
are ensuring that any evidence that is recovered is going
to be almost impossible to introduce a trial. You undermined everything.
(35:39):
Frank was discovering that it wasn't the exception for crime
scenes to be tampered with in Huirez, It was the norm,
and it prevented crimes from ever being solved. The killings
Frank was initially concerned with were murders of men committed
by the cartel, But then he had an idea. What
if the FBNI also offered to help the local please
(36:00):
get to the bottom of the women's murders. When we
come back, we learn what came of that offer. During
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to learn more. Hi there, I'm doctor John White, WebMD's
(37:08):
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 doesn't have to be as scary as
it sounds. I was outside shoveling snow and I noticed
I was coughing up flim unbeknownst to me, I left
(37:30):
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 apnea, I had a lot of
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(37:52):
when that occurred that I thought something was seriously wrong.
Listen to Health Discovered on the iHeartRadio appreever you get
your podcasts. Before the break, Frank Evans was describing his
(38:19):
work to exhume bodies as part of Operation Plaza Sweep,
an FBI effort to secure an indictment against the Huias
cartel leader for the murder of American citizens. In that investigation,
his Mexican counterparts were from the federal police, but one
in quires Franks or an opportunity to offer the FBI's
resources to the local and state police to help solve
(38:43):
the murders of women. Part of it was selfish. We
were trying to see can we work with anybody locally,
you know, is it possible that there's a local group
that might be able to be vetted into Plaza sweep.
You know, we have resources that we will make available
to you as you look at these harmicides. We will
give you the best minds the FBI has in criminal
(39:06):
profiling to look at your case and tell you what
they think. Specifically, Frank offer access to the FBI's analysts
at Quantico, the men and women who'd been trained in
Robert Wrestler's approach to forensic psychology. The officials in Huis accepted,
and as they've done with Candice, they handed out the
case files. We were given seventy six files, each file
(39:31):
representing one of the deceased. The profilers took those files,
they went through them just like they would a file
that would be provided by a United States law enforcement entity,
and they identified thirty four cases that had items of
interest that they wanted to explore further. Thirty four of
(39:52):
the seventy six files shared by the police had common
characteristics indicating to the FBI profiles that the people may
have been involved in the murders. This felt like a
potentially huge break. Then something happened that told Frank everything
he needed to know about his partners in Mexico. It
(40:12):
was at that point that the authorities, the State Attorney
General's Office of Chihuahua, it was like, oh, we've gotten
the FBI reports and they agree with us one hundred
percent and case closed. In fact, they claimed that the
FBI's reports confirmed the guilt of Abdel Latif Sharif Sharif,
the Egyptian chemist who stood accused of both being a
(40:34):
serial killer and then paying a gang to commit murders
on his behalf in order to prove his innocence. They
distorted what the report said in order to validate the
position that they had been espousing. But why why the
failure after failure to resolve these crimes once and for all,
(40:55):
we had evidence that, unfortunately I am not at liberty
to go into too, that the handling of the femicide
cases was not in accordance with accepted police procedure. And
the assumption is it is either than gross incompetence on
the part of the police officials or it's deliberate. You know,
(41:18):
you can only be incompetent so many times you can't
be incompetent three hundred plus times. From our perspective, it
showed that there wasn't a real commitment to resolve the femicides.
Do you ever know? Could you tell why why there
was a lack? No? We speculated, Well, our speculation was
(41:40):
that when you don't want a crime to be solved,
it's because the resolution of it is going to be
extremely either embarrassing to somebody in power, or it's going
to come back to you, you being the law enforcement authorities.
The law enforcement authorities, Was it possible they weren't just
(42:04):
failing to solve the murders of women, but actively involved
in them. Could this explain why decades of murders had
gone unsolved? Well, Alfredo's reporting was also beginning to suggest
this might be the case. So Alfredo ultimately did feel
that he could trust what he'd heard from that drug
(42:25):
dealer in the Houire's prison, Monica, and he went to
print with a huge story. How did he get there, Well,
he paired up with another colleague, and together they backed
up the witness's account with intelligence from federal law enforcement
from the US and Mexico. One of the law enforcement
(42:48):
accounts that Alfredo prints in his story is an unnamed
US official who cites ry intelligence and he says, quote,
all you have to do is put together a simple
investigative equation of why and how, and you get to
the who why because they can because there's a sense
(43:09):
of excitement, a sense of and erotic feeling. Cicadios that is,
hitmen fit the profile. There is no limit anymore to
what they can do. They enjoy the feeling of ecstasy,
the orgies. The women are like trophies for them. They
are thrill kills. These guys like the feeling of control.
(43:31):
But they need help, and that's where the local and
state police come in. I hate that quote, but I
don't doubt it's true. Alfredo was able to verify that
the very police who were supposed to be protecting the
public and investigating the crimes were actually the ones committing
(43:53):
the crimes. When you read that first article on the
front page of the Dallas Morning News, I mean it
was huge. Alfredo's story went to print in February two
thousand and four. Later on, he reprinted the drug dealers
play by play account in his book Midnight in Mexico
(44:17):
to have it debate him we asked him to read
it aloud. The cops would first identify potential victims study
their routine. It wasn't hard to lure the women. Police
would stopped at them on the street as they got
off work and tell them that a family member was
missing or something had happened to their child, and wouldn't
they please get in the backseat of the police car.
(44:41):
The cops would then transport them to the parties, where
they would be gang raped. By the end, the women
always knew too much and they would killed. This would
explain the lackluster search for Cigario. It would explain why
when witnesses is reported seeing Lily Alexander struggling, the police
(45:03):
logbook for the night says nothing to report. This was
a conspiracy and it wouldn't have been uncovered without the
work of journalists like Alfredo. This is how journalism is
supposed to work. This is why we need a strong
and robust press. It took the combination of these Mexican
(45:25):
reporters who first wrote about these crimes beginning in nineteen
ninety three, then Diana calling attention to the systematic nature
of the murders, and Alfredo confirming the corruption behind it.
But this isn't where the story ends. I mean, the
corrupt cops are only part of the equation. Alfredo had
(45:50):
finally corroborated what Dante's source had told him, and it
exposed the involvement of certain police officers. But if law
enforcement agents were acting on behalf of the cartel, how
far did the influence of organized crime reach? And who
else was complicit in the abduction and murder of women.
(46:11):
On his journey to answer those questions, Alfredo paid a
visit to the corridors of power in Mexico City, and
he came into contact with a force that seemed far
more menacing than corrupt cops. Yeah, I mean, I mean,
I'm in the heart of se Alquie is in downtown quiet,
near the cathedral, near the park, and I'm walking away
(46:33):
and there's a number comes in and the sun of
number is just unknown. It says unknown on your says
unown on the phone, and the person says a key
or lad Lize's face, what's that in English? I'm right
behind you. On the sixteenth of September, Avenue I was
being watched. Alfredo was scared, and he turned to the
(46:57):
only person he could think of Aunte. It was the
first time I saw Dante and at that he looks worried,
and then he finally says yeah the chaste, which means
you're fucked. I said why, He says, they're aren'to you?
La Lina's aunto you. In the next episode, Alfredo makes
(47:25):
a break for safety. He tries to understand what La
Line is and what their role might be in the murders.
I'm as Floshen and I'm Monica. See you next time?
Do you know? See? Do you know? I love Velicia?
(48:22):
Forgotten The Women of Juarez is co hosted by Me
Monica and me oswal Oshin. Forgotten is executive produced by
Me and Mangesh Hattiga. Our producers are Julian Weller and
Katrina Norvell. Sound editing by Julian Weller, Jacopo Penzo and
Aaron Kaufman. Lucas Riley is our story editor. Caitlin Thompson
(48:47):
is our consulting producer. Recording assistance this episode from Alice
Daniel and Michael Perez. Production support from Emily Maronoff and
Aaron Kaufman. Our theme tune is rich in Thought as
performed by Natalia. Music by Leonardo Heblum and Hakkabo Libermann.
(49:07):
Additional music by Aaron Kaufman. Carla Tassara is the voice
actor for Paula Flores. Hello beautiful, I name you are
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dot CEO. Forgotten is a production of ihont Media and
Unusual Productions. Before we start. This podcast contains accounts which
some listeners will find disturbing, but without them, the story
can't be fully understood. Please take care while listening last
(01:50):
time on Forgotten. At the beginning, I thought it was
a typical case of a Serra killer, but it appeared
so highly organized group. The fact that a lawyer is
murdered in such a public way or should we call
ourn execution, indicates that we're talking about something very big
(02:12):
behind these murders. If you really want to know the
underbelly of what, you need to talk to the Devil's lawyer,
Dante Dante, very smart decided to hide this guy too
coment to present under false charges under a different name.
He would always leave me with a little titbit, and
(02:34):
one of them was this guy's alive if you're interested.
It was two thousand and three and Alfredo Coccado was
in Juarez with an assignment from the Dallas Morning News
find out who is kidding the women and why? Alfredo,
who had been asking everyone he could think of, but
(02:55):
no one seemed able to give him answers. Finally, Estas
Kanda introduced him to Dante almaras, the so called Devil's lawyer,
and Dante did not disappoint. He had a drug dealer
on the run hidden in the Horre's prison, who claimed
firsthand knowledge of the killings. The fact that you had
(03:16):
an eye witness was incredibly important, he alleged, and I
had no reason to not beloon, but it alleged to
be part of the why scottel And it finally worked
out where I was able to visit this person under
what as m was an alias. But we talked long
and long, and I kept asking, so why are these
(03:37):
women being killed? Alfreda was apparently on the verge of
getting the story, but just like Dante, the source didn't
give up all his information at once, and the thing
that really kind of cut my eyeway said, you know,
these are women who are coming from other parts of
the country, who if they go miss him for a
day or two or a week, no one's going to
(04:00):
miss him immediately. And so you know, little things started clicking.
So here was Alfredo sitting in a jail cell in
Juarez when, to his surprise, this alleged cartel member started
giving him specifics. I had a night witness who alleged
that he had been at these parties or these women
(04:22):
would be brought into and I mean they would turn
into orgies or rapes, and eventually the women would be
killed because they knew too much. Alfredo was shocked, although
more so when the witness went on to explain that
the women were taken off the streets to celebrate successful
drug runs to the US. So this was the first
(04:45):
time that I might talking to someone facebook face and
he's given me an account, a night witness account, and
we're like, there's no way we can report that unless
we really get as much evidence as possible. Alfredo had
a shocking but potentially plausible explanation for what was happening
(05:08):
to the women in Huires, But could he trust the information.
After all, he had heard the account from a drug
dealer who wants to save his own skin, who he
met through an underworld lawyer, himself openly on a quest
for revenge. At times, you feel like an American Joey.
I feel like everybody's sort of playing you, you know.
(05:28):
But if it was true, it opened up all kinds
of new questions. How could the men act with such
brutality and impunity? Who else knew what Alfredo had just
been told and who might be complicit in covering it up.
I'm as Voloshi and I'm this is forgotten. The women
(05:50):
are by you know, do you know? Hala Felicia. So
(06:31):
just months earlier, Monica Alfredo's in DC interviewing presidents and ambassadors,
and now he's in a jail cell in Juarez, interviewing
a drug dealer with Dante by his side. How does
he get here? Something to remember here is that Alfredo
ended up in this jail cell out of naivety more
(06:55):
so than astute planning. He's convinced that all of Mexico's
problems will disappear now that it has free and fair elections,
and he's on his way to Mexico City to cover
this progress. Wattis was only supposed to be a pit stop.
He's now waited into the nether world and Dante was
(07:18):
his link. And how do you make sense of this
nether world where Dante of a Dandie operates and where
he's did Alfredo, Well, that's a big question. In Mexico.
There are these two parallel universes that coexist, the one
that's visible on the surface and the one that's not.
(07:39):
And it's that invisible universe that operates completely outside the
rule of law. It's the one everyone knows exists, but
nobody talks about. To talk about it openly is to
ask for trouble because this realm is ruled by organized crime,
(07:59):
and this is where Alfredo's witness operates. But Alfredo's mission
is to find out who is killing the women of
Hottas and to answer that question, you really have no
choice but to tread into the Hottis underworld as a
reporter who's been relentlessly asking who's doing this, who's behind
(08:20):
the murders, who's responsible. What do you think Alfredo's thinking
when he was hearing this testimony. Well, I'm certain that
Alfredo was feeling a mix of giddiness and fear because
you're starting to tread past an invisible line where you
go from the traditional, reliable sources into this grayer world.
(08:47):
And I mean, as you might imagine, he's blown away
by this account, but he knows that as a good journalist,
he just can't take this account and put it in
the newspaper. Everyone you interview will have an agenda, probably
most especially a drug trafficker, So you can't just take
a witness account at face value. You have to get
(09:09):
confirmation from multiple sources. Alfredo had a potentially huge break
about the connection between the women's murders and organized crime
in Huirez, but he couldn't go to print without verifying
the information was true. And in that sense, Alfredo's journey
was just beginning. And meanwhile, he wasn't the only person
(09:31):
who was still asking questions about who was responsible for
the murders of women in Huirez. By this point, Paula
Flores had been trying to establish who was responsible for
her daughter's murder for five years, and they've been long years.
Paula was prepared to tell Sir Glorio's story again and
again to keep her memory alive and in the hope
(09:52):
it might bring her closer to the answer she craved.
She got increasingly involved in activism with the mothers of
other victims. But back when Sagario first went missing, Paula
told us her son Chewi took it very hard. Before
she disappeared, she had bought a cassette of Los Demidradios
(10:13):
and we had a van an arrow Star that they
bought between themselves. In those days, she would insist that
Julie play the cassette in the van because she didn't
know how to work it, and she would tell Julie
play the cassette, play that the Meidandios cassette, and Juie
would say, quit being a pest, I'll put it on
in a second. He would stall and not do it.
(10:35):
After she disappeared, my son would lock himself in that
van with the cassette and he would play that music
and just cry because it reminded him of her. Before
moving to Juarez, Paula has sent letters to her husband Jesus,
(10:57):
asking if the city was safe for their six daughters.
She'd heard about the murders there and was concerned about
cholos or gang members in the neighborhood. Jesus replied that
there weren't any just a boy who hung around with
his sister. And after the family moved to Juarez, they
got to know this boy, he was called Mamuelo, was
(11:19):
a boy about sixteen years old. Actually felt sorry for
him because he had no family. He had nothing here.
He was abandoned by his mother when he was very young.
Mamuilio became friends with paulas son Cheui and started to
spend time with the family, even sharing meals with them.
My son and he'd known us since we moved here.
(11:42):
Always noticed that he liked Sa Gradio. But mamue Leo
was far from being a desirable suitor. He was what's
known as a coyote. We arrived here at ninety five.
He was working smuggling people into the United States. Only
did he cross people, but he also cross drugs and all.
Paula and her family lived in Lomas de Puleo, which
(12:04):
at the time was only separated from the US by
a barbed wire fence, so smuggling was an appealing line
of business in the area. For a teenager like Manuelio.
It seemed to offer better prospects than working in a
factory for less than seven dollars a day. Yea often
came to my house asking for water because he was
(12:25):
crossing the US border. Never refused to give him water.
While Paula was concerned about Manuelio's connections to the Huire's underworld,
she also understood his circumstances. He was as poor as
the Flores family, and even more vulnerable because he didn't
have any family of his own, so Paula helped him
(12:46):
out where she could. A few weeks after Sir Garrio's
body was discovered, Manuelio paid her a visit. Paula was
at home grieving, tending to an altar commemorating her daughter,
flowers letters we need the Pooh stuffed toy from the mikiler,
and something about this visit seemed off. Maybe asked me
(13:12):
for water. I told him go ahead fill the gallon.
That time he saw me crying and he said, you
cried too much, stopped crying for her. These were words
that did not seem appropriate to the situation, and the
angered Paula tugging at a suspicion she already felt. Yes.
They turned around and said, you know what, I'll always
(13:33):
curse my daughter's killers, because she didn't deserve to die
that way. And he told me nervously, don't say that,
and they said, yes, that's what I asked all the time.
I curse them. After a few tense moments, Mamoeleo left
with his gallon of water, and Paula returned to the altar.
(13:56):
By this point, she and her family had searched frantically
through the night, posting flies and trying to track down
any leads. She'd yelled to Grio's name desperately into the night.
She'd even broken into a government meeting and begged the
Attorney General on her knees for help, and she'd prayed
and prayed. I would ask God to let my daughter
(14:20):
come to me and tell me who had harmed her,
who had taken her. At night in bed, I would
turn my back to my husband and face the corner
looking for my daughter. You was go on speaking to God.
I told him I'm not good enough to see my daughter,
but allow her to come to me, even if it's
in my dreams. Let her tell me in my dreams.
(14:43):
But I don't know if I was asleep or awake,
but I heard a voice, or you have voice talking
to me softly like yeah, yeah, called me Baula. She
said baola one day yeah, when she spoke without moving,
not knowing if I was asleep, I asked her, is
that you said at you? But as a very clear voice,
(15:05):
she told me yes. I started dreaming of her. In
Durango was a place where water trickles out of stones,
and we collected water to drink from there. And I
saw her kneeling down washing some clothes there. I went
(15:29):
down to her and the first thing I did was
caress her hair and moved it off her face. Her
hair was long, black and wavy. The first thing I
told her was who took you? My daughter? Who hurt you?
Who took you? Tell me who took you? She told
me it was Manueliyo. In the depths of her grief,
(16:00):
after weeks of searching for Cigario with no answers and
no help from the authorities, it seemed to Paula like
her prayers had been answered. She had a name, and
even though it came from a dream, it seemed plausible.
Mammoilio's life as a coyote brought him into contact with
dangerous criminals, but he was someone who Paula knew who
(16:22):
Sigario had known. They'd invited him into their home and
thought of him as a friend, so the next time
he showed up in search of water, Paula challenged him.
At first, Mamoilio denied all knowledge, but Paula had a
relentless conviction in her dream, and ultimately Mammoilio confessed that
he did know something about her daughter's fate. He told me,
(16:47):
you know what the narcos from Elvayo did it, asked him,
what could the narcos from Elvalio have to do with
my daughter? Told me, when they're like a girl, they
find her, no matter the cost. Paula's dreams seemed to
have revealed something to her that she already felt. Mamulio
(17:09):
knew something about Cigario's murder. But who are these other
narcos drug traffickers from Elvaie? How are they involved? When
we come back? Mamuelio appears poised to answer those questions.
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(19:26):
the break, Manuelo told Paula that narcos were responsible for
Sagario's murder. Paula now felt she had something to go on.
The authorities had been unhelpful even after her protest before
the Attorney General, but now she had new information to
share with them, and so she went to the Special
Prosecutor's office in Juarez to ask them for help. At first,
(19:50):
Paula was treated with the usual dismissive attitude, especially when
she told them that the lead began with a dream.
But Paula persisted and ultimately Manuelie was arrested and he
gave the authorities some more details about his part in
so Gloria's fate. In the third class normal statement, he
names two other people. He states that he was paid
(20:11):
five hundred U S. Dollars for taking them to my
daughter's workplace. They brought him people to cross illegally, but
he also crossed drugs for them. This all seemed to
be taking Paula closer and closer to the answer she craved.
But then Manuelo retracted his statement, and in fact, he
entered a new testimony before he was sentenced, saying that
(20:34):
he had acted completely alone. Paula, Jesus, and two of
their children went to the sentencing hearing to challenge him.
I faced him, I told him, tell the truth once
and for all. You didn't act alone. Julie approached him
and said how many times did you stab her? At least?
And then he got scared and he said nod. He
(20:57):
went quiet and said like three, I believe my daughter
had six. Mamoilio didn't even know how many times Sagrario
had been stabbed, and Paula didn't believe a word he
was saying in front of everyone. She pressed him him.
(21:17):
I used to feed you along with my daughters due
to meet with my children. I said, why don't you
tell us the truth at once? Who are you covering
up for? That's how he called the state police. He said,
it's just that they told me that I should just
accuse myself for all of this to be over. Why
(21:41):
would Mamoilio paint himself as a murderer when in fact
he was likely a scout. Why would he be prepared
to take the fall for these other smugglers, and why
would the authorities pressure him to do so? The process
of scapegoating was familiar Sharif the so called Rebelde's gang,
the bus drivers Manuelio. Except Manuelio likely wasn't innocent in
(22:06):
Sagario's disappearance. He had initially confessed that he was an
accessory to a larger crime. Since two thousand and five,
he has served a twenty nine years sentence. You've always
told the authorities if he's getting other people involved, he
didn't just make them up. They said that the emblematic
case of Sagardo has been solved. Murderer was in jail already,
(22:28):
and all I've always said the opposite. But he's not
the only one, and that the authors of the crime
are still free, Gail Minona, Who are the authors of
the crime and how do they remain free? These are
questions Paulett is asking twenty years after her daughter's murder.
(22:50):
But the suspicions and hints we'd heard that there was
a network of scouts in Juarez identifying women to be
murdered by other men were starting to seem more more
plausible to me. Hearing about Paula's dream why she sees
Sagrario again in their hometown in Durango is one of
(23:11):
the moments in our reporting the sticks with me the most.
But Monica, you told me that hearing these kinds of
dreams from family members is something I've experienced before. Yes.
So it was the aunt of a young woman who
went missing in twenty ten, and she also describes a
dream very similar to Paula's dream, in which she's invoking
(23:36):
her missing niece and imploring her to please tell her
where are you? Who did this to? You? Help me
solve this crime. And I think those dreams are born
out of desperation, just the sheer desperation and impotence that
these families feel not being able to rely on the
(24:01):
authorities whose job it is to find those responsible. And
yet even if the authorities don't want to acknowledge it,
once you hear this story about Manuelio alongside Alfredo's story,
the connections seem hard to dispute. I mean, there's these
chilling parallels between what Manuelio tells Paula and what this
(24:23):
drug dealer witness tells Alfredo. Manuelio was just an adolescent,
a young man, and really, I mean, the way these
drug traffickers recruit young men like him is they say, hey, look,
this is all you have to do. They make it
seem very simple. Here's what you have to do, and
here's what we're going to pay you. And for a
lot of these immigrants in what is who don't necessarily
(24:46):
have the family ties that they used to back in
their hometowns in the interior of Mexico, joining a gang
or the drug cartel offers that connection of family that
they may have lost. But the tradeoff is he has
to then answer to the underworld. There's no justice system
(25:06):
in drug trafficking. If you run a foul of the cartel,
that's typically a death sentence. Manuelio most certainly knew this,
so when he got orders, he knew that his choice
was either to follow those orders or kiss his life goodbye.
And of all people, it feels like Paula Flores understood this.
(25:29):
That was something very remarkable to me, is that there's
a part of her that pities him, that feels sympathy
for him being in this impossible situation. As of today,
Manuelio is in jail, and his official confession states that
he acted alone, that as a sixteen year old, he
(25:49):
abducted and killed Sagrio, the daughter of the family who
gave him water as he smuggled people through the desert.
The authorities never followed up on his initial confession to
Power about the narticles from Elvae. Rather than acknowledging a
potential network, they preferred to blame individuals, and despite mounting
(26:09):
evidence pointing to organization behind the murders, there was an
enduring suspicion on both sides of the border that a
serial killer was at work in Huirez. That's what brought
candiscrophic there in the nineteen nineties. She's a forensic criminologist
at Fresno State University. I was trained by FBI profilers
(26:32):
in Quantico, Virginia as a psychologist. My background is consistent
with the kinds of things that the agents are learning
about mental disorders, various forms of psychopathology, and how they
may leave clues at crime scenes. But basically it was
drilling down case after case trying to identify patterns of
(26:54):
behavior that could be reflective of the kind of person
that would perpetrate that kind of crime. Candice went to
Huirez with her friend and colleague, Robert Wrestler. He was
a retired FBI agent who had helped create the bureau's
Behavioral Science unit. He was one of the world's top
experts on serial killers. In fact, he's credited with coining
(27:17):
the term. Candice and Wrestler were in Juarez at the
invitation of an American public safety advisor to the Huire's authorities,
so Candice got access to the case files. I saw
the homicide photographs, I went through all the autopsy reports
and things, and without doubt in my mind, there was
(27:37):
one serial murderer operating who was getting the little girls
and the young adolescent girls in terms of patterns of behavior.
As Candice reviewed the case files, it became clear to
her that there was a serial killer operating in Huires,
someone praying on very young victims, but the murders of
Cigarrio and Lilie Lejandra didn't match that patter and noted
(28:01):
many others. What stun Candice was that there was clearly
something else biker going on in the city as well,
something on a scale she'd never seen before. Were most
of these hundreds of murders where they attributed to serial killers,
while not in the traditional sense. There was one crime
scene in particular that Candice examined which confirmed to her
(28:24):
that what was happening in Juarez was unlike anything else
she'd ever encountered, and as a warning, her description is
very upsetting. Well. One of the bodies was left on
the outskirts of Warez, and they had clearly driven her.
They because of the numbers of footprints, they had abducted her,
driven her, got out of the truck and made her
(28:47):
walk without her shoes into the semi desert area where
presumably they raped her repeatedly and strangled her and just
left her exposed nude legs spread open, just showing their
(29:12):
their disgust of her. So the first person that would
walk upon the crime scene as it were, would be
met with her legs open. Candice was deeply shocked despite
(29:37):
her years of experience investigating serial killing and sexual crime.
In fact, even Robert Wrestler was taken aback. I asked
Agent Wrestler about that, because he has more experience and
homicide and his little finger than I have in my
whole body. And I said, Bob, have you ever seen
anything like this in your career when your experience And
(30:00):
he said no, I haven't. The men that I study
mostly they operate alone. I mean, I think about it.
If I were intent upon killing a number of people
as long as I could, I don't think i'd want
anybody watching me do it. Certainly they could turn me in.
How would I know I could trust them with this?
(30:20):
So I started thinking, how could all of these men
trust each other? What if one of them goes to
the bar and start shooting his mouth off about their
latest victim. And then I realized he's not going to
be doing that, because there is a pact. If it's
not spoken, it's certainly unspoken that if you start turning
(30:44):
any of us in, pointing any fingers in any of us,
we think you love your family, and we'll kill them first.
What Candice was describing went beyond killing for pleasure. It
was killing as a bonding ritual, a new definition of
(31:04):
serial killing. According to our analysis, one of the key
reasons why so many women were murdered in Juarez was
to create a code of loyalty and silence. The murders
were not a side effect of cartel violence. They were
a crucial part of how it worked. But if this
was apparent from the crime scenes and even from the
(31:27):
testimony of lower level cartel affiliates, why didn't the authorities
not take more decisive action? While Candice and Robert Wrestler
traveled to Juarez as private individuals, but not long after
their trip, the FBI launched an official operation in Juarez
to learn more about how the cartel operated. It was
(31:49):
led by Frank Evans, who was assistant Special Agent in
charge of the FBI's El Paso office from nineteen ninety
eight the Sagrario went missing to two thousand. My name's
Frank Evans, and while I was in the FBI, I
had the opportunity to work violent crimes, kidnappings, extortions, organized crime,
(32:12):
of course, drug investigations or what ultimately brought me to
the FBI office in El Paso. So what interested the
El Paso FBI in the hottest cartel well at that time. Obviously,
the Warrest cartel was a major mover of contraband in
the United States, any kind of drug that could be moved, marijuana, cocaine.
The cartel controlled they called the Warres Corridor. Wires's position
(32:37):
across the border from El Paso made it one of
the world's most sought after drug trafficking routs, and the
cartel acted with extraordinary violence to protect that turf. And
this violence didn't respect nationality. So in nineteen ninety nine,
the FBI received a tip that a number of American
men had been killed by the cartel in Mexico. If
(32:59):
they could prove of these murders of American citizens, they
could secure an indictment for the leader of the Juires cartel,
the Sente Gario Fuentes. The FBI wanted to have him
arrested and extradited for trial in the US, and they
were given unprecedented jurisdiction by the Mexican government to cross
the border to recover and analyze the bodies. The mission
(33:19):
was called Operation Plaza Sweep. I mean we crossed in
with food, water, portable toilets, heavy machinery, forensic equipment. We
actually had an entire forensic morgue in the FBI space
here in El Paso, and the scale of the investigation
(33:42):
was extremely large. You know, the cartel didn't have taco
stands waiting for us, and you know called drink stands.
They were truly shocked that you now have one hundred
and twenty FBI agents with equipment coming into Mexico. How
did you know there were shock on their behalf? You know,
Bertie's told us listening. You know, potentially one of Frank's
(34:12):
goals when he arrived in Juarez was to evaluate how
evidence was connected and stalled, and he discovered some fundamental problems.
Many of the crime scenes were contaminated. In some cases,
the bodies were discovered and you know, okay, guys, when
you discover one, don't touch it. Let your forensics people
(34:35):
come in. Well, then the forensics people come in, they
turn the body over and there's fresh cigarette butts under
the body. Well, when you check into it and you
find out the cigarette butts belonged to the detective that
was there first, Well, wait a minute, you didn't touch
the body. No, no, I didn't touch the body. Well,
how did your cigarette butts get under the body? Oh,
(34:55):
you know, the media wanted to take some pictures, so
I rolled the body over and it must have happened that.
How does this occur, Well, it doesn't occur by accident,
it occurs by design. If you have a contaminated crime scene,
you can't tie it successfully to a subject or subjects.
(35:16):
To Frank, it appeared the crime scenes were being purposely
disturbed by the very people whose job it was to
preserve them. When you don't follow your established protocols, you
are ensuring that any evidence that is recovered is going
to be almost impossible to introduce a trial. You undermined everything.
(35:39):
Frank was discovering that it wasn't the exception for crime
scenes to be tampered with in Huirez, It was the norm,
and it prevented crimes from ever being solved. The killings
Frank was initially concerned with were murders of men committed
by the cartel, But then he had an idea. What
if the FBNI also offered to help the local please
(36:00):
get to the bottom of the women's murders. When we
come back, we learn what came of that offer. During
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(37:08):
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 doesn't have to be as scary as
it sounds. I was outside shoveling snow and I noticed
I was coughing up flim unbeknownst to me, I left
(37:30):
a trail of blood behind me, and I was one sign. Now.
Of course, prior to I was excessively gaining weight. I
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(37:52):
when that occurred that I thought something was seriously wrong.
Listen to Health Discovered on the iHeartRadio appreever you get
your podcasts. Before the break, Frank Evans was describing his
(38:19):
work to exhume bodies as part of Operation Plaza Sweep,
an FBI effort to secure an indictment against the Huias
cartel leader for the murder of American citizens. In that investigation,
his Mexican counterparts were from the federal police, but one
in quires Franks or an opportunity to offer the FBI's
resources to the local and state police to help solve
(38:43):
the murders of women. Part of it was selfish. We
were trying to see can we work with anybody locally,
you know, is it possible that there's a local group
that might be able to be vetted into Plaza sweep.
You know, we have resources that we will make available
to you as you look at these harmicides. We will
give you the best minds the FBI has in criminal
(39:06):
profiling to look at your case and tell you what
they think. Specifically, Frank offer access to the FBI's analysts
at Quantico, the men and women who'd been trained in
Robert Wrestler's approach to forensic psychology. The officials in Huis accepted,
and as they've done with Candice, they handed out the
case files. We were given seventy six files, each file
(39:31):
representing one of the deceased. The profilers took those files,
they went through them just like they would a file
that would be provided by a United States law enforcement entity,
and they identified thirty four cases that had items of
interest that they wanted to explore further. Thirty four of
(39:52):
the seventy six files shared by the police had common
characteristics indicating to the FBI profiles that the people may
have been involved in the murders. This felt like a
potentially huge break. Then something happened that told Frank everything
he needed to know about his partners in Mexico. It
(40:12):
was at that point that the authorities, the State Attorney
General's Office of Chihuahua, it was like, oh, we've gotten
the FBI reports and they agree with us one hundred
percent and case closed. In fact, they claimed that the
FBI's reports confirmed the guilt of Abdel Latif Sharif Sharif,
the Egyptian chemist who stood accused of both being a
(40:34):
serial killer and then paying a gang to commit murders
on his behalf in order to prove his innocence. They
distorted what the report said in order to validate the
position that they had been espousing. But why why the
failure after failure to resolve these crimes once and for all,
(40:55):
we had evidence that, unfortunately I am not at liberty
to go into too, that the handling of the femicide
cases was not in accordance with accepted police procedure. And
the assumption is it is either than gross incompetence on
the part of the police officials or it's deliberate. You know,
(41:18):
you can only be incompetent so many times you can't
be incompetent three hundred plus times. From our perspective, it
showed that there wasn't a real commitment to resolve the femicides.
Do you ever know? Could you tell why why there
was a lack? No? We speculated, Well, our speculation was
(41:40):
that when you don't want a crime to be solved,
it's because the resolution of it is going to be
extremely either embarrassing to somebody in power, or it's going
to come back to you, you being the law enforcement authorities.
The law enforcement authorities, Was it possible they weren't just
(42:04):
failing to solve the murders of women, but actively involved
in them. Could this explain why decades of murders had
gone unsolved? Well, Alfredo's reporting was also beginning to suggest
this might be the case. So Alfredo ultimately did feel
that he could trust what he'd heard from that drug
(42:25):
dealer in the Houire's prison, Monica, and he went to
print with a huge story. How did he get there, Well,
he paired up with another colleague, and together they backed
up the witness's account with intelligence from federal law enforcement
from the US and Mexico. One of the law enforcement
(42:48):
accounts that Alfredo prints in his story is an unnamed
US official who cites ry intelligence and he says, quote,
all you have to do is put together a simple
investigative equation of why and how, and you get to
the who why because they can because there's a sense
(43:09):
of excitement, a sense of and erotic feeling. Cicadios that is,
hitmen fit the profile. There is no limit anymore to
what they can do. They enjoy the feeling of ecstasy,
the orgies. The women are like trophies for them. They
are thrill kills. These guys like the feeling of control.
(43:31):
But they need help, and that's where the local and
state police come in. I hate that quote, but I
don't doubt it's true. Alfredo was able to verify that
the very police who were supposed to be protecting the
public and investigating the crimes were actually the ones committing
(43:53):
the crimes. When you read that first article on the
front page of the Dallas Morning News, I mean it
was huge. Alfredo's story went to print in February two
thousand and four. Later on, he reprinted the drug dealers
play by play account in his book Midnight in Mexico
(44:17):
to have it debate him we asked him to read
it aloud. The cops would first identify potential victims study
their routine. It wasn't hard to lure the women. Police
would stopped at them on the street as they got
off work and tell them that a family member was
missing or something had happened to their child, and wouldn't
they please get in the backseat of the police car.
(44:41):
The cops would then transport them to the parties, where
they would be gang raped. By the end, the women
always knew too much and they would killed. This would
explain the lackluster search for Cigario. It would explain why
when witnesses is reported seeing Lily Alexander struggling, the police
(45:03):
logbook for the night says nothing to report. This was
a conspiracy and it wouldn't have been uncovered without the
work of journalists like Alfredo. This is how journalism is
supposed to work. This is why we need a strong
and robust press. It took the combination of these Mexican
(45:25):
reporters who first wrote about these crimes beginning in nineteen
ninety three, then Diana calling attention to the systematic nature
of the murders, and Alfredo confirming the corruption behind it.
But this isn't where the story ends. I mean, the
corrupt cops are only part of the equation. Alfredo had
(45:50):
finally corroborated what Dante's source had told him, and it
exposed the involvement of certain police officers. But if law
enforcement agents were acting on behalf of the cartel, how
far did the influence of organized crime reach? And who
else was complicit in the abduction and murder of women.
(46:11):
On his journey to answer those questions, Alfredo paid a
visit to the corridors of power in Mexico City, and
he came into contact with a force that seemed far
more menacing than corrupt cops. Yeah, I mean, I mean,
I'm in the heart of se Alquie is in downtown quiet,
near the cathedral, near the park, and I'm walking away
(46:33):
and there's a number comes in and the sun of
number is just unknown. It says unknown on your says
unown on the phone, and the person says a key
or lad Lize's face, what's that in English? I'm right
behind you. On the sixteenth of September, Avenue I was
being watched. Alfredo was scared, and he turned to the
(46:57):
only person he could think of Aunte. It was the
first time I saw Dante and at that he looks worried,
and then he finally says yeah the chaste, which means
you're fucked. I said why, He says, they're aren'to you?
La Lina's aunto you. In the next episode, Alfredo makes
(47:25):
a break for safety. He tries to understand what La
Line is and what their role might be in the murders.
I'm as Floshen and I'm Monica. See you next time?
Do you know? See? Do you know? I love Velicia?
(48:22):
Forgotten The Women of Juarez is co hosted by Me
Monica and me oswal Oshin. Forgotten is executive produced by
Me and Mangesh Hattiga. Our producers are Julian Weller and
Katrina Norvell. Sound editing by Julian Weller, Jacopo Penzo and
Aaron Kaufman. Lucas Riley is our story editor. Caitlin Thompson
(48:47):
is our consulting producer. Recording assistance this episode from Alice
Daniel and Michael Perez. Production support from Emily Maronoff and
Aaron Kaufman. Our theme tune is rich in Thought as
performed by Natalia. Music by Leonardo Heblum and Hakkabo Libermann.
(49:07):
Additional music by Aaron Kaufman. Carla Tassara is the voice
actor for Paula Flores. Hello beautiful, I name you are
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