June 29, 2020 • 44 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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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Forgotten is a production of iHeart 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 time on Forgotten.
(00:24):
At the beginning, I thought it was a typical case
of a serial killer, but it appeared there was a
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 behind these murders.
(00:45):
If you really want to know the underbelly of what,
you need to talk to the Devil's lawyer, Dan't tell
Mas Dante, very smart, decided to hide this guy Togiment
to present under false charges under a different name. He
would always leave me with the little titbit, and one
of them was this guy's alive if you're interested. It
(01:13):
was two thousand and three and Alfredo Coccado was in
Huires with an assignment from the Dallas Morning News find
out who was killing the women and why. Alfredo had
been asking everyone he could think of, but no one
seemed able to give him answers. Finally, Este Javascano introduced
him to Dante Almaras, the so called Devil's lawyer, and
(01:34):
Dante did not disappoint. He had a drug dealer on
the run hidden in the Juires prison who claimed firsthand
knowledge of the killings. The fact that you had an
eye witness was incredibly important, he alleged, and I had
no reason to not be looon, but alged to be
part of the cartel. And it finally worked out where
(01:57):
I was able to visit this person under what someone
was an alias. But we talked long and long, and
I kept asking, so why are these women being killed?
Alfredo 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
(02:19):
of caught my eyeways 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 miss him immediately.
And so you know, little things started clicking. So here
was Alfredo sitting in a jail cell in Juarez, when,
(02:41):
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 where these women 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
(03:05):
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 time that I might targuing
to someone Facebook phase and he's given me an account
and I witness account, and we're like, there's no way
we can report that unless we really get as much
(03:29):
evidence as possible. Alfredo had a shocking but potentially plausible
explanation for what was happening to the women in wires,
but could he trust the information. After all, he'd heard
the account from a drug dealer who wants to save
his own skin, who he met through an underworld lawyer,
(03:50):
himself openly on a quest for revenge. At times, you
feel like an American journey. I feel like everybody's sort
of playing you, you know. 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
(04:11):
be complicit in covering it up. I'm as Voloshi and
I'm Monica. This is forgotten the women acquires Barama LOI
(04:33):
you know? So do you know? Ma se Hala Felicia?
(05:00):
So 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
(05:24):
naivety more 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
(05:46):
world and Dante was his link. And how do you
make sense of this nether world where Dante Evidendee 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
(06:08):
that's not. 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, and this is where Alfredo's witness operates.
(06:34):
But Alfredo's mission is to find out who is killing
the women of Hoats, and to answer that question, you
really have no choice but to tread into the hoddas
underworld as a reporter who's been relentlessly asking who's doing this,
who's behind the murders, who's responsible. What do you think
Alfredo's thinking when he was hearing this testimony. Well, I'm
(06:58):
certain that Alfredo 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.
And I mean, as you might imagine, he's blown away
(07:20):
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
confirmation from multiple sources. Alfredo had a potentially huge break
(07:46):
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. I mean, he wasn't the only person
who was still asking questions about who was responsible for
the murders of women in Huarez. By this point, Paula
(08:08):
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 Sigorio's story again and again
to keep her memory alive and in the hope it
might bring her closer to the answer she craved. She
got increasingly involved in activism with the mothers of other victims.
(08:31):
But back when Sigario first went missing, Paula told us
her son Cheuie took it very hard. Before she disappeared,
she had bought a cassette of Los Demidradios and we
had a van An aerostar 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
(08:52):
work it. And she would tell Julie play the cassette,
play that the Mederios cassette, and Juie would say, quit
being a pest, We'll put it on a second. He
would stall and not do it. After she disappeared, my
son would lock himself in that van with the cassette
and he would play that music and just cry because
(09:15):
it reminded him of her. Before moving to Juarez, Paula
has sent letters to her husband Jesus, 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,
(09:38):
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 Mamuelio. He was 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. Ma
(10:00):
Leo became friends with Paula's son, Chewy, and started to
spend time with the family, even sharing meals with them.
My son and he'd known us since we moved here.
Always noticed that he liked Sa Gradio. But manual Leo
was far from being a desirable suitor. He was what's
(10:20):
known as a coyote. We arrived here in ninety five.
He was working smuggling people into the United States. Not
only did he cross people, but he also crossed drugs
and all. Paula and her family lived in Lomas de Pouleo,
which at the time was only separated from the US
by a barbed wire fence, so smuggling was an appealing
(10:41):
line of business in the area. For a teenager like Manuelo.
It seemed to offer better prospects than working in a
factory for less than seven dollars a day. Often came
to my house asking for water because he was crossing
the US border. Never refused to give him water. While
(11:02):
Paula was concerned about Mamulio's connections to the Huire's underworld,
she also understood his circumstances. He was as poor as
the Flora's family, and even more vulnerable because he didn't
have any family of his own, so Paula helped him
out where she could. A few weeks after Sir Gario's
body was discovered, Mammolio paid her a visit. Paula was
(11:26):
at home grieving, tending to an altar commemorating her daughter.
Flowers letters are Winnie the Pooh, stuffed toy from the micheler,
and something about this visit seemed off. Maybe has asked
me for water. I told him go ahead, filled the
gallant that time he saw me crying and he said,
(11:48):
you cried too much. You 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,
you will be turned around and said, you know what,
I'll always curse my daughter's killers because she didn't deserve
to die that way. And he told me nervously, don't
(12:10):
say that, and they said, yes, that's what I asked
all the time. I curse them. After a few tense moments,
Mamoi Leo left with his gallon of water and Paula
returned to the altar. By this point, she and her
family had searched frantically through the night, posting fliers and
(12:31):
trying to track down any leads. She'd yelled Sagrario'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 come to me and tell me who
(12:52):
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. 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.
(13:14):
Don't know if I was asleep or awake, but I
heard a voice, a voice talking to me softly like la.
She said baola day when she spoke without moving, not
knowing if I was asleep, I asked her, is that
you said? But I say a very clear voice. She
(13:35):
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 down
(14:00):
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 Manuelillo. In the depths of her grief,
(14:30):
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.
Mammalio's life as a coyote brought him into contact with
dangerous criminals, but he was someone who Paula knew, who
(14:52):
Cigario 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 Mamuoilio confessed that
he did know something about her daughter's fate. Medico, he
(15:17):
told me, you know what the narcos from Elvaya did it?
Asked him, what could the narcos from Elvaio have to
do with my daughter? 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. Mamoelio
(15:39):
knew something about Sigario's murder. But who were these other
narcos drug traffickers from elvae? How were they involved? When
we come back? Mamoelio appears poised to answer those questions.
(16:07):
Before the break, manuel Leo told Paula that narcos were
responsible for Sir Gario'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
(16:29):
them for help. At first, 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
manuel Leo was arrested and he gave the authorities some
more details about his part in Sir Gario's fate. In
the third class normal statement, he names two other people
(16:51):
the class. He states that he was paid 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
(17:13):
a new testimony before he was sentenced, saying that 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?
(17:34):
And then he got scared and he said no. He
went quiet and said like three, I believe my daughter
had six. Manuelo didn't even know how many times Sir
Garrio had been stabbed, and Paula didn't believe a word
he was saying in front of everyone. She pressed him
(17:58):
to him, he used to feel dio 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.
(18:22):
Why 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
(18:47):
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 always
all the authorities if he's getting other people involved, he
didn't just make them up. They said that the emblematic
case of Sagardio has been solved. Er was in jail already,
(19:10):
and all I've always said the opposite. But he's not
the only one, and that the authors of the crime
are still Freelona. Who are the authors of the crime,
and how do they remain free? These are questions Paula
is asking twenty years after her daughter's murder. But the
(19:32):
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 and more plausible
to me. Hearing about Paula's dream why she sees Sagrario
again in their hometown in Durango is one of the
(19:53):
moments in our reporting that sticks with me the most.
But Monica, you told me that hearing these kinds of
dreams from family members 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 her
(20:18):
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 authorities
(20:43):
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 Mamma Leo 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
(21:05):
drug dealer witness tells Alfredo. Manuelo 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 Watts who don't necessarily have
(21:28):
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 trade off is he has
to then answer to the underworld. There's no justice system
in drug trafficking. If you run a foul of the cartel,
(21:51):
that's typically a death sentence. Manuelio most certainly knew this,
so when he got orders in you 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.
That was something very remarkable to me, is that there's
(22:14):
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
abducted and killed Sagrario, the daughter of the family who
(22:34):
gave him water as he smuggled people through the desert.
The authorities never followed up on his initial confession to
Paula about the narticles from Elvae. Rather than acknowledging a
potential network, they preferred to blame individuals, and despite mounting
evidence pointing to organization behind the murders, there was an
(22:55):
enduring suspicion on both sides of the border that a
serial killer was at work in Huirez. That's what brought
Candice Scrophic there in the nineteen nineties. She's a forensic
criminologist at Fresno State University. I was trained by FBI
profilers in Quantico, Virginia as a psychologist. My background is
(23:18):
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 behavior that could be reflective of the kind of
(23:40):
person that would perpetrate that kind of crime. Candice went
to Juarez 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 the term. Candice and Wrestler were in Juarez at
(24:02):
the invitation of an American public safety advisor to the
huire's authorities, so Candice got access to the case files.
I saw all the homicide photographs, I went through all
the autopsy reports and things, and without doubt in my mind,
there was one serial murderer operating who was getting the
little girls and the young adolescent girls in terms of
(24:25):
patterns of behavior. As Candice reviewed the case files, it
became clear to her that there was a serial killer
operating in Juarez, someone praying on very young victims. But
the murders of Cigarrio and Lili Alejandra didn't match that
pattern and not died many others. What stun Candice was
(24:45):
that there was clearly something else, bigger going on in
the city as well, something on a scale she'd never
seen before. Were most of these hundreds of murders were
they attributed to serial killers? While not in the tradition
a sense, there was one crime scene, in particular the
canvas examined, which confirmed to her what was happening in
(25:06):
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
(25:27):
of the truck and made her 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 just showing their their their disgust
(25:56):
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 her years
(26:19):
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 he said, no,
(26:42):
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 wanted anybody watching me do it.
Certainly they could turn me in. How would I know
I could trust them with this? So I started thinking,
(27:04):
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 any of us in,
(27:26):
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 serial killing.
(27:48):
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 islands. They were a crucial
part of how it worked. But if this was apparent
from the crime scenes and even from the testimony of
(28:09):
lower level cartel affiliates, why didn't the authorities not take
more decisive action. Well, 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 led by
(28:31):
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, of course,
(28:54):
drug investigations or what ultimately brought me to the FBI
office and or person. So when interested the El Paso
FBI in the Howadast cartel. Well at that time, obviously,
the Warrist cartel was a major mover of contraband in
the United States, any kind of drug that could be moved, marijuana, cocaine.
The cartel control they called the Warres Corridor. Wires's position
(29:18):
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 their 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
(29:40):
they could prove these murders of American citizens, they could
secure an indictment for the leader of the Juires cartel,
Vicente Cario 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 BOD. The mission was
(30:01):
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 was extremely large. You know,
(30:27):
the cartel didn't have taqua 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 was
shocked on their behalf. You know, Berties told us listening,
(30:47):
you know, potentially one of Frank's 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
(31:09):
and you know, okay, guys, when you discover one, don't
touch it. Let your forensics people 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,
(31:31):
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, you know, the media
wanted to take some pictures, so I rolled the body
over and it must have happened. Then 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
(31:52):
successfully to a subject or subjects. To Frank, it appeared
the crime scenes with being purposefully 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
(32:16):
to introduce a trial. You undermined everything. 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,
(32:36):
But then he had an idea. What if the FBI
also offered to help the local police get to the
bottom of the women's murders. When we come back, we
learn what came of that offer. Before the break, Frank
(33:05):
Evans was describing his work to exhume bodies as part
of Operation Plaza Sweep, an FBI effort to secure an
indictment against the Quires 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
(33:28):
state police to help solve 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
(33:51):
the FBI has in criminal profiling to look at your
case and tell you what they think. Specifically, Frank 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,
(34:12):
they handed over case files. We were given seventy six files.
Each file 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
(34:33):
had items of interest that they wanted to explore further.
Thirty four of the seventy six files shared by the
police had common characteristics, indicating to the FBI profilers that
the same people may have been involved in the murders.
This felt like a potentially huge break. Then something happened
(34:54):
that told Frank everything he needed to know about his
partners in Mexico. It was that point that the authorities,
the State Attorney General's Office of HuaHua, it's 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
(35:17):
Sharif Sharif, the Egyptian chemist who stood accused of both
being a 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
(35:37):
the failure after failure to resolve these crimes once and
for all. We had evidence that, unfortunately I even not
at liberty to go into that the handling of the
femicide cases was not in accordance with accepted police procedure.
And the assumption is it is either than gross and
(35:59):
cops on the part of the police officials, or it's deliberate.
You know, 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
(36:22):
why there was a lack No? We speculated, Well, our
speculation was 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
(36:43):
law enforcement authorities. The law enforcement authorities. Was it possible
they weren't just 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
(37:03):
beginning to suggest this might be the case. So Alfredo
ultimately did feel that he could trust what he'd heard
from that drug dealer in the Howire's Prison Monica, and
he went to print with a huge story. How did
he get there? Well, he paired up with another colleague,
(37:24):
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 accounts that Alfredo prince in his
story is an unnamed US official who cites raw intelligence
and he says, quote, all you have to do is
(37:46):
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 of excitement, a sense of and
erotic feeling icadios. That is, hitmen fit the profile. There
is no limit anymore to what they can do. They
(38:07):
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. 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
(38:31):
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 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
(38:54):
to print in February two thousand and four. Later on
he reprinted the drugs played by play account in his
book Midnight in Mexico. 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
(39:17):
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. 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 kill. This would explain the lackluster search for Cigario.
(39:45):
It would explain why when witnesses reported seeing Lily Alexander struggling,
the police look book for the Knight 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
(40:06):
a strong and robust press. It took the combination of
these Mexican 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,
(40:29):
the corrupt cops are only part of the equation. Alfredo
had 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,
(40:50):
how far did the influence of organized crime reach? And
who else was complicit in the abduction and murder of women.
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,
(41:13):
I'm in the heart of se Alquis in downtown. Quite
the Medico near the cathedral, near the park, and I'm
walking away and there's a number comes in and it's
not a number, is just unknown. It says unknown on
your says unown on the phone and the person says
a key or La Lisi's fays what's that in English?
I'm right behind you. On the sixteenth of September, Avenue
(41:39):
I was being watched, Alfredo was scared and he turned
to the only person he could think of, Dante. It
was the first time I saw Dante, and I thought
he looked worried, and then he finally says, yeah the chaste,
which means you're fucked, I said. He says, they're aren'to you?
(42:02):
La Lina is Anto you. In the next episode, Alfredo
makes a break for safety. He tries to understand what
La Lina is and what their role might be in
the murders. I'm as Flash and I'm Monica. See you
(42:24):
next time? Do you know not? See so? Do you
know not? Sque I love Licia. Forgotten The Women of
(43:10):
Juarez is co hosted by me Monica and me oswal Oshin.
Forgotten is executive produced by Me and Mangesh Hatiga. Our
producers are Julian Weller and Katrina Norvell. Sound editing by
Julian Weller, Jakapo Penzo and Aaron Kaufman. Lucas Riley is
(43:31):
our story editor. Caitlin Thompson 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 Namo as performed by Natalie La, music by
(43:51):
Leonardo Hablum and Hakkabo Libermann. Additional music by Aaron Kaufman.
Karla Tassara is the voice actor for Paula Flores
Forgotten is a production of iHeart 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 time on Forgotten.
(00:24):
At the beginning, I thought it was a typical case
of a serial killer, but it appeared there was a
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 behind these murders.
(00:45):
If you really want to know the underbelly of what,
you need to talk to the Devil's lawyer, Dan't tell
Mas Dante, very smart, decided to hide this guy Togiment
to present under false charges under a different name. He
would always leave me with the little titbit, and one
of them was this guy's alive if you're interested. It
(01:13):
was two thousand and three and Alfredo Coccado was in
Huires with an assignment from the Dallas Morning News find
out who was killing the women and why. Alfredo had
been asking everyone he could think of, but no one
seemed able to give him answers. Finally, Este Javascano introduced
him to Dante Almaras, the so called Devil's lawyer, and
(01:34):
Dante did not disappoint. He had a drug dealer on
the run hidden in the Juires prison who claimed firsthand
knowledge of the killings. The fact that you had an
eye witness was incredibly important, he alleged, and I had
no reason to not be looon, but alged to be
part of the cartel. And it finally worked out where
(01:57):
I was able to visit this person under what someone
was an alias. But we talked long and long, and
I kept asking, so why are these women being killed?
Alfredo 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
(02:19):
of caught my eyeways 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 miss him immediately.
And so you know, little things started clicking. So here
was Alfredo sitting in a jail cell in Juarez, when,
(02:41):
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 where these women 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
(03:05):
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 time that I might targuing
to someone Facebook phase and he's given me an account
and I witness account, and we're like, there's no way
we can report that unless we really get as much
(03:29):
evidence as possible. Alfredo had a shocking but potentially plausible
explanation for what was happening to the women in wires,
but could he trust the information. After all, he'd heard
the account from a drug dealer who wants to save
his own skin, who he met through an underworld lawyer,
(03:50):
himself openly on a quest for revenge. At times, you
feel like an American journey. I feel like everybody's sort
of playing you, you know. 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
(04:11):
be complicit in covering it up. I'm as Voloshi and
I'm Monica. This is forgotten the women acquires Barama LOI
(04:33):
you know? So do you know? Ma se Hala Felicia?
(05:00):
So 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
(05:24):
naivety more 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
(05:46):
world and Dante was his link. And how do you
make sense of this nether world where Dante Evidendee 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
(06:08):
that's not. 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, and this is where Alfredo's witness operates.
(06:34):
But Alfredo's mission is to find out who is killing
the women of Hoats, and to answer that question, you
really have no choice but to tread into the hoddas
underworld as a reporter who's been relentlessly asking who's doing this,
who's behind the murders, who's responsible. What do you think
Alfredo's thinking when he was hearing this testimony. Well, I'm
(06:58):
certain that Alfredo 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.
And I mean, as you might imagine, he's blown away
(07:20):
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
confirmation from multiple sources. Alfredo had a potentially huge break
(07:46):
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. I mean, he wasn't the only person
who was still asking questions about who was responsible for
the murders of women in Huarez. By this point, Paula
(08:08):
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 Sigorio's story again and again
to keep her memory alive and in the hope it
might bring her closer to the answer she craved. She
got increasingly involved in activism with the mothers of other victims.
(08:31):
But back when Sigario first went missing, Paula told us
her son Cheuie took it very hard. Before she disappeared,
she had bought a cassette of Los Demidradios and we
had a van An aerostar 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
(08:52):
work it. And she would tell Julie play the cassette,
play that the Mederios cassette, and Juie would say, quit
being a pest, We'll put it on a second. He
would stall and not do it. After she disappeared, my
son would lock himself in that van with the cassette
and he would play that music and just cry because
(09:15):
it reminded him of her. Before moving to Juarez, Paula
has sent letters to her husband Jesus, 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,
(09:38):
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 Mamuelio. He was 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. Ma
(10:00):
Leo became friends with Paula's son, Chewy, and started to
spend time with the family, even sharing meals with them.
My son and he'd known us since we moved here.
Always noticed that he liked Sa Gradio. But manual Leo
was far from being a desirable suitor. He was what's
(10:20):
known as a coyote. We arrived here in ninety five.
He was working smuggling people into the United States. Not
only did he cross people, but he also crossed drugs
and all. Paula and her family lived in Lomas de Pouleo,
which at the time was only separated from the US
by a barbed wire fence, so smuggling was an appealing
(10:41):
line of business in the area. For a teenager like Manuelo.
It seemed to offer better prospects than working in a
factory for less than seven dollars a day. Often came
to my house asking for water because he was crossing
the US border. Never refused to give him water. While
(11:02):
Paula was concerned about Mamulio's connections to the Huire's underworld,
she also understood his circumstances. He was as poor as
the Flora's family, and even more vulnerable because he didn't
have any family of his own, so Paula helped him
out where she could. A few weeks after Sir Gario's
body was discovered, Mammolio paid her a visit. Paula was
(11:26):
at home grieving, tending to an altar commemorating her daughter.
Flowers letters are Winnie the Pooh, stuffed toy from the micheler,
and something about this visit seemed off. Maybe has asked
me for water. I told him go ahead, filled the
gallant that time he saw me crying and he said,
(11:48):
you cried too much. You 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,
you will be turned around and said, you know what,
I'll always curse my daughter's killers because she didn't deserve
to die that way. And he told me nervously, don't
(12:10):
say that, and they said, yes, that's what I asked
all the time. I curse them. After a few tense moments,
Mamoi Leo left with his gallon of water and Paula
returned to the altar. By this point, she and her
family had searched frantically through the night, posting fliers and
(12:31):
trying to track down any leads. She'd yelled Sagrario'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 come to me and tell me who
(12:52):
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. 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.
(13:14):
Don't know if I was asleep or awake, but I
heard a voice, a voice talking to me softly like la.
She said baola day when she spoke without moving, not
knowing if I was asleep, I asked her, is that
you said? But I say a very clear voice. She
(13:35):
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 down
(14:00):
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 Manuelillo. In the depths of her grief,
(14:30):
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.
Mammalio's life as a coyote brought him into contact with
dangerous criminals, but he was someone who Paula knew, who
(14:52):
Cigario 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 Mamuoilio confessed that
he did know something about her daughter's fate. Medico, he
(15:17):
told me, you know what the narcos from Elvaya did it?
Asked him, what could the narcos from Elvaio have to
do with my daughter? 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. Mamoelio
(15:39):
knew something about Sigario's murder. But who were these other
narcos drug traffickers from elvae? How were they involved? When
we come back? Mamoelio appears poised to answer those questions.
(16:07):
Before the break, manuel Leo told Paula that narcos were
responsible for Sir Gario'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
(16:29):
them for help. At first, 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
manuel Leo was arrested and he gave the authorities some
more details about his part in Sir Gario's fate. In
the third class normal statement, he names two other people
(16:51):
the class. He states that he was paid 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
(17:13):
a new testimony before he was sentenced, saying that 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?
(17:34):
And then he got scared and he said no. He
went quiet and said like three, I believe my daughter
had six. Manuelo didn't even know how many times Sir
Garrio had been stabbed, and Paula didn't believe a word
he was saying in front of everyone. She pressed him
(17:58):
to him, he used to feel dio 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.
(18:22):
Why 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
(18:47):
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 always
all the authorities if he's getting other people involved, he
didn't just make them up. They said that the emblematic
case of Sagardio has been solved. Er was in jail already,
(19:10):
and all I've always said the opposite. But he's not
the only one, and that the authors of the crime
are still Freelona. Who are the authors of the crime,
and how do they remain free? These are questions Paula
is asking twenty years after her daughter's murder. But the
(19:32):
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 and more plausible
to me. Hearing about Paula's dream why she sees Sagrario
again in their hometown in Durango is one of the
(19:53):
moments in our reporting that sticks with me the most.
But Monica, you told me that hearing these kinds of
dreams from family members 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 her
(20:18):
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 authorities
(20:43):
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 Mamma Leo 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
(21:05):
drug dealer witness tells Alfredo. Manuelo 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 Watts who don't necessarily have
(21:28):
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 trade off is he has
to then answer to the underworld. There's no justice system
in drug trafficking. If you run a foul of the cartel,
(21:51):
that's typically a death sentence. Manuelio most certainly knew this,
so when he got orders in you 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.
That was something very remarkable to me, is that there's
(22:14):
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
abducted and killed Sagrario, the daughter of the family who
(22:34):
gave him water as he smuggled people through the desert.
The authorities never followed up on his initial confession to
Paula about the narticles from Elvae. Rather than acknowledging a
potential network, they preferred to blame individuals, and despite mounting
evidence pointing to organization behind the murders, there was an
(22:55):
enduring suspicion on both sides of the border that a
serial killer was at work in Huirez. That's what brought
Candice Scrophic there in the nineteen nineties. She's a forensic
criminologist at Fresno State University. I was trained by FBI
profilers in Quantico, Virginia as a psychologist. My background is
(23:18):
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 behavior that could be reflective of the kind of
(23:40):
person that would perpetrate that kind of crime. Candice went
to Juarez 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 the term. Candice and Wrestler were in Juarez at
(24:02):
the invitation of an American public safety advisor to the
huire's authorities, so Candice got access to the case files.
I saw all the homicide photographs, I went through all
the autopsy reports and things, and without doubt in my mind,
there was one serial murderer operating who was getting the
little girls and the young adolescent girls in terms of
(24:25):
patterns of behavior. As Candice reviewed the case files, it
became clear to her that there was a serial killer
operating in Juarez, someone praying on very young victims. But
the murders of Cigarrio and Lili Alejandra didn't match that
pattern and not died many others. What stun Candice was
(24:45):
that there was clearly something else, bigger going on in
the city as well, something on a scale she'd never
seen before. Were most of these hundreds of murders were
they attributed to serial killers? While not in the tradition
a sense, there was one crime scene, in particular the
canvas examined, which confirmed to her what was happening in
(25:06):
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
(25:27):
of the truck and made her 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 just showing their their their disgust
(25:56):
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 her years
(26:19):
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 he said, no,
(26:42):
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 wanted anybody watching me do it.
Certainly they could turn me in. How would I know
I could trust them with this? So I started thinking,
(27:04):
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 any of us in,
(27:26):
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 serial killing.
(27:48):
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 islands. They were a crucial
part of how it worked. But if this was apparent
from the crime scenes and even from the testimony of
(28:09):
lower level cartel affiliates, why didn't the authorities not take
more decisive action. Well, 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 led by
(28:31):
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, of course,
(28:54):
drug investigations or what ultimately brought me to the FBI
office and or person. So when interested the El Paso
FBI in the Howadast cartel. Well at that time, obviously,
the Warrist cartel was a major mover of contraband in
the United States, any kind of drug that could be moved, marijuana, cocaine.
The cartel control they called the Warres Corridor. Wires's position
(29:18):
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 their 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
(29:40):
they could prove these murders of American citizens, they could
secure an indictment for the leader of the Juires cartel,
Vicente Cario 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 BOD. The mission was
(30:01):
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 was extremely large. You know,
(30:27):
the cartel didn't have taqua 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 was
shocked on their behalf. You know, Berties told us listening,
(30:47):
you know, potentially one of Frank's 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
(31:09):
and you know, okay, guys, when you discover one, don't
touch it. Let your forensics people 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,
(31:31):
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, you know, the media
wanted to take some pictures, so I rolled the body
over and it must have happened. Then 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
(31:52):
successfully to a subject or subjects. To Frank, it appeared
the crime scenes with being purposefully 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
(32:16):
to introduce a trial. You undermined everything. 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,
(32:36):
But then he had an idea. What if the FBI
also offered to help the local police get to the
bottom of the women's murders. When we come back, we
learn what came of that offer. Before the break, Frank
(33:05):
Evans was describing his work to exhume bodies as part
of Operation Plaza Sweep, an FBI effort to secure an
indictment against the Quires 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
(33:28):
state police to help solve 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
(33:51):
the FBI has in criminal profiling to look at your
case and tell you what they think. Specifically, Frank 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,
(34:12):
they handed over case files. We were given seventy six files.
Each file 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
(34:33):
had items of interest that they wanted to explore further.
Thirty four of the seventy six files shared by the
police had common characteristics, indicating to the FBI profilers that
the same people may have been involved in the murders.
This felt like a potentially huge break. Then something happened
(34:54):
that told Frank everything he needed to know about his
partners in Mexico. It was that point that the authorities,
the State Attorney General's Office of HuaHua, it's 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
(35:17):
Sharif Sharif, the Egyptian chemist who stood accused of both
being a 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
(35:37):
the failure after failure to resolve these crimes once and
for all. We had evidence that, unfortunately I even not
at liberty to go into that the handling of the
femicide cases was not in accordance with accepted police procedure.
And the assumption is it is either than gross and
(35:59):
cops on the part of the police officials, or it's deliberate.
You know, 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
(36:22):
why there was a lack No? We speculated, Well, our
speculation was 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
(36:43):
law enforcement authorities. The law enforcement authorities. Was it possible
they weren't just 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
(37:03):
beginning to suggest this might be the case. So Alfredo
ultimately did feel that he could trust what he'd heard
from that drug dealer in the Howire's Prison Monica, and
he went to print with a huge story. How did
he get there? Well, he paired up with another colleague,
(37:24):
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 accounts that Alfredo prince in his
story is an unnamed US official who cites raw intelligence
and he says, quote, all you have to do is
(37:46):
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 of excitement, a sense of and
erotic feeling icadios. That is, hitmen fit the profile. There
is no limit anymore to what they can do. They
(38:07):
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. 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
(38:31):
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 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
(38:54):
to print in February two thousand and four. Later on
he reprinted the drugs played by play account in his
book Midnight in Mexico. 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
(39:17):
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. 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 kill. This would explain the lackluster search for Cigario.
(39:45):
It would explain why when witnesses reported seeing Lily Alexander struggling,
the police look book for the Knight 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
(40:06):
a strong and robust press. It took the combination of
these Mexican 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,
(40:29):
the corrupt cops are only part of the equation. Alfredo
had 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,
(40:50):
how far did the influence of organized crime reach? And
who else was complicit in the abduction and murder of women.
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,
(41:13):
I'm in the heart of se Alquis in downtown. Quite
the Medico near the cathedral, near the park, and I'm
walking away and there's a number comes in and it's
not a number, is just unknown. It says unknown on
your says unown on the phone and the person says
a key or La Lisi's fays what's that in English?
I'm right behind you. On the sixteenth of September, Avenue
(41:39):
I was being watched, Alfredo was scared and he turned
to the only person he could think of, Dante. It
was the first time I saw Dante, and I thought
he looked worried, and then he finally says, yeah the chaste,
which means you're fucked, I said. He says, they're aren'to you?
(42:02):
La Lina is Anto you. In the next episode, Alfredo
makes a break for safety. He tries to understand what
La Lina is and what their role might be in
the murders. I'm as Flash and I'm Monica. See you
(42:24):
next time? Do you know not? See so? Do you
know not? Sque I love Licia. Forgotten The Women of
(43:10):
Juarez is co hosted by me Monica and me oswal Oshin.
Forgotten is executive produced by Me and Mangesh Hatiga. Our
producers are Julian Weller and Katrina Norvell. Sound editing by
Julian Weller, Jakapo Penzo and Aaron Kaufman. Lucas Riley is
(43:31):
our story editor. Caitlin Thompson 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 Namo as performed by Natalie La, music by
(43:51):
Leonardo Hablum and Hakkabo Libermann. Additional music by Aaron Kaufman.
Karla Tassara is the voice actor for Paula Flores
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