Part 5: The CEO

David Castillo has been accused of planning the murder of Berta Caceres. But he insists that everything you think you know about this crime is wrong.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Yeah, you're looking good. It's May two thousand four, graduation
day at the U. S. Military Academy at west Point.
The U S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeldt stands on
a stage in a football stadium, squinting into the crowd.

(00:24):
It's a privilege to be here in the shadows of
some of the greatest leaders of our age, and to
celebrate today with the leaders who will follow in their footsteps.
Rumsfeld is speaking to about nine hundred graduating cadets. They
wear clean white hats and gray wool jackets. Scattered among

(00:46):
the graduates are about fifty who are a little different
from the rest. They're part of west Point's little known
Foreign Cadet program. They're the international students. Essentially, west Point
aims to instill in them a familiarity with and a
respect for the US military. Dozens of allied countries participate

(01:10):
in it. The idea is that those countries end up
with well educated future leaders. The United States also gets
something out of this program, future foreign counterparts who have
a relationship with the U. S Military on a personal level.
Rumsfeld knows the value in grooming these cadets, even gives

(01:33):
them a shout out in his speech, they come from
all across this great country, and from I'm told American Samala, Cameroon,
the Dominican Republic, Honduras, Jordan's that nod to Honduras actually
refers to a single student, David Castillo. He spent the

(01:54):
past four years here, taking the exact same classes as
his American counterparts, doing the same military drills, living in
the same barracks, and cheering at the same football games.
Rumsfeld reminds them all that the purpose of everything they've
endured is to become leaders. He urges all of the

(02:17):
graduates to set positive examples for anyone who might look
up to them in the years ahead. Use the skills
you've learned here to bring out the very best in them,
including respect for others, and always fall back on the
moral clarity of the honor code that you've learned here.

(02:37):
This ceremony comes at a time when America's War on
Terror is at its height, and soon after the graduates
toss their white hats in the air, many of them
will be deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan. But David Castillo's
future will be nothing like those of his classmates. It

(02:58):
will lead him back to Honduras, where he'll rise through
both the military and business worlds, and after his path
intersects with Berta Casseres, it will take a detour, one
that ends in a prison cell. My name is Monte

(03:26):
Reel for Bloomberg Green. In this episode, we'll go into
that prison cell. We'll talk to David Castillo and hear
the story of Executive Number three, the CEO who stands
accused of masterminding Berta's murder. David hasn't publicly told his
full story before. His defense is adamant and unyielding, and

(03:51):
it aims to upend almost everything you've heard so far
in this series. This is Blood River. David's mother, Dina,

(04:20):
grew up in Honduras, but she was always surrounded by
American culture. Her father worked for the United Fruit Company,
one of the two dominant American banana corporations in the country.
Do Nora attended the American School in her town. Then
she graduated college, got married, and when she was twenty

(04:41):
three years old, she gave birth to David. I actually
studied law, but I never worked as a professional in law.
My husband didn't want me to go into that because
he went with me one day too to a prison

(05:03):
in I was taking this case. I had taken this
case for a person that was there, and it was
after visiting hours that we came out. He had accompanied
me and then a whole bunch of men started saying
all these different things, and so he said, well, I'm

(05:24):
sorry to tell you that you will not be able
to continue in your profession. You better find something else.
So Dona got a master's degree in education as well
as a divorce. She landed a job teaching at the
oldest American school in Honduras, the same school her son

(05:45):
eventually would attend. This was in the town of Las
Aba on the country's north coast. This school was founded
in the nine by the Standard Fruit Company. It's the
other big American ben in a company in Honduras. Basically
all production in the town was very much based on

(06:08):
Standard Foud Company operations. Some year was one of David's classmates.
He wasn't only my classmate, he was my best friend
because he was my neighbor. Actually he lived three houses
four houses from my house. Most of the places in
Honduras that we visited so far in this podcast have
been marked by poverty and a glaring lack of reliable infrastructure.

(06:32):
This neighborhood as some amenities like those you might see
in an American suburb. We had a golf club near
our house, so we went to the golf club. I
play tennis and golf. He played golf. I remember we
had the first cars. The first golf cars were starting
to come into to our town because everybody just before,

(06:54):
everybody just walked the eighteen holes, and now we started
with the with the cars, and it was a lot
of fun. David liked sports, but some years, says math,
science and computers were more his thing. He was the
smart guy. He was the I won't say, I think

(07:15):
it's wrong to say a nerd, but he was very
He was always the guy that was interested in in
in getting his best grades and applying always. David had
never shown any interest in the military growing up, at
least none that his friends and family ever noticed, but
he knew about West Point's foreign cadet program several years

(07:36):
before another student from his high school had been selected
for it. West Point was a premier academic institution with
a top shelf engineering program. David decided that's where he
wanted to go. The U. S Embassy in Honduras handled

(07:58):
the application process. When David was called in for interviews
and for testing, Samir sometimes tagged along. I remember we
went to the to the physical tests, and I remember
I was with another of our close friends, Carlos, and
we were there, both of us like looking at him,

(08:18):
and I remember I think it was a three minute
push up tests to see how many push ups he
could do in through minute in three minutes, and I
remember he did like it was a very small amount,
and we were like, man, you know what you're not
getting in I mean, you suck. He started exercising every

(08:38):
day and he was determined to get that because my
dad also insisted that's the best thing that you can get.
If you're able to get that scholarship, you will have
the doors open in all the world. David got in.
The doors to West Point open for him. In the
summer of two thousand. He was in a new country

(09:02):
with new friends and a strict new routine. Wake up
was probably around six am, where we both wake up together,
get ready for the day, and have formation about six
thirty UM. That's where all the cadets get together in
line up outside of the barracks. Doesn't matter the temperature
and march to breakfast, and then we would all sit

(09:25):
down and have breakfast together. Travis Dent from Columbus, Ohio,
was one of David's roommates at West Point. They became
close friends. David spent his days working toward a degree
in electrical engineering. He was on the sailing team and
in the Honor Society. In the evenings, he talked on
the phone with his girlfriend and future wife, Tanya. David

(09:49):
had an obligation to return to the Honduran military after graduation,
but he delayed that move. Instead, he relocated to the Washington,
d c. Area enrolled in graduate school at the University
of Maryland. While there, he interned at a technology company
that developed communications systems. To Travis, David's West Point roommate,

(10:12):
this choice to study and to dip his toe into
the business world seemed natural because David always struck him
as more of a future businessman than a future soldier,
because we both were kind of passionate about entrepreneurship and
and thinking about different ideas that we could bring to life.

(10:34):
And this was also in the start of I mean,
we're looking two thousand two to two thousand and four,
when the Internet was kind of just becoming popular. Um, yes,
we had a O L and things like that, but
now it was at a massive scale, and we would
talk about different ways that we could leverage and help
and and and do different companies to to to grow

(10:54):
along that path. David returned to Honduras in two thousand
and six and entered the military. His rise through the
ranks was nothing short of meteoric, but he didn't exactly
start at the bottom. He was the assistant to the
country's intelligence director. Soon after that, he was picked to

(11:16):
be the assistant to the Secretary of Defense. When the
Honduran military was tasked with restructuring the country's electrical utility company,
David oversaw part of that project. There he was perfectly
positioned to help lead the country's push towards renewable energy projects.

(11:38):
I think he's a workaholic because he used to work
every single day of the year. David, at this point
was twenty six years old. During this same period, d

(12:00):
David also branched out into private enterprise. He was a
majority shareholder in an electronics and computer company, for example,
but by two thousand eight, he was working full time
at the electrical utility. This was around the time when
the Honduran government began really pushing renewable energy. In two

(12:22):
thousand nine, DESSA was formed. It got the rights to
develop a hydro electric project on the Gualcarate River and
also to sell electricity to the state owned utility company
where David worked. David's name wasn't attached to DESSA at
that moment, but two years later in David officially left

(12:46):
the government to work for that hydro electric company. But
he wasn't just any employee. He became Dessa's president and
was on the board of directors. David still kept in
touch with a few of his friends from West Point.
One of them, Marco Lakaya, remembers the first time David

(13:07):
told him of his shift to the energy business. That
was impressed, Wow, you're you put up your your own
company and you're like building like a hydro electric plant.
I'm like, wow, how did you learn all that? And
he said, well, I had a great experience with the
with the Honduran Army. Travis, David's old roommate at West Point,

(13:27):
was equally amazed. David I thought was and we would
joke about it. I thought it was gonna be the
president of Honduras one day because of his ties and
because of his his wanting to better the country, and
and the way he talked about it in in his
growth within within the politic arena, renewable energy was attractive

(13:50):
to lots of people in David's generation. It was an
alternative to fossil fuels, a cleaner way to bring energy
into people's homes, and there was money in it and
lots of political momentum. Travis himself, after completing his military commitment,
had started working in the renewable sector in Ohio. We

(14:12):
talked everything from solar to wind to hydro um and
the complications of hydro and the United States versus Honduras.
And then there was Samir, David's best friend from when
he grew up in Las Aba. He too had ended
up in the same field today. Samir is the executive

(14:32):
director for honduras Is Renewable Energy Association. David was in
a perfect spot. His career seemed to be running on rails,
and those rails were shuttling him straight towards success. His
grandfather and his mother had been right. All the doors

(14:52):
in the world were opening. David Castillo remembers the precise
moment when he first became aware of Berta Cassaris. He'd
already been president of Dessa for nearly two years by

(15:14):
this time. I know the exact date. Actually, it's April
first of two thousand. This was the very first time
that I heard the name Berta. At that time, Berta
had just led a protest against Dessa's Awazarka Damn project. David,

(15:35):
who lived and worked into Gooseagalpa, the capital, traveled to
the Gualcaate River to meet her. A few days later,
he encountered her again at a meeting in a government office.
He says they got along pretty well, but he says
Berta's supporters were the problem. He says it was clear

(15:55):
they were itching for a fight. He says, within weeks
of that meeting, they began vandalizing his company's work site.
Towards late in April of two thousand thirteen, we began
to see some sabotage. They began to cut the brakes
from machinery, cut fuel supplies, uh in Um contractors equipment.

(16:24):
By June they were trespassing the campsites and burning buildings.
This was the summer when Rio Blanco turned violent when
Copeine protester Thomas Garcia was shot dead, and when Christian Madrid,
the boy whose family supported Dessa, was killed. And here's

(16:47):
where David's version of events really begins to veer sharply
from the accounts from Berta's colleagues, from the media, from prosecutors,
and from the international investigators who need the case. Berta
is often credited with driving out Sino Hydro, the Chinese
construction contractor that Dessa had hired. When Sino Hydro left,

(17:12):
it put the project on hold, and it forced Dessa
to relocate the damn David says neither Berta nor the
protesters caused Sino Hydro to leave. He insists that he
is the one that did it, that Dessa terminated the
company's contract after the violence broke out because he wasn't

(17:36):
satisfied with Sino Hydro's work. He even says that some
of Berta's criticisms of the Ahwa Zarka project in its
earliest stages were valid, and he blames Sino Hydro for them.
Some of the concerns from the community of Latagira were

(17:56):
legitimate that Sino Hydro was not performing social compensations to them.
We're not doing social management correctly. David insists it's important
that he and not the protesters, drove the contractor out.
By making that point, he's suggesting that he and Berta

(18:19):
on this matter, at least saw ida iye. He's also
undermining the idea that the protests were successful and that
Berta and Copeine had been the ones to paralyze the project.
In fact, David has a counter argument for almost everything

(18:39):
Copeine has ever said about Agua Zarca. One of the
biggest arguments surrounding the project has to do with local support.
By law, if a project impacts indigenous communities, companies must
consult with and get the approval from those residents. The

(19:03):
protesters have always said that Dessa rushed through the approval
process without serious consultations in the area. David says that
community consent is required only if the damn affects indigenous lands.
He says this project did not do that, but Deessa

(19:25):
pursued local approvals anyway. He points to documents released by
the international development banks that funded the project. F m O,
a bank from the Netherlands, sent a fact finding mission
to the area and reported that local residents had signed
letters of support for the project. In both and again

(19:47):
in David says there are eleven separate communities within Rio Blanco,
and he says ten of them supported the dam. Latahera,
where Copine's base was centered, was the lone exception. These
ten communities probably about six thousand people compared to this

(20:11):
community in a Taha that has a population of about
four dred people. But some residents there told me that
Dessa went so far as to forge signatures to fake
that community support, and their assertions were backed up by
a report issued by a United Nations office that specializes

(20:31):
in Indigenous rights. The head of that group visited the
area in and she later said that the communities had
not been properly consulted. David insists all of that is
an outright lie. He says his opponents are also lying
when they talk about how special or sacred the Gualcake

(20:54):
River is to them. Berta often talked about this idea.
The Linka indigenous community speaks of the river as being
part of its ancestral traditions, traditions that were never written down,
but that instead we're passed on through ritual and oral repetition.

(21:16):
David points out that FMO the Development Bank also looked
into this when they studied the project. The very first
time that this was referred to as a sacred river
was when Complete referred to it sometime in around two thousand,
fifteen and sixteen. These are very sensitive points of dispute,

(21:38):
but they're not nearly as sensitive as the one we're
going to get into now. David says that in or
So the nature of his relationship with Berta changed for
the better. This was around the time that the Ahwah's
Arka project was modified and moved two kilometers up river.

(21:59):
He says, after that happened, Ian beart to spoke more
as allies than as opponents. We do not have any
countis were going. This seems to defy reason. Even after
the project was moved, Berta and Coping still held occasional

(22:20):
protests against the dam. They did so right up to
the weeks before her murder. So how can David say
there were no tensions between them. It's because they had
an unspoken understanding, he says, at this particular time, Berta's

(22:41):
protests against DASA were essentially for show, orchestrated displays devoid
of any real consequence. David claims Berta would stage these
protests for visiting journalists and for international NGOs. He explains

(23:03):
it this way. If a protest group like Copaine wants
to raise funds, it has to show the outside world
that it's embroiled in a hot and active conflict. He says,
Berta couldn't afford to portray its relationship with Dessa as friendly.

(23:23):
He says, his tacit deal with Berta at this time
was that Copeine wouldn't hurt Deessa, and Dessa wouldn't hurt Copeine.
His job was to build a dam, Hers was to protest.
I didn't have any hard feelings because that's what they do.
That's what they're supposed to be doing. Protesting in a

(23:46):
song as they protests, and it just start affecting me.
Why would I have any hard feelings. It might be
a difficult idea to absorb that the environmental activists and
the developer whose project she continued to fight against could
be civil towards each other, or even more than that,

(24:07):
that they could be genuinely close. You have to separate
the idea that David Castillo as a person is Dessa
and the project, and that Berta cases is coping. David
and Berta were really good friends. I I got to

(24:31):
have affection for her. I got to consider her my
my good friend, in which that you call, you talk,
you support you hear um. When she had a concern,
she called me when she had an emergency. She also
called me when I had when I wanted to talk
to her, I also called her and I requested that

(24:54):
I wanted to see her and not necessarily anything I
had to do with the project. Okay, so Koben and this.
They might have been antagonists, but David and Verta we're friends.

(25:17):
David says sometimes he and bear To travel together for fun.
One time, as an example, we took a trip, a
road trip together to a place called Cerro de los Oios.
It's a forested spot where the ground is marked by
mysteriously deep holes. It's a local attraction near La Speranza, Barts,

(25:42):
his hometown. He says he and bear To took a
day trip there. In they hired guides, five or six
local kids who showed them around. After that hike, they
returned to La Speranza and went to dinner. Then they
at a bar They capped the evening with a cup

(26:02):
of tea at her house and he returned to his hotel.
David says this wasn't an unusual evening for them. She
also regularly visited to goose Agalpa, the capital where David lived.
He says he'd take her out to her favorite Mexican
restaurant and the evening would evolve from there. After having dinner,

(26:26):
we used to go across the street to um to
ambar Um calls Kawano, and sometimes she she danced in
she had some beer. We used to do this every month,
once a month, once every two months. If she had traveled,
she used to usually bring a gift to me from

(26:48):
her travels. I recalled that one time she brought me
a jade mentally um with a my and representation of
a sort of sodiac sign that she said was my
soda sign. He says she brought him a CD from Asia,

(27:10):
a novel from Argentina, and a bottle of Grappa from Italy,
and he returned the favors. I also supported her economically
because I knew that she also had needs. Gifts of
money or a plane ticket or anything that would help
her with her travels. David says he helped her buy

(27:33):
a new vehicle for Copine. He donated money so Barta
could paint murals on the walls of Copine's women's health
center in Lasperanza. He says he even paid medical expenses
for Barta's mother, and because of all of that, he says,
her murder was a complete surprise to him. He'd gotten

(27:55):
a call early in the morning after she was killed.
I wasn't show um. I could not believe it. I
felt sad, But he says one thing he didn't feel
was fear from the law. And throughout those two years

(28:15):
following her murder, even his fingers pointed Adessa and at him.
He says it never occurred to him that he'd be
seriously considered a suspect. That's because he says, he was
perfectly innocent. In no way did I ever feel that
I was going to be arrested. That day I was detained.

(28:48):
I was flying to Houston to see my family, which
I did every two weeks. David is walking through an
airport in northern Honduras. It's March two, the two year
anniversary of Barton's death. David's wife, Tanya, and their three

(29:12):
young daughters had been living in Houston for more than
a year. David says this was for security reasons. Honduras
had never felt safe, but he says that after Copeine
began Blamingdessa for Barta's murder, they decided to make a change.
So David began splitting his time between the two countries,

(29:34):
flying back and forth. I check in and the at
United to get my plane ticket. I go to custom
seven Immigration and they told me, listen, Mr Cassio, you're
not gonna be able to travel today. And I said,
why am I not going to be able to travel?
Because you have a immigration alert and a you you

(30:00):
just can't travel. And when I hear that, I'm mad
because I'm gonna lose my fight. And I told him, listen,
you have to tell me why I have an immigration
learned and they said, no, listen, we don't have that information.
He walks to the police station inside the Honduran airport
to try to figure out what's going on. So I'm

(30:21):
talking to this police member when he goes online and
he says, only sucre still you also have in a restaurrant? Uh?
And I said why? More officers arrive and they escort
him to a vehicle. David says the atmosphere was confusing
but casual. He didn't resist and they didn't treat him

(30:43):
like some sort of threat. They just explained that they
were driving him to a prosecutor's office. So they left
the airport, but on the road, one of the officers
gets a phone call. The officer explains to David, we're
gonna have to go back to the airport and we're
gonna take you a picture of you outside the airport.

(31:06):
So I'm like, listen, I can't cooperate with you. Uh.
If you can, you can take me by force, but
I'm not a trophy. It felt to him like a
public relations stunt. It was the anniversary of Berta's murder.
David believed the police wanted to show they were still

(31:27):
interested in the case, and he was paying the price.
His defiance wouldn't change the fact that he was going
to jail. David Castillo was charged with the murder of
Berta Casseres, a woman that he says was his close
friend and confidante. Shortly after the arrest, David proclaims his

(31:52):
innocence at an indictment hearing he mentions that he had
considered himself Berta's friend. To the members of Rita's family,
this counter narrative is deeply offensive. They harbor no doubts
whatsoever that he planned her death. Berta's daughter er Tita Isabel,

(32:12):
remembers being in the courtroom that day Brando Castill when
we were in the hearing with David Castillo. It was
horrible because the only person in the family who went
to this hearing was me. Well, first of all, it
was uncomfortable to be in such a tiny room. Not

(32:33):
all of the people who wanted to attend could because
it was super small. But I had to be there,
and he was right there, and when he testified, he
looked at me. He didn't speak to the judge, he
spoke to me. He was looking at me, And so
he was being the victim, the poor little thing who

(32:53):
was such a friend of my mother, and he was
such a kind person with her, and that he'd helped
give her so many opportunities in life. She says it
was extremely uncomfortable to listen to him, yet also satisfying

(33:14):
in a strange way to be able to look him
in the eye and to be able to hear him
tell his story out loud. It was valuable to her
to listen to him speak. She says he measured his
words and recited them calmly. To her, it seemed as
if he was following a memorized script. Beer Tita Isabelle

(33:39):
says her mother had talked to her about David. Berta
told her that David was different from the others at Dessa.
He spoke differently, softly, and with no apparent aggression. He
didn't insult Berta. He'd ask about her children, and he
let her know that he was paying attention to them

(34:00):
where they traveled, when they were coming back. But Bertita
isabel says her mother never really trusted David. That she
always believed there was a sinister undercurrent to his kindness,
as if he was cultivating her like an intelligence source,
always probing for information and keeping tabs of what she

(34:22):
was up to. She told me, this sort of person
is much more dangerous because it's not that he said
outright that he's going to kill her, but she knew
he was a stalker. Today, David's case still hasn't gone

(34:44):
to trial, but his defense wants to prove that David
and Berta were in fact close. They came up with
almost fourteen hundred direct text messages sent between the two
of them. The messages cover a period of almost three years,
right up until the weeks before Barta was killed. The

(35:09):
texts do support the idea that they got along very well,
at least most of the time. I appreciate our friendship,
bear To, wrote to him the year before she was killed.
Despite our differences, I've tried to trust you. David responded
that he felt the same way. On rare occasions, she'd

(35:31):
complain about his project or about other people involved in it.
A little less than a year before she died, she
vented to him about fm O, that's the development bank
that said local communities had signed letters supporting the dam.
Barton wrote to David about quote his friends, saying the

(35:51):
bank's representatives were miserable liars. But after some back and forth,
she and David were on friendly terms. By the next evening,
they agreed they'd see each other again, and Barta seemed
frankly playful. She wrote to David, and you'll give me
permission to rob a kiss, nothing more, just once. Even

(36:14):
neither side has suggested there was a romantic relationship between them.
Barrett's supporters say her text to him were playful and
in character with a personality that wasn't always serious. More importantly,
her supporters say the texts uncovered by the defense team
actually support their allegations. To them, the texts offer proof

(36:40):
that bear to in David's relationship began to deteriorate in
the fall of that's also when they say David and
others began plotting her murder. Barta and Copeine began ramping
up their opposition to Deessa with renewed protests and public
denunciations around that time. David wrote to her in October,

(37:04):
you say that you like me, and your actions speak otherwise.
You speak of dialogue, but the reality is different. He
assures her. He still considers her a friend, but by
the first of December he's writing her back. I see
you've been busy, David tells her. He then pays a
copy of some strong criticisms she recently made against his company.

(37:27):
Barretta writes him back, something else you want to tell me?
You response to her only that I hope you're well
and send many best wishes. Barta writes to him, is
this irony? Later that December, they exchange friendly holiday greetings,
but by February something appears to have changed, and remember,

(37:52):
prosecutors alleged that at this time, the accused killers had
begun surveilling Berta and that they had already attempted murder her.
In early February, Barrettster writes to David saying she is
quote disappointed. She says she thought maybe he really could
be different from the wealthy elites who financially backed his project.

(38:15):
In the messages, she does not indicate what provoked her disappointment.
David doesn't write her back for a couple of weeks,
but when he finally does, his message comes two days
after what investigators allege was that failed murder attempt. He
writes her, what does that refer to? Different? It appears

(38:38):
he's referencing the message she'd sent, comparing him to the
wealthy investors. She says, you know them, you know, and
then she adds, how strange what you write to me.
David responds, suggesting that he's a little confused. Yes, I
know them very well, they're friends. But I don't know

(38:58):
what you would think would be different. I know that
I am very different, but I don't know what you think.
He suggests that he was just trying to be friendly
when he brought up her criticisms of his company. He writes,
they told me that you went to visit Lattehea, and
it made me want to say hello. Bear To responds, seriously,

(39:21):
you wanted to say hello to me or to fight?
After he assures her of his good intentions, bear to rights.
I believe that there are people in your world who
can have integrity. I thought you could be one of
those exceptions. I think you may be capable somewhere of

(39:42):
having kindness, integrity, ethics, and humanity. You can even give
love and nice things, But you are also capable of
being like those bastards from the comfort of a certain
power and impunity from which you act. David again expresses

(40:03):
his sincerity, and she writes, I'm disappointed for many underlying reasons.
And it's not that you are obligated to have anything
to do with me or to even appear respectful. But
I believed in you as a human being, that even
being from that shitty world, you could be different. When

(40:24):
he again insists they can maintain respect and friendship, she
asked him, do you really believe what you're saying truly?
Or do you want to pull my leg? This is
the last day February that Bearton David will exchange text messages.

(40:46):
She ends the conversation and telling him that she'd picked
out a gift for him a while ago. She says
she wants to give it to him before the sense
of why she had chosen it was lost and that

(41:07):
was it. If these texts suggests tension between the two
of them, David says it was quickly resolved. He categorically
rejects the idea that these conversations illustrate a falling out.
You can see that we are friends. We continue to
visit each other all the way until very recently. When

(41:29):
when when when she was killed. It's impossible that you know,
asked copeene mentions or as guy demensis, that I was
planning to hurt my friend. It's ridiculous, He says. They
met in person after those final messages. It was less
than two weeks later. He says she gave him the gift,
a type of gemstone native to western Honduras, and phone

(41:53):
records verify they were in contact. She called him on
February eighteen, two weeks later, she would be murdered. David

(42:16):
was locked in prison after his hearing to await trial.
His mother, Dona, visited him shortly after that. She says
she had to stand in a long line to get
past the front gate. She guesses there might have been
two thousand people, mostly women, waiting to enter. All the

(42:38):
women there very vulgar. Um. I remember that I didn't
know where I had to in, which line I had
to be, and I asked, and one of the ladies
just looked at me from top to bottom and she said, lady,

(42:58):
you look so well edge hated. I don't think you
belong here. And I just looked at her and I said, um,
I just want to know where I have to stand.
And I couldn't believe that my son, who was a businessman,
a respectful person, respectful in every sense, you know, towards

(43:24):
every human being, towards law, was sleeping there in that place.
I interviewed David after he'd been transferred to another prison.
This one is inside a military compound just outside of GOOSEGALPA.
You enter through multiple guard stations and then reach the

(43:47):
actual prison behind a locked, high metal gate. I talked
to him multiple times going to the prison on weekends,
when the inmates are allowed to receive visitors. Did Ara
was there along with her husband. They sat in a
narrow courtyard chatting with the families of other prisoners. Many

(44:08):
had brought sacks full of food and clothes for the inmates.
A few children played soccer in the courtyard. The atmosphere
felt relaxed. The prisoners could walk freely out of their rooms,
visiting with their families and if they wanted to other inmates.
One of the other prisoners here is Sergio Rodriguez, the

(44:31):
former environmental manager and community relations chief Fordessa. He was
arrested almost two years before David. The two of them
spend a lot of time together. Now. David's room is small,
maybe eight by ten ft or so, with an even
smaller toilet area. A mattress sits atop a yellow cement platform.

(44:54):
There's a table, two plastic chairs, and a plastic cabinet
with a candle on it. David appeared thinner than he'd
been at the time of his arrest, but he looked healthy.
You wore a white Nike T shirt, blue sweite pants,
and silver Nike running shoes. David says that more than

(45:14):
two years in confinement has taken a toll. This has
been terrible, horrible it I've lost everything everything in these
two years that I've been detained. I've lost everything, and
most important, I've lost my family because I have not

(45:37):
been able to see him. They do not live here
in nondutas it's not easy for them to travel now.
I have not seen my three little girls, which is
what I missed the most in almost two years. I
missed him a lot. I wish I could see them.
I wish I could hug them. I wish I could

(45:58):
go to school with him. And it's unjust, but I'm
going through. David's mother visits him every weekend, or did
until prison visits were suspended because of the COVID nineteen pandemic.
Her loyalty to her son is total. She says that
only once in the past two years did she allow

(46:21):
herself to question the possibility that he could have been
involved in the murder. She says she'd been praying to
God every day that all of the details of his
case would be revealed, everything so that her son could
be set free. One day, she told David that she'd

(46:41):
been doing that, and she posed a question to him,
and I would like to know as a mom if
by praying this way we might be hurting you. Because
God will reveal everything. And I don't know if you
could have heard some thing and didn't say anything, if

(47:02):
you could have done something, and maybe I don't know
if your partners could have told you something to do something,
and maybe it was wrong. And you know that this

(47:25):
will come out. And he looked at me that day
and he said, listen, Mom, I want to tell you something.
I am very proud of having you as my mother,
but I want you to be and feel proud of
the son that you grew up. Because I've never done

(47:47):
anything against the law, and not even say against the
human being. I have nothing to be ashamed of, and
you have nothing to feel ashamed of. I want you
to have your head high up always because there's nothing

(48:08):
that I have ever done against anyone. She says that
to lock up her son is to lock up a
man who had been invested with unlimited potential. So much
had been poured into his life, starting all the way
back in las Aba. He'd had a proper upbringing, the

(48:30):
best education, enormous opportunities. She says that after Barts's murder.
When people began pointing the finger at Dessa, she became
afraid for her son's life. She says it made a
dangerous country feel even more menacing to everyone in the family.

(48:51):
To her, much of Honduras had turned on David. These
people don't have anything to lose. If they lose their
life one less, that's it. But we do. We have
a different life. We have a lot to lose, you know,

(49:23):
the family members and copying. They they have been picked
him um stir about what happened to uh huberta um.
But I have also been a victim. I continue to
be a victim because when all these slides are published

(49:47):
and said and how they frame things, um, they probably
look bad. David's tone sometimes shifted during our conversations from
dejected and despairing to a dug in sort of defiance,
but the message never changed. I did not order this,

(50:10):
I did not participate it in the murder. There is
no evidence whatsoever that could link me to the killing Operta.
But there are all those text messages, the ones that

(50:30):
prosecutors say show David conspiring with others to try to
get away with murder. On the next episode of Blood River,
we dive into the heart of David's defense. Yeah. Blood

(51:02):
River is written and reported by me monte Reel Top
for Foreheads is our senior producer. My Aquava is our
associate producer. Our theme was composed and performed by Senior Rubinos.
Special thanks to Carlos Rodriguez. Francesca Levi is the head
of Bloomberg Podcasts. Be sure to subscribe if you haven't already,

(51:25):
and if you like what you hear, please leave us
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Thanks for listening.