August 24, 2020 • 39 mins
Prosecutors say a trail of text messages tie David Castillo to the plot to kill Berta Caceres. But David offers an explanation for all of these seemingly incriminating exchanges. And his freedom could rest on whether a court will believe him.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
July is a critical day in the story of Berta
Cassarus and David Castile. Here's what we know happened. A
security guard at the Ahwa Zarka Damn's work site shot
and killed the protester from Copeene, the indigenous rights group
(00:22):
led by Berta. If you're David, the CEO of the
company behind the damn, you know this is a crisis.
The damn has already attracted controversy. Depending on how the
press reports it, this could make things much worse. Here's
what else we know. That same day, David sends a
(00:43):
text message to his colleagues Adessa, his company. He tells
them pay the reporter from h H h H is
a Honduran cable news network. David instructs his colleagues to
offer the reporter two thousand lympiras, which is about out
eighty dollars today. And those two bits of information that
(01:05):
someone was killed and that David wanted to pay a
reporter are the only two facts in this instance that
investigators and David can seemingly agree on. If you're the
team investigating David, this looks like a bribe, an attempt
to spend the incident and provide cover for the project.
(01:28):
H H didn't respond to a request for comments, but
David says his company did make that payment and that
there was nothing wrong with it. Generalists local generalists do
not have funds to be able to travel far away normally,
(01:49):
they don't have few to be able to go to
remote places um even more sound development amountain. David argues
that the testers, not the company's security guards, had incited
the violence that day, and unless he covered a local
journalist's expenses to come to the area, no one in
(02:12):
Honduras would ever hear his side of the story. In
his version, this wasn't a breach of ethics. It was
a public service. We wanted the news. We wanted the
people of Honduras to know exactly what was going on,
what was happening, what we were being victims of during
(02:34):
this time. The debate over the meaning of this text
might seem like a side note in the Berte Cathros
murder case, but investigators say it's important that it helps
establish a pattern where Dessa used influence and money to
twist institutions to their will. They say it was part
(02:54):
of Dessa's corporate culture, and messages like that support or
other even more important texts conversations that prosecutors say directly
tie David Castillo to the murder plot itself. But David
will attempt to explain every one of these seemingly incriminating texts.
(03:17):
We're going to explore some of the most crucial exchanges
in this episode. This will give us a glimpse into
a big part of his defense, because ultimately, so much
could rest on how he explains them and whether a
judge finds his counter narrative convincing. I'm monte Reel for
(03:45):
Bloomberg Green and this is Blood River. The text exchange
(04:20):
we're going to start with involves messages sent between David
and Douglas Bustillo, and before we get into the messages themselves,
it's important to say a little bit about the relationship
between these two men and the timing of this exchange. Bustillo,
if you recall, was the former security chief for Deessa
(04:42):
at the Agua Zarca work site, and this particular exchange
of messages happened in November. That's right around the time
when Berta and Copeene resumed their protests against the damn.
Now it might seem strange that the two men, David
and Bustillo, would have any correspondence at all around that time.
(05:06):
That's because months earlier, in July, David actually had fired
Boustillo as his head of security at Awa Zarca, and
he says one of the reasons he did it was
because Berta asked him to. Berta asked me personally to
fire Bustio from from the project site, and when I
(05:29):
found a chance due to poor behavior and lack of
judgment from from Mr Bustio, he was He was fired
sometime around July of two thousand. He got caught drunk
driving Andy company vehicle, which was unacceptable to us. So
(05:50):
fast forward a few months from that firing to the
fall of Bustillo is no longer working for David, at
least not a ficially, but the text show that David
and Boustillo are still in touch and they're still working
together on something. That November, Boustillo sends a message to David,
(06:12):
one that prosecutors alleged is very important. It's the one
where Boustillo asked David about the quote. Investigators have alleged
that these messages refer to payments made by David or
his company to Bustillo, and that the payments are connected
(06:33):
to the plot to kill Berta. In this message, Bustillo
greets David by name and writes in Spanish. As it's typed,
that translates literally as a request complete. A smoother translation
(06:53):
might be give me the David responds, telling Bostio to
meet him at a Lee's restaurant in a shopping mall.
Investigators believe Bustillo is asking for a payment half of
the money that he's owed for helping to plan the
murder and to hire the hitman. They say one of
(07:14):
Bustillo's bank accounts shows a deposit of about four thousand
dollars shortly before this call. Roxanna Athols is one of
the members of the investigating team put together by Berta's family.
She says the timing of these messages is important. It's November.
(07:37):
This is the same month when Berta and Copeine resumed
their protests at the Gualcarque River against Dessa. This is
after more than a year of relative calm at the site,
and when Davi Costillo realizes Da Copin is going to
continue to oppose the damn project um. We think. Also
(07:57):
in November of two thousand fifty is when the murder,
the plot we canst take shape to kill her. So
how does David explain these messages where Boustillo asked him
for the Well, it starts with a typo. Boustillo wrote
the word again as written in Spanish, it's a command.
(08:22):
But if you put an accent mark on the last
letter of the word, the meaning changes. With an accent mark,
the word would not be a command, it would be
a statement, would mean I completed. Boustillo did not put
an accent mark on that word, but David says he
(08:45):
meant to. It's just that when you're typing texts, you're
not so careful with punctuation. So David says he understood
the text from Boustillo to mean I completed. In other words,
Boustillo was saying he'd finished half of a job he
(09:05):
was supposed to do. Remember, David had already fired Bustillo,
but he says he realized Boustillo could still be of service.
David says no one knew the copine protesters in Rio
Blanco better than Boustillo, his former head of security. He
(09:28):
had lived among those protesters for years. David says, Bustillo's
job that November was to convince two local residents, men
who had previously always been aligned with Copinge against Dessa,
to come to the other side to work with the company.
So we had asked Bustillo that he knew them to
(09:51):
recruit them. Refers to that he had recruited one of them.
He had completed what we had requested from him, David says.
The second potential recruit never panned out, So that is
the context surrounding the message. Tausto says, I have completed
(10:16):
the work of It has nothing to do with funding.
So David dismisses this entire exchange as meaningless. It was
all about a recruiting drive, a misinterpretation that started with
a missing accent mark. This brings us to another important
(10:45):
text string again. This one is between David and Douglas Bustillo.
It takes place a couple of months later in February,
about a month before Barton's actual murder in early Mark
ch So what we think happened in early February was
there is an effort to kill Berta. Roxanna says this
(11:09):
was the failed effort to kill her, an attempt that
was abandoned when the would be killers saw that Berta's
daughters were with her at the house. Immediately after that,
Boustillo sent another message to David. He says, Mission aborta
Mission aborted bias for lack of resources. David says that
(11:32):
this mission had nothing to do with Berta. He says
that Boustillo's still doing work for him now and then
at this point, and not just around Rio Blanco. In fact,
David says that by February, he was considering hiring Bustillo
as a security manager for a solar project he was
(11:53):
developing in another region completely separate from the Ahwa Zarca site.
He says there was a substation connected to that solar
project that had been taken over by gangs. The site
was effectively held for ransom. David says he wanted Boustillo
to visit that solar site to do some reconnaissance and
(12:15):
to figure out how many security guards would be needed
to secure the place, but Bostio had to abandon that visit.
He could not travel to the project on that a
specific date. He was going to travel at a later date.
Mission aborted again. David says investigators simply misinterpreted the meaning
(12:38):
of the texts, he and Boustillo weren't focused on murdering Berta.
He says they were preoccupied with a solar project. David
says this explains a message that he sent to Boustillo.
He wrote, quote, remember the accidents and the scene. I
(12:59):
think if you look at that text in the context
of the plan, it means clean up after yourself. At
least that's the way I would interpret it. But David
says this was a reference to the incident that led
him to fire Boustillo from Deessa. Months before the drunk
driving incident, David says Bustillo had made a scene in
(13:21):
the town square where he wrecked his vehicle. David says
he was reminding Bustillo of that unfortunate event before he
made his trip to visit the solar plant in the
town of Choluteca. That's why we were not going to
provide or allow him to drive any vehicles from from
(13:42):
from this and when he was going to go to Chotea. So,
David says that exchange, which prosecutors say supports their theory
of the aborted murder attempt, was also completely unrelated to Berta.
But there's a complicating factor here. Investigators know that around
(14:03):
the same time Boustillo was in contact with David, Boustillo
was also in contact with Mariano Diaz. He's the military
officer whose phone coincidentally was tapped as part of a
drug and kidnapping investigation. Prosecutors say Diaz was also helping
coordinate the murder. Additionally, both Diaz and Boustillo were in
(14:29):
direct contact with a guy named Henry Hernantez. Hernandez was
arrested as one of the hitman who had broken into
Berta's house the night of the murder. Police had used
cell phone data to place him there at her subdivision
on that night, and later Hernandez admitted to being there.
(14:50):
He didn't say he killed Barton. He claimed he was
essentially dragged there against his will by the other hitman,
whom he implicated. So, why, when Boostillo is supposed to
be working with David on a solar project, is he
talking to Mariano Diaz and Henry Hernandez at the same time,
(15:12):
And why a week before all of that was Boustillo
himself in Berta's subdivision taking pictures of her house, and
according to phone data, he'd return there again about a
week before the actual murder. David says he doesn't know
why Boustillo was doing any of that when he was
(15:33):
supposed to be concentrating on a solar project. He doesn't
know why Bustillo had been in contact through the time
of the actual murder with marian o'diaz or Henry Hernandez.
David says he only knows it had nothing to do
with him or his company. No, Montitez has absolutely nothing
(15:56):
to do with has absolutely nothing to do with the
work we had requested. Was teal to do the conversations
that was we're heavy, if they were a parallel, if
he was addressing any issues with either Bodeano or others,
were totally unrelated to us, and we had known ledge about.
(16:37):
Many of David's critics say his explanation of the text
to Boostello reveal a pattern. They say David wrote to
him in a coded language designed to obscure meaning, and
they also argue that his friendly text to bear to
herself were part of a similar strategy that at the
(16:58):
same time that he was plotting her murder, he was
protecting himself and planting the seeds for his future defense.
Billy Kite used to work for Global Witness, a London
based human rights organization. In November, he was in Honduras
preparing a report about violence against activists. He met with
(17:22):
Berta then. This was around the same time that David
and Bustillo were exchanging the fifty texts. Also, at this time,
David was offering to pay for Berta's mother's medical care.
Billy kept notes about his conversation with Berta. He says
David Castillo was a topic of discussion. She said to
(17:46):
me that he would often call her um, always with
a fake, kind of you know, friendly tone, wanted to
be her friend. The text that David's team has produced
show that David and Berta were exchanging messages in the
days before Billy met with her. David says he sent
(18:07):
assistance to the medical officers where her mother was being
treated to pay some of those costs. Billie says bert
To suspected David was trying to bribe her. She told
me that two days previously, when when I when I
met her so Monday, the I think it was the
second of November, he had called her again a kind
(18:31):
of familiar tone, and then he offered her a bribe
to to stop her her activism. Um so the exact
words and these are from my notes from that day,
where so let's come to an agreement. It is what
that she she told me that he had said to
her on that phone call on the second of November.
And obviously she told me she she refused, she wasn't
(18:52):
by any means a friend of de Wiksti or she
she knew the games that he was he was playing.
She knew that he was the one who who was
putting the strings with David and jail. Dessa's defense team
hired Amsterdam and Partners, law firm based in London and Washington,
d C. One of its specialties is crisis management. Previous
(19:15):
clients have included prime ministers, the internet entrepreneur Kim dot Com,
and even the Turkish government. The firm published a report
defending Dessa and attacking Copine. It was titled the War
on Development Exposing the Copine disinformation campaign surrounding the Berta
(19:37):
Cassarus case in Honduras. Robert Amsterdam, the head of the firm,
posted a video on his Twitter feed about eight months
after David was arrested. He argued that it would make
no sense for Dessa to be involved with Berta's murder.
He said everyone at the company had known that violence
(19:57):
was the one thing they could have sunk their hydro
electric project, because they learned that lesson in when the
protester was shot by the security guard at the work site.
There was absolutely no business motive for murdering Castras, because
when one protester was killed by a member of the
(20:17):
army a year before, that had stopped the project. So
it would be very clear Todessa that any involvement with
respect to Berta would have ended the project Number one
number two. On the day of her death, a journalist
has stated that he spoke to Berta and she was
worried about a threat she received from a mining company
(20:43):
Amsterdam is referring to texts bear To exchanged with a
Swiss journalist. This happened on March second, about five and
a half hours before she was killed. The journalist was
working on a project about mining. He asked her, if
he might is that the areas where she worked to
take pictures of mining impacts. Bear To responded, here, we
(21:08):
have not allowed mining company's entry. Then she followed that
with there are serious threats, very serious. We know the topic.
We can talk. David's defense team believes this text exchange
illustrates an important point. Berta had made lots of enemies
throughout lots of industries. Berta's backers do not believe Berta
(21:34):
was referring to a specific threat on her life from
a specific company. When Berta spoke of the Ahwazarka dam,
she often warned that it might be a gateway for mining.
She put it this way, If the dam were built,
its electricity wouldn't benefit the locals. It was more likely
to benefit mining companies who would use the power to
(21:56):
move into the region. David's team argues the texts raised
the possibility of other suspects, suspects that never were seriously considered,
they say, because investigators were determined to blame Dessa. David's
lawyers claimed the messages had been purposefully hidden by prosecutors
(22:18):
who didn't flag them as being significant. David's defense team, however,
labeled Berta's text to that journalist as being of quote
transcendental importance. David's team, in fact, has tried to prove
that all of the prosecution's phone data, the text messages,
(22:39):
what'sapp chats, should carry no weight in court. They say
the state's lead forensic technician, the person who extracted the
data from the phones, was biased, that she didn't follow
proper technical protocols. This has become a cornerstone of David's defense.
(23:01):
When we saw her report, we noticed inconsistencies that we
knew they were not true, and you will be surprised
that we have found out more evidence that she has
manipulated more phone calls and more phone data. David's lawyers
(23:21):
contended in court last year the message strings from different
chat groups got mixed together, and so they say the
court was given transcripts where unrelated messages appear as if
they flow together, and when transcribing a few of the
chat strings, the lawyers say the prosecution omitted messages that
(23:44):
were part of those conversations. They gave a couple of
examples in a court filing. The most significant involved the
WhatsApp conversation from October, about five months before Bart's murder.
Sergie Rodriguez, Dessa's environmental and social manager, wrote to David
(24:06):
and other Dessa employees. In the message, Sergio refers to
Berta and to Thomas Gomez, one of her colleagues with Copine.
Sergio wrote, Obviously, as long as Thomas and Berta don't arrive,
the movement weakens and there is little mobilization power. We
(24:26):
thus must also direct actions against them. Prosecutors highlighted this
message because it comes right at the time Copeine was
ramping up protests against Dessa. David's lawyers say the DEASA
employees exchanged additional messages eleven days later in the same chat.
(24:47):
Those messages refer to a lawyer. The defense says that
proves the actions Sergio was suggesting were legal actions, not violence.
David's defense team also argues that the government's technical expert
(25:09):
changed the dates of messages to frame him. The example
of this David gave me was that string of messages
between him and Douglas Bustillo, the one from November, around
the time that prosecutors Saydessa began plotting Berta's murder. This
is that fifty percent text Bustillo sent to David, the
(25:32):
one prosecutors say referred to a payment. They say Boustillo
was asking David to pay him half of what was
owed for arranging the preliminary murder plans. David told me
that investigators presented those messages as unfolding, not in November,
(25:52):
but in February. She lied, did not happen in in
in February. This really confused me. I had seen those
texts referred to several times, and every time I'd seen them,
they clearly were labeled as having taken place in November,
(26:13):
not in February. In fact, the November date seemed central
to the narrative that Guy Pay and the State had reconstructed.
They argued that David and the others had begun planning
the murder in November. That's when COPINE resumed its protests,
and it's when David and Bustillo had exchanged that string
(26:37):
of messages. In February was the time of the failed
murder attempt, when the mission aboarded texts came. I told
David that I had examined that string and I couldn't
find anything that suggested that prosecutors had changed the date
from November to February. But I and I looked at it,
(27:01):
it says that it was from November. Well, in one
report they changed the date and it was presented as
if it was in February. So I looked again and
I found an example of what he was talking about
when he was indicted. Prosecutors presented a summary description of
(27:25):
the facts to the court. It says the original planning
was in November, but that in quote the months of
January and February Boustillo asked David to make a fifty
advance on payment agreed to that was wrong. Later the
(27:46):
correct date was attached to those texts, but not here.
This might seem like a minor point, but David and
his defense team argue that these sorts of discrepancies add up.
The foundation of the prosecution's case is the presentation and
interpretation of text messages. David's lawyers argue that if the
(28:08):
prosecution can't be trusted to correctly handle and interpret that evidence,
how can any part of the case against him stand?
And all of this underscores a strange aspect of this case.
Both the victim's family and the defense have argued that
the Honduran justice system can't be trusted the justice is
(28:31):
in shaky hands. Both have said the state, at various
points in the process, has made a mess of the case.
The Honduran Public Prosecutor's office denies the family's claims that
police mishandled the investigation and that court proceedings have been corrupted,
(28:52):
but the court case against David practically ground to a
halt for more than a year. One reason is David's
defense team has ald appeals arguing the text messages were manipulated.
Those proceedings repeatedly delayed the preliminary hearing the determines if
his case will go to trial. With each delay, the
(29:12):
demands for justice from Artes supporters grew louder. Under Honduran law,
a person cannot be held for more than two and
a half years without going to trial. For David, that
deadline expires on September two of this year. Vertas family
says the defenses appeals have all been part of a
(29:34):
strategy delay the process, run out the clock and allowed
David to be released from custody. David denies this. He
says he hopes for a fair trial, but doesn't accept
the idea that government investigators have acted in good faith.
(29:55):
He says they've had two and a half years to
put together a case against him, and holding him indefinitely
violates his rights. Were institutions sometimes delivered weak results. The
(30:28):
first test of the Honduran justice system in the bar
Te Cassarus case came with the trials of several men
who were arrested nearly two years before David. They included
four accused hitmen and a couple of people with ties
to Dessa. One was Sergio Rodriguez, the AWA's ARCA Projects,
(30:48):
environmental and social manager. Another was Douglass Bustillo, the former
security chief accused of plotting the crime with David and
the others. Seraghi O had denied all involvement, starting with
the allegations that he threatened Berta. Multiple witnesses from Copeine
had said Sergio had threatened Berta during a specific protest
(31:13):
and at another one in early Sergio insisted his interaction
with Berta at one of the protests was friendly and
that he hadn't even been at the other one. In fact,
Sergio's lawyers presented cell phone and credit card records showing
he'd been into Gooseigalpa, hours away from the Damn site
(31:34):
at the time of that particular demonstration. His defense showed
that there were no financial transactions that could be traced
between him, Ordessa, and the other accused co conspirators, and
Sergio's telephone experts argued that the evidence clearly showed that
he had not been in contact with Mariano Diaz, the
(31:56):
military officer charged with plotting logistics, or with anyone accused
of being at the scene of the crime. Sergio says
he believes the expert witnesses testifying on his behalf made
a convincing case. Jalla conclusion. They came to the conclusion
(32:18):
that in all of the telephone communications or in the
text messages that I wrote, there is no evidence at
all that links me to the death of Berta caris
noiinging in this cam but the court concluded that there
was enough evidence to show he'd been involved in the planning. Sergio,
(32:42):
along with Douglas Boustillo, Mariano Diaz, and four others accused
of being part of the squad of hitmen. We're all
found guilty. Some avowed to fight with appeals, but in December,
(33:13):
a full year after that verdict, they were sentenced. The
gunmen got fifty years each. Boostillo, Diaz, and Sergio were
each sentenced to thirty years in prison. It wouldn't have
surprised a lot of people if no one had ever
(33:34):
been brought to justice uh for Berta Casta's murder. James Neilan,
who had been the US ambassador to Honduras at the
time of the murder, says successful murder convictions in Honduras
are exceedingly rare, and harsh sentences are almost unheard of.
He believes that international pressure, as well as some practical
(33:57):
assistants during the investigation, turn this particular case into an
almost unprecedented success story. I see it as a great
achievement because if you know as much about unders as
I do, you know that it could have gone in
a very different way. I'm proud of the work that
(34:18):
a lot of people did on that case. Obviously, Hondurans
were at the at the center of it, but there
were people from the United States Embassy who did fabulous
and unsun work on that case. And uh, I think
I can say with a straight face that you wouldn't
see the result that you've seen if it hadn't been
for their work. The Cassarras family applauded the verdicts, but
(34:42):
they certainly didn't celebrate. They reminded people that those who
had been sentenced relatively low level players in a much
larger scheme. They feared complacency that people would think these
convictions amount to justice being done, but the family believed
(35:03):
Sergio and the others were simply being sacrificed to protect
the real criminals in this case, the executives like David
Castillo and the investors behind his company. Just a few
weeks after Sergio and the six others were sentenced in
the murder, a Honduran government agency announced that it was
(35:25):
seeking one billion dollars for the construction of fifty four
new hydro electric projects throughout the country. Barretta's daughter, ber
Tita Isabel, says that announcement felt like a slap in
the face and no, no I no moza. Among ourselves,
(35:49):
we said, no, we are not going to achieve what
we are searching for. We said, they're insulting us with
this announcement. They're insulting the memory of my mummy. They
were saying, Okay, you can have these seven guys and
leave them in jail for thirty years, fifty years, but
we have loads more projects on the way to profit from.
(36:11):
This has nothing to do with energy or the right
to energy. It's about economic profits, period, announce economic David's case, meanwhile,
seemed to be going nowhere. But this summer in August
(36:32):
the Honduran court made a surprise announcement. It removed the
judge that had overseen the case, replacing her with a
new one. Bartes supporters were shocked. They described it as
a last minute surprise. In just two weeks, the time
limit on keeping David in custody would expire. If no
(36:55):
trial is set, according to the law, David might be released.
Copine issued a statement, this subjects the process two forms
of manipulation and procedural trickery. And it wasn't just Copeine
expressing alarm. The Twitter account of the U. S. House
Foreign Affairs Committee quoted New York Congressman Elliott Ingle I
(37:20):
urge Honduran authorities to act swiftly to bring Castillo to
trial and provide justice for the Cassaris family. Later the
same week, the preliminary hearing in David's case was finally held.
David's lawyers argued that telephone text messages were manipulated and
couldn't be trusted. Prosecutors said the evidence against him was
(37:45):
clear and definitive. Next week, the court must make a decision.
Will David Castillo finally stand trial? That's next time. On
the season finale of Blood River m Blood River is
(38:19):
written and reported by me monte reel sofra Fores is
our senior producer. My Aquava is our associate producer. Our
theme was composed and performed by Senior Rubinos. Special thanks
to Carlos Rodriguts. Francesca Levi is the head of Bloomberg Podcasts.
(38:39):
Be sure to subscribe if you haven't already, and if
you like what you hear, please leave us a review.
It helps others find out about the show. Thanks for listening.
July is a critical day in the story of Berta
Cassarus and David Castile. Here's what we know happened. A
security guard at the Ahwa Zarka Damn's work site shot
and killed the protester from Copeene, the indigenous rights group
(00:22):
led by Berta. If you're David, the CEO of the
company behind the damn, you know this is a crisis.
The damn has already attracted controversy. Depending on how the
press reports it, this could make things much worse. Here's
what else we know. That same day, David sends a
(00:43):
text message to his colleagues Adessa, his company. He tells
them pay the reporter from h H h H is
a Honduran cable news network. David instructs his colleagues to
offer the reporter two thousand lympiras, which is about out
eighty dollars today. And those two bits of information that
(01:05):
someone was killed and that David wanted to pay a
reporter are the only two facts in this instance that
investigators and David can seemingly agree on. If you're the
team investigating David, this looks like a bribe, an attempt
to spend the incident and provide cover for the project.
(01:28):
H H didn't respond to a request for comments, but
David says his company did make that payment and that
there was nothing wrong with it. Generalists local generalists do
not have funds to be able to travel far away normally,
(01:49):
they don't have few to be able to go to
remote places um even more sound development amountain. David argues
that the testers, not the company's security guards, had incited
the violence that day, and unless he covered a local
journalist's expenses to come to the area, no one in
(02:12):
Honduras would ever hear his side of the story. In
his version, this wasn't a breach of ethics. It was
a public service. We wanted the news. We wanted the
people of Honduras to know exactly what was going on,
what was happening, what we were being victims of during
(02:34):
this time. The debate over the meaning of this text
might seem like a side note in the Berte Cathros
murder case, but investigators say it's important that it helps
establish a pattern where Dessa used influence and money to
twist institutions to their will. They say it was part
(02:54):
of Dessa's corporate culture, and messages like that support or
other even more important texts conversations that prosecutors say directly
tie David Castillo to the murder plot itself. But David
will attempt to explain every one of these seemingly incriminating texts.
(03:17):
We're going to explore some of the most crucial exchanges
in this episode. This will give us a glimpse into
a big part of his defense, because ultimately, so much
could rest on how he explains them and whether a
judge finds his counter narrative convincing. I'm monte Reel for
(03:45):
Bloomberg Green and this is Blood River. The text exchange
(04:20):
we're going to start with involves messages sent between David
and Douglas Bustillo, and before we get into the messages themselves,
it's important to say a little bit about the relationship
between these two men and the timing of this exchange. Bustillo,
if you recall, was the former security chief for Deessa
(04:42):
at the Agua Zarca work site, and this particular exchange
of messages happened in November. That's right around the time
when Berta and Copeene resumed their protests against the damn.
Now it might seem strange that the two men, David
and Bustillo, would have any correspondence at all around that time.
(05:06):
That's because months earlier, in July, David actually had fired
Boustillo as his head of security at Awa Zarca, and
he says one of the reasons he did it was
because Berta asked him to. Berta asked me personally to
fire Bustio from from the project site, and when I
(05:29):
found a chance due to poor behavior and lack of
judgment from from Mr Bustio, he was He was fired
sometime around July of two thousand. He got caught drunk
driving Andy company vehicle, which was unacceptable to us. So
(05:50):
fast forward a few months from that firing to the
fall of Bustillo is no longer working for David, at
least not a ficially, but the text show that David
and Boustillo are still in touch and they're still working
together on something. That November, Boustillo sends a message to David,
(06:12):
one that prosecutors alleged is very important. It's the one
where Boustillo asked David about the quote. Investigators have alleged
that these messages refer to payments made by David or
his company to Bustillo, and that the payments are connected
(06:33):
to the plot to kill Berta. In this message, Bustillo
greets David by name and writes in Spanish. As it's typed,
that translates literally as a request complete. A smoother translation
(06:53):
might be give me the David responds, telling Bostio to
meet him at a Lee's restaurant in a shopping mall.
Investigators believe Bustillo is asking for a payment half of
the money that he's owed for helping to plan the
murder and to hire the hitman. They say one of
(07:14):
Bustillo's bank accounts shows a deposit of about four thousand
dollars shortly before this call. Roxanna Athols is one of
the members of the investigating team put together by Berta's family.
She says the timing of these messages is important. It's November.
(07:37):
This is the same month when Berta and Copeine resumed
their protests at the Gualcarque River against Dessa. This is
after more than a year of relative calm at the site,
and when Davi Costillo realizes Da Copin is going to
continue to oppose the damn project um. We think. Also
(07:57):
in November of two thousand fifty is when the murder,
the plot we canst take shape to kill her. So
how does David explain these messages where Boustillo asked him
for the Well, it starts with a typo. Boustillo wrote
the word again as written in Spanish, it's a command.
(08:22):
But if you put an accent mark on the last
letter of the word, the meaning changes. With an accent mark,
the word would not be a command, it would be
a statement, would mean I completed. Boustillo did not put
an accent mark on that word, but David says he
(08:45):
meant to. It's just that when you're typing texts, you're
not so careful with punctuation. So David says he understood
the text from Boustillo to mean I completed. In other words,
Boustillo was saying he'd finished half of a job he
(09:05):
was supposed to do. Remember, David had already fired Bustillo,
but he says he realized Boustillo could still be of service.
David says no one knew the copine protesters in Rio
Blanco better than Boustillo, his former head of security. He
(09:28):
had lived among those protesters for years. David says, Bustillo's
job that November was to convince two local residents, men
who had previously always been aligned with Copinge against Dessa,
to come to the other side to work with the company.
So we had asked Bustillo that he knew them to
(09:51):
recruit them. Refers to that he had recruited one of them.
He had completed what we had requested from him, David says.
The second potential recruit never panned out, So that is
the context surrounding the message. Tausto says, I have completed
(10:16):
the work of It has nothing to do with funding.
So David dismisses this entire exchange as meaningless. It was
all about a recruiting drive, a misinterpretation that started with
a missing accent mark. This brings us to another important
(10:45):
text string again. This one is between David and Douglas Bustillo.
It takes place a couple of months later in February,
about a month before Barton's actual murder in early Mark
ch So what we think happened in early February was
there is an effort to kill Berta. Roxanna says this
(11:09):
was the failed effort to kill her, an attempt that
was abandoned when the would be killers saw that Berta's
daughters were with her at the house. Immediately after that,
Boustillo sent another message to David. He says, Mission aborta
Mission aborted bias for lack of resources. David says that
(11:32):
this mission had nothing to do with Berta. He says
that Boustillo's still doing work for him now and then
at this point, and not just around Rio Blanco. In fact,
David says that by February, he was considering hiring Bustillo
as a security manager for a solar project he was
(11:53):
developing in another region completely separate from the Ahwa Zarca site.
He says there was a substation connected to that solar
project that had been taken over by gangs. The site
was effectively held for ransom. David says he wanted Boustillo
to visit that solar site to do some reconnaissance and
(12:15):
to figure out how many security guards would be needed
to secure the place, but Bostio had to abandon that visit.
He could not travel to the project on that a
specific date. He was going to travel at a later date.
Mission aborted again. David says investigators simply misinterpreted the meaning
(12:38):
of the texts, he and Boustillo weren't focused on murdering Berta.
He says they were preoccupied with a solar project. David
says this explains a message that he sent to Boustillo.
He wrote, quote, remember the accidents and the scene. I
(12:59):
think if you look at that text in the context
of the plan, it means clean up after yourself. At
least that's the way I would interpret it. But David
says this was a reference to the incident that led
him to fire Boustillo from Deessa. Months before the drunk
driving incident, David says Bustillo had made a scene in
(13:21):
the town square where he wrecked his vehicle. David says
he was reminding Bustillo of that unfortunate event before he
made his trip to visit the solar plant in the
town of Choluteca. That's why we were not going to
provide or allow him to drive any vehicles from from
(13:42):
from this and when he was going to go to Chotea. So,
David says that exchange, which prosecutors say supports their theory
of the aborted murder attempt, was also completely unrelated to Berta.
But there's a complicating factor here. Investigators know that around
(14:03):
the same time Boustillo was in contact with David, Boustillo
was also in contact with Mariano Diaz. He's the military
officer whose phone coincidentally was tapped as part of a
drug and kidnapping investigation. Prosecutors say Diaz was also helping
coordinate the murder. Additionally, both Diaz and Boustillo were in
(14:29):
direct contact with a guy named Henry Hernantez. Hernandez was
arrested as one of the hitman who had broken into
Berta's house the night of the murder. Police had used
cell phone data to place him there at her subdivision
on that night, and later Hernandez admitted to being there.
(14:50):
He didn't say he killed Barton. He claimed he was
essentially dragged there against his will by the other hitman,
whom he implicated. So, why, when Boostillo is supposed to
be working with David on a solar project, is he
talking to Mariano Diaz and Henry Hernandez at the same time,
(15:12):
And why a week before all of that was Boustillo
himself in Berta's subdivision taking pictures of her house, and
according to phone data, he'd return there again about a
week before the actual murder. David says he doesn't know
why Boustillo was doing any of that when he was
(15:33):
supposed to be concentrating on a solar project. He doesn't
know why Bustillo had been in contact through the time
of the actual murder with marian o'diaz or Henry Hernandez.
David says he only knows it had nothing to do
with him or his company. No, Montitez has absolutely nothing
(15:56):
to do with has absolutely nothing to do with the
work we had requested. Was teal to do the conversations
that was we're heavy, if they were a parallel, if
he was addressing any issues with either Bodeano or others,
were totally unrelated to us, and we had known ledge about.
(16:37):
Many of David's critics say his explanation of the text
to Boostello reveal a pattern. They say David wrote to
him in a coded language designed to obscure meaning, and
they also argue that his friendly text to bear to
herself were part of a similar strategy that at the
(16:58):
same time that he was plotting her murder, he was
protecting himself and planting the seeds for his future defense.
Billy Kite used to work for Global Witness, a London
based human rights organization. In November, he was in Honduras
preparing a report about violence against activists. He met with
(17:22):
Berta then. This was around the same time that David
and Bustillo were exchanging the fifty texts. Also, at this time,
David was offering to pay for Berta's mother's medical care.
Billy kept notes about his conversation with Berta. He says
David Castillo was a topic of discussion. She said to
(17:46):
me that he would often call her um, always with
a fake, kind of you know, friendly tone, wanted to
be her friend. The text that David's team has produced
show that David and Berta were exchanging messages in the
days before Billy met with her. David says he sent
(18:07):
assistance to the medical officers where her mother was being
treated to pay some of those costs. Billie says bert
To suspected David was trying to bribe her. She told
me that two days previously, when when I when I
met her so Monday, the I think it was the
second of November, he had called her again a kind
(18:31):
of familiar tone, and then he offered her a bribe
to to stop her her activism. Um so the exact
words and these are from my notes from that day,
where so let's come to an agreement. It is what
that she she told me that he had said to
her on that phone call on the second of November.
And obviously she told me she she refused, she wasn't
(18:52):
by any means a friend of de Wiksti or she
she knew the games that he was he was playing.
She knew that he was the one who who was
putting the strings with David and jail. Dessa's defense team
hired Amsterdam and Partners, law firm based in London and Washington,
d C. One of its specialties is crisis management. Previous
(19:15):
clients have included prime ministers, the internet entrepreneur Kim dot Com,
and even the Turkish government. The firm published a report
defending Dessa and attacking Copine. It was titled the War
on Development Exposing the Copine disinformation campaign surrounding the Berta
(19:37):
Cassarus case in Honduras. Robert Amsterdam, the head of the firm,
posted a video on his Twitter feed about eight months
after David was arrested. He argued that it would make
no sense for Dessa to be involved with Berta's murder.
He said everyone at the company had known that violence
(19:57):
was the one thing they could have sunk their hydro
electric project, because they learned that lesson in when the
protester was shot by the security guard at the work site.
There was absolutely no business motive for murdering Castras, because
when one protester was killed by a member of the
(20:17):
army a year before, that had stopped the project. So
it would be very clear Todessa that any involvement with
respect to Berta would have ended the project Number one
number two. On the day of her death, a journalist
has stated that he spoke to Berta and she was
worried about a threat she received from a mining company
(20:43):
Amsterdam is referring to texts bear To exchanged with a
Swiss journalist. This happened on March second, about five and
a half hours before she was killed. The journalist was
working on a project about mining. He asked her, if
he might is that the areas where she worked to
take pictures of mining impacts. Bear To responded, here, we
(21:08):
have not allowed mining company's entry. Then she followed that
with there are serious threats, very serious. We know the topic.
We can talk. David's defense team believes this text exchange
illustrates an important point. Berta had made lots of enemies
throughout lots of industries. Berta's backers do not believe Berta
(21:34):
was referring to a specific threat on her life from
a specific company. When Berta spoke of the Ahwazarka dam,
she often warned that it might be a gateway for mining.
She put it this way, If the dam were built,
its electricity wouldn't benefit the locals. It was more likely
to benefit mining companies who would use the power to
(21:56):
move into the region. David's team argues the texts raised
the possibility of other suspects, suspects that never were seriously considered,
they say, because investigators were determined to blame Dessa. David's
lawyers claimed the messages had been purposefully hidden by prosecutors
(22:18):
who didn't flag them as being significant. David's defense team, however,
labeled Berta's text to that journalist as being of quote
transcendental importance. David's team, in fact, has tried to prove
that all of the prosecution's phone data, the text messages,
(22:39):
what'sapp chats, should carry no weight in court. They say
the state's lead forensic technician, the person who extracted the
data from the phones, was biased, that she didn't follow
proper technical protocols. This has become a cornerstone of David's defense.
(23:01):
When we saw her report, we noticed inconsistencies that we
knew they were not true, and you will be surprised
that we have found out more evidence that she has
manipulated more phone calls and more phone data. David's lawyers
(23:21):
contended in court last year the message strings from different
chat groups got mixed together, and so they say the
court was given transcripts where unrelated messages appear as if
they flow together, and when transcribing a few of the
chat strings, the lawyers say the prosecution omitted messages that
(23:44):
were part of those conversations. They gave a couple of
examples in a court filing. The most significant involved the
WhatsApp conversation from October, about five months before Bart's murder.
Sergie Rodriguez, Dessa's environmental and social manager, wrote to David
(24:06):
and other Dessa employees. In the message, Sergio refers to
Berta and to Thomas Gomez, one of her colleagues with Copine.
Sergio wrote, Obviously, as long as Thomas and Berta don't arrive,
the movement weakens and there is little mobilization power. We
(24:26):
thus must also direct actions against them. Prosecutors highlighted this
message because it comes right at the time Copeine was
ramping up protests against Dessa. David's lawyers say the DEASA
employees exchanged additional messages eleven days later in the same chat.
(24:47):
Those messages refer to a lawyer. The defense says that
proves the actions Sergio was suggesting were legal actions, not violence.
David's defense team also argues that the government's technical expert
(25:09):
changed the dates of messages to frame him. The example
of this David gave me was that string of messages
between him and Douglas Bustillo, the one from November, around
the time that prosecutors Saydessa began plotting Berta's murder. This
is that fifty percent text Bustillo sent to David, the
(25:32):
one prosecutors say referred to a payment. They say Boustillo
was asking David to pay him half of what was
owed for arranging the preliminary murder plans. David told me
that investigators presented those messages as unfolding, not in November,
(25:52):
but in February. She lied, did not happen in in
in February. This really confused me. I had seen those
texts referred to several times, and every time I'd seen them,
they clearly were labeled as having taken place in November,
(26:13):
not in February. In fact, the November date seemed central
to the narrative that Guy Pay and the State had reconstructed.
They argued that David and the others had begun planning
the murder in November. That's when COPINE resumed its protests,
and it's when David and Bustillo had exchanged that string
(26:37):
of messages. In February was the time of the failed
murder attempt, when the mission aboarded texts came. I told
David that I had examined that string and I couldn't
find anything that suggested that prosecutors had changed the date
from November to February. But I and I looked at it,
(27:01):
it says that it was from November. Well, in one
report they changed the date and it was presented as
if it was in February. So I looked again and
I found an example of what he was talking about
when he was indicted. Prosecutors presented a summary description of
(27:25):
the facts to the court. It says the original planning
was in November, but that in quote the months of
January and February Boustillo asked David to make a fifty
advance on payment agreed to that was wrong. Later the
(27:46):
correct date was attached to those texts, but not here.
This might seem like a minor point, but David and
his defense team argue that these sorts of discrepancies add up.
The foundation of the prosecution's case is the presentation and
interpretation of text messages. David's lawyers argue that if the
(28:08):
prosecution can't be trusted to correctly handle and interpret that evidence,
how can any part of the case against him stand?
And all of this underscores a strange aspect of this case.
Both the victim's family and the defense have argued that
the Honduran justice system can't be trusted the justice is
(28:31):
in shaky hands. Both have said the state, at various
points in the process, has made a mess of the case.
The Honduran Public Prosecutor's office denies the family's claims that
police mishandled the investigation and that court proceedings have been corrupted,
(28:52):
but the court case against David practically ground to a
halt for more than a year. One reason is David's
defense team has ald appeals arguing the text messages were manipulated.
Those proceedings repeatedly delayed the preliminary hearing the determines if
his case will go to trial. With each delay, the
(29:12):
demands for justice from Artes supporters grew louder. Under Honduran law,
a person cannot be held for more than two and
a half years without going to trial. For David, that
deadline expires on September two of this year. Vertas family
says the defenses appeals have all been part of a
(29:34):
strategy delay the process, run out the clock and allowed
David to be released from custody. David denies this. He
says he hopes for a fair trial, but doesn't accept
the idea that government investigators have acted in good faith.
(29:55):
He says they've had two and a half years to
put together a case against him, and holding him indefinitely
violates his rights. Were institutions sometimes delivered weak results. The
(30:28):
first test of the Honduran justice system in the bar
Te Cassarus case came with the trials of several men
who were arrested nearly two years before David. They included
four accused hitmen and a couple of people with ties
to Dessa. One was Sergio Rodriguez, the AWA's ARCA Projects,
(30:48):
environmental and social manager. Another was Douglass Bustillo, the former
security chief accused of plotting the crime with David and
the others. Seraghi O had denied all involvement, starting with
the allegations that he threatened Berta. Multiple witnesses from Copeine
had said Sergio had threatened Berta during a specific protest
(31:13):
and at another one in early Sergio insisted his interaction
with Berta at one of the protests was friendly and
that he hadn't even been at the other one. In fact,
Sergio's lawyers presented cell phone and credit card records showing
he'd been into Gooseigalpa, hours away from the Damn site
(31:34):
at the time of that particular demonstration. His defense showed
that there were no financial transactions that could be traced
between him, Ordessa, and the other accused co conspirators, and
Sergio's telephone experts argued that the evidence clearly showed that
he had not been in contact with Mariano Diaz, the
(31:56):
military officer charged with plotting logistics, or with anyone accused
of being at the scene of the crime. Sergio says
he believes the expert witnesses testifying on his behalf made
a convincing case. Jalla conclusion. They came to the conclusion
(32:18):
that in all of the telephone communications or in the
text messages that I wrote, there is no evidence at
all that links me to the death of Berta caris
noiinging in this cam but the court concluded that there
was enough evidence to show he'd been involved in the planning. Sergio,
(32:42):
along with Douglas Boustillo, Mariano Diaz, and four others accused
of being part of the squad of hitmen. We're all
found guilty. Some avowed to fight with appeals, but in December,
(33:13):
a full year after that verdict, they were sentenced. The
gunmen got fifty years each. Boostillo, Diaz, and Sergio were
each sentenced to thirty years in prison. It wouldn't have
surprised a lot of people if no one had ever
(33:34):
been brought to justice uh for Berta Casta's murder. James Neilan,
who had been the US ambassador to Honduras at the
time of the murder, says successful murder convictions in Honduras
are exceedingly rare, and harsh sentences are almost unheard of.
He believes that international pressure, as well as some practical
(33:57):
assistants during the investigation, turn this particular case into an
almost unprecedented success story. I see it as a great
achievement because if you know as much about unders as
I do, you know that it could have gone in
a very different way. I'm proud of the work that
(34:18):
a lot of people did on that case. Obviously, Hondurans
were at the at the center of it, but there
were people from the United States Embassy who did fabulous
and unsun work on that case. And uh, I think
I can say with a straight face that you wouldn't
see the result that you've seen if it hadn't been
for their work. The Cassarras family applauded the verdicts, but
(34:42):
they certainly didn't celebrate. They reminded people that those who
had been sentenced relatively low level players in a much
larger scheme. They feared complacency that people would think these
convictions amount to justice being done, but the family believed
(35:03):
Sergio and the others were simply being sacrificed to protect
the real criminals in this case, the executives like David
Castillo and the investors behind his company. Just a few
weeks after Sergio and the six others were sentenced in
the murder, a Honduran government agency announced that it was
(35:25):
seeking one billion dollars for the construction of fifty four
new hydro electric projects throughout the country. Barretta's daughter, ber
Tita Isabel, says that announcement felt like a slap in
the face and no, no I no moza. Among ourselves,
(35:49):
we said, no, we are not going to achieve what
we are searching for. We said, they're insulting us with
this announcement. They're insulting the memory of my mummy. They
were saying, Okay, you can have these seven guys and
leave them in jail for thirty years, fifty years, but
we have loads more projects on the way to profit from.
(36:11):
This has nothing to do with energy or the right
to energy. It's about economic profits, period, announce economic David's case, meanwhile,
seemed to be going nowhere. But this summer in August
(36:32):
the Honduran court made a surprise announcement. It removed the
judge that had overseen the case, replacing her with a
new one. Bartes supporters were shocked. They described it as
a last minute surprise. In just two weeks, the time
limit on keeping David in custody would expire. If no
(36:55):
trial is set, according to the law, David might be released.
Copine issued a statement, this subjects the process two forms
of manipulation and procedural trickery. And it wasn't just Copeine
expressing alarm. The Twitter account of the U. S. House
Foreign Affairs Committee quoted New York Congressman Elliott Ingle I
(37:20):
urge Honduran authorities to act swiftly to bring Castillo to
trial and provide justice for the Cassaris family. Later the
same week, the preliminary hearing in David's case was finally held.
David's lawyers argued that telephone text messages were manipulated and
couldn't be trusted. Prosecutors said the evidence against him was
(37:45):
clear and definitive. Next week, the court must make a decision.
Will David Castillo finally stand trial? That's next time. On
the season finale of Blood River m Blood River is
(38:19):
written and reported by me monte reel sofra Fores is
our senior producer. My Aquava is our associate producer. Our
theme was composed and performed by Senior Rubinos. Special thanks
to Carlos Rodriguts. Francesca Levi is the head of Bloomberg Podcasts.
(38:39):
Be sure to subscribe if you haven't already, and if
you like what you hear, please leave us a review.
It helps others find out about the show. Thanks for listening.
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