Speaker 1: This story contains adult content and language. Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 2: She was always very careful with her stuff. She was
Speaker 2: very orderly. She was the kind of person who would
Speaker 2: keep letters that she wrote, copies of letters that she wrote.
Speaker 2: I had an idea that she was doing that, but
Speaker 2: I certainly didn't know the extent and the kinds of
Speaker 2: thing that she was keeping in these boxes.
Speaker 1: I'm Kate Winkler Dawson, a nonfiction author and journalism professor
Speaker 1: in Austin, Texas. I'm also the host of the historical
Speaker 1: true crime podcast Tenfold More Wicked and the co host
Speaker 1: of the podcast Buried Bones on Exactly Right. I've traveled
Speaker 1: around the world interviewing people for the show, and they
Speaker 1: are all excellent writers. They've had so many great true
Speaker 1: crime stories, and now we want to tell you those
Speaker 1: stories with details that have been published. Tenfold War Wicked
Speaker 1: Presents Wicked Words is about the choices that writers make,
Speaker 1: good and bad. It's a deep dive into the stories
Speaker 1: behind the stories. Many of the books that we talk
Speaker 1: about on the show are very personal, and this book
Speaker 1: is incredibly personal to its author. It's about a woman
Speaker 1: in Mexico who journaled about everything in her life until
Speaker 1: she was murdered. Were their answers to her death inside
Speaker 1: her diaries and letters. Her sister, Christina Rivera Garza wrote
Speaker 1: a book called Liliana's Invincible Summer. Well, let's start from
Speaker 1: the beginning. Where did you two grow up? What's the
Speaker 1: family dynamic? Like, you know, what's your age difference? All
Speaker 1: of that?
Speaker 2: Well, we are au Bonner family. I was born actually
Speaker 2: on the Mexican side of the US Mexico borderline, in
Speaker 2: Matamoros and Olippus, and five years later Leleana was born
Speaker 2: in that re Mavolyon, also a city, an industrial city
Speaker 2: in the north of Mexico. It was only the two
Speaker 2: of us, two girls. My father was a scientist, my
Speaker 2: mother was a homemaker. We led what I believed to
Speaker 2: be a quite an average middle class life in Mexico.
Speaker 2: We went to school in Central Mexico. We moved to
Speaker 2: central Mexico when I was about I don't know, twelve
Speaker 2: years old. My sister was much younger. We moved to
Speaker 2: this city in the highest city actually in Mexico, to
Speaker 2: Luca Tluca, very close to Mexico City. I very soon
Speaker 2: moved back to Mexico City. We go to the university
Speaker 2: and Liliana, who arrived in te Luca at a much
Speaker 2: younger age and developed stronger relationships that I did. She
Speaker 2: remained there in te Luca for her high school. It
Speaker 2: was later when it came time for her to choose
Speaker 2: she chose architecture, and she too moved to Mexico City.
Speaker 2: She was a student at the Autonomous Metropolitan University in
Speaker 2: Mexico City and as Caposalco twenty years old.
Speaker 1: What would you say your relationship the intimacy of your
Speaker 1: relationship was like there was.
Speaker 2: A big age difference between the two of us, five
Speaker 2: years when you are very young. For many many years,
Speaker 2: we never shared friends. It was very difficult for us.
Speaker 2: But what we did share was swimming lessons. The swimming
Speaker 2: pool that became a place in which we always knew
Speaker 2: we were sisters. There we told each other secrets, We
Speaker 2: kept each other informed by what we were doing. We
Speaker 2: had great admiration for each other. We exchanged books. I've
Speaker 2: come to learn now that I've been doing that, I've
Speaker 2: done my research around her life that she read pretty
Speaker 2: much every single book that I recommended her to read.
Speaker 2: She passed him along to her dearest friends as well.
Speaker 2: There was a communication, a close one between the two
Speaker 2: of us, but there were issues too that we didn't
Speaker 2: talk about. One of those issues that I presume was
Speaker 2: very difficult for her to actually share was the story
Speaker 2: that she got into with his boyfriend of hers. She
Speaker 2: met into Luca in the late nineteen eighties angle Gonzale.
Speaker 1: Rams and how old was she when they met?
Speaker 2: Late fourteens, early fifteens In Mexico, we have the second
Speaker 2: Secudaria secondary school before going properly to the high school.
Speaker 2: She met him precisely in the first year of her
Speaker 2: high school.
Speaker 1: What do you remember her saying about him, her emotions
Speaker 1: around him? Was this a big infatuation and did he
Speaker 1: seem to reciprocate it?
Speaker 2: Was an interesting story from the very beginning, it seems
Speaker 2: that he had to really try very hard to get
Speaker 2: Leana's attention. He was a fast, short, stocky, blonde guy,
Speaker 2: temperamental and from the very beginning he was very much
Speaker 2: obsessed with Leana. He talked to her friends. He wanted
Speaker 2: to make sure that they were going to become nobvious,
Speaker 2: that they were going to go steady right, and Lilliana
Speaker 2: after thinking about that, after you know, flirting with other guys.
Speaker 2: After considering several options. Eventually, a year after they met,
Speaker 2: they became sweethearts. They became nobvious.
Speaker 1: When she was a teenager. They were both teenagers.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he was two years older than her. They were
Speaker 2: more or less the same age.
Speaker 1: Did your mother have a sense at all for him?
Speaker 1: Did she have some sort of uneasiness or did she
Speaker 1: think that they would be a good match.
Speaker 2: It was kind of complicated. He at that point was
Speaker 2: very solicitous. He had a car, he was very willing
Speaker 2: to take everywhere she wanted to go. She came and
Speaker 2: picked her up. He was always paying attention to what
Speaker 2: she wanted to do. So, to my mom, to my father,
Speaker 2: those were good signs. We didn't have an idea. We
Speaker 2: couldn't read all that attention as control. We read most
Speaker 2: of that attention as just an infatuation, as a loving
Speaker 2: interest on his side.
Speaker 1: Was Liliana recording her thoughts journaling at this age or
Speaker 1: did that come a little bit later.
Speaker 2: No. Actually, Leana was writing from a very young age,
Speaker 2: and she was writing pretty much about every single thing
Speaker 2: that was happening to her. She was non necessarily very
Speaker 2: direct or open about her ideas. At times, she was
Speaker 2: even cryptic, but at the beginning, it seems that she
Speaker 2: was very much interested in him, and she had several
Speaker 2: entries in a diary indicating that she was very happy
Speaker 2: and that she got to really really like this guy.
Speaker 2: Something happened though, pretty soon and some months after they
Speaker 2: started to go steady. And that's something that happened is
Speaker 2: something that is something that Leona never quite described, at
Speaker 2: least not openly. It was something that she expressed as
Speaker 2: a way of loving her that she disliked, a way
Speaker 2: of connecting or trying to be with her that she
Speaker 2: didn't find either appealing. She just said, I just don't
Speaker 2: like that. I don't like the way she wants to
Speaker 2: love me. And so that's how I came to learn
Speaker 2: that there was something complicated there, something that she was
Speaker 2: trying to get at and not necessarily elaborating further on that.
Speaker 1: She went on to university right to major architecture, So
Speaker 1: this was a long term relationship. Were they together when
Speaker 1: she went to school?
Speaker 2: That was a major issue too, because she was admitted
Speaker 2: at this university in Mexico City, he was not. She
Speaker 2: moved from that industrial city in central Mexico de Luca
Speaker 2: to live on her own for the first time in
Speaker 2: Mexico City, sprawling metropolis, and she was obviously meeting new people,
Speaker 2: experiencing new facets of life, getting interested, really passionate about
Speaker 2: her field, and he was not. And it was then
Speaker 2: that he became even more controlling, increasingly aggressive too.
Speaker 1: And this was the only relationship she had between sort
Speaker 1: of fifteen sixteen up until what ends up happening is
Speaker 1: that right had she broken up with him at any point.
Speaker 2: They broke up several times, especially when Leanna was living
Speaker 2: already in Mexico City, she would try to go out
Speaker 2: with some other friends. She developed close relationships with, at
Speaker 2: least two of them. One of them, Draule Spino Madrigal,
Speaker 2: actually was profoundly in love with her, and one of
Speaker 2: the most tender testimonies that I was witnessed to precisely
Speaker 2: came from him. So she was, she was, and she
Speaker 2: told this to all her friends. She was trying to
Speaker 2: get out of that relationship, but she didn't know how
Speaker 2: to do it. Jil Gonzale Ramos was very insistent. He
Speaker 2: was carrying a gun. Lilliana confided one of her friends
Speaker 2: that he had told her that if she let him,
Speaker 2: he was going to kill herself. But I saw there
Speaker 2: is a woman just growing very rapidly, discovering a world
Speaker 2: that she was really passionate about, and a man who
Speaker 2: wouldn't let her.
Speaker 1: Go, And you and your parents didn't have a sense
Speaker 1: for how disturbing their relationship was unraveling at this point.
Speaker 1: Before what happens happens.
Speaker 2: This is the late twentieth century, this is the late eighties,
Speaker 2: and I think all across the world, not only Mexico,
Speaker 2: it was very difficult to talk about domestic violence, even
Speaker 2: more difficult to talk about violence between just a young couple.
Speaker 2: In addition to that in Mexico US around the world,
Speaker 2: a lot of this kind of behavior was framed within
Speaker 2: the narrative of romantic love, passion, passion, jealousy, all the
Speaker 2: kinds of things that now we will be very worried
Speaker 2: about and we see red flags all over. I don't
Speaker 2: think this was the case in the nineteen nineties. I
Speaker 2: think Lillana knew that something was not right. I think
Speaker 2: some of the friends, closer friends of Illana were aware
Speaker 2: that this guy was not necessarily the kind of person
Speaker 2: that Leana was going to growing up with. They never
Speaker 2: saw any incidents of violence for example. So they knew
Speaker 2: something was off that none of us, including Lilliana, I think,
Speaker 2: knew how dangerous the situation was.
Speaker 1: So tell me about the events that lead up to
Speaker 1: July sixteenth, nineteen ninety. When was the last time you
Speaker 1: had spoken to her before this happens.
Speaker 2: Well, I have to tell you I have moved to
Speaker 2: the United States before. Then, in nineteen eighty eight, I
Speaker 2: moved to Houston to I enrolled into a master's degree
Speaker 2: and later a PhD. So I was very much living
Speaker 2: in the United States while this story was developing. So
Speaker 2: Leana would tell me about what was happening. But taking
Speaker 2: a look at the letters that we exchanged, at that point,
Speaker 2: we were mostly talking about what was happening in our world,
Speaker 2: about shared interest about movies, and she was not necessarily
Speaker 2: talking about about him. In the years previous to this
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety, Leleana was really eagerly embracing life. She had
Speaker 2: travel with her friends to places like Wahaka in southern Mexico.
Speaker 2: She had become a teaching assistant to a professor in
Speaker 2: her university. She was reading all kinds of stuff, not
Speaker 2: necessarily architecture related. So it seems that the freedom that
Speaker 2: she was so insistent about the freedom that she really
Speaker 2: cherished was becoming increasingly annoying to Unca. That was a
Speaker 2: situation that a couple of months prior to that July sixteenth,
Speaker 2: I see a woman trying to find her way in
Speaker 2: the world of loving and not loving these person who
Speaker 2: had been very important in her life. She was developing
Speaker 2: new interests, and it was becoming increasingly complicated. Just to
Speaker 2: balance that situation.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about what happens with her murder from your
Speaker 1: point of view, When do you find out anything after
Speaker 1: July sixteenth, and how do you find it out?
Speaker 2: Well, that was a story very hard to put together,
Speaker 2: and I had to read the newspaper articles that were
Speaker 2: published about it. I had to I talked to Lilliana's
Speaker 2: friends about how things developed the morning of July sixteenth.
Speaker 2: According to most witnesses, what had happened is that Lilliana
Speaker 2: had been working that Sunday, July fifteenth, in a university
Speaker 2: project with this friend of his Manolo, a classmate too,
Speaker 2: and a guy who had been in love with her
Speaker 2: in the past. It seems like they were at the
Speaker 2: initial stages of a new relationship. They've been together the
Speaker 2: whole day working on this project, and at about ten
Speaker 2: o'clock at night he left. Lilliana had asked to stay
Speaker 2: with her because she was feeling lonely, and he said no,
Speaker 2: I had to go to my mom. I promised my
Speaker 2: mom that I would get there. I'll pick you up
Speaker 2: tomorrow morning, early in the morning so that we can
Speaker 2: take this project to class. That was at ten o'clock.
Speaker 2: According to most witnesses, what happened is that Anhel Gonzalez
Speaker 2: Ramos arrived out around one o'clock in the morning, jumped
Speaker 2: over the fence according to some. According to authors, he
Speaker 2: borrowed a room to open the gate, the main gate
Speaker 2: of the place where Leana was leaving. In any case,
Speaker 2: what I'm trying to say is that he was not
Speaker 2: invited or is expected that night. We don't know exactly
Speaker 2: what happened during those hours, but by five o'clock he
Speaker 2: left the place. Manolo came by in the morning at
Speaker 2: about seven point thirty and realized that Lilliana was dead.
Speaker 2: According to the scientific report, she was suffocated. She was
Speaker 2: renting a room in this larger home. The owner of
Speaker 2: the home. Manola called the owner of the home. Both
Speaker 2: of them very quickly called the police. The police came,
Speaker 2: The police started to call witnesses, friends of Williana. Detectives
Speaker 2: and investigators showed up to the scene. And meanwhile, my
Speaker 2: parents were traveling. They were in Europe at that point
Speaker 2: and I was in the United States, so they were
Speaker 2: trying very hard to locate either of us so that
Speaker 2: we could come to Mexico City immediately. I was, as
Speaker 2: I said, in Houston, and I received the visit of
Speaker 2: members of the Mexican consulate. They knock on my door,
Speaker 2: and I was very strange. You know, people don't come
Speaker 2: on announced in the United States usually, so I knew
Speaker 2: something was strong. And as soon as they said her name,
Speaker 2: I knew that the news were not good. They told
Speaker 2: me very same what had happened, and I immediately called
Speaker 2: my family, family that I have in Houston. We got
Speaker 2: together about tickets and we left for Mexico City as
Speaker 2: soon as we could.
Speaker 1: And when you arrived in Mexico City, what was the explanation?
Speaker 1: Where were they in the investigation at that point?
Speaker 2: This is something that I actually mentioned in the book.
Speaker 2: When I was on the plane, on the flight going
Speaker 2: to Mexico City, I was not given any kind of explanation.
Speaker 2: I was told that my sister was no longer with us,
Speaker 2: and I was thinking, what could have happened, what could
Speaker 2: have happened? And then there was this point an uncle
Speaker 2: of mine said, the only thing I wish for her
Speaker 2: is that she had a true and beautiful love in
Speaker 2: her life. And at that point something really down at me,
Speaker 2: and I was thinking, that's what happened. So I must
Speaker 2: have known something, I must have remembered something, because that
Speaker 2: was my first conclusion. So as soon as we arrived
Speaker 2: in Mexico City, we were taking to the place where
Speaker 2: where Lilliana was. She was no longer in the house
Speaker 2: where she was killed. We had to organize taking her
Speaker 2: from Mexico City to Toluca and organize all the family
Speaker 2: members who were coming. It was very, very confusing, and
Speaker 2: in fact, it's been thanks to the interviews that I've
Speaker 2: been conducting with friends and family members that I've been
Speaker 2: able to remember much of what had happened. At that point,
Speaker 2: I really didn't remember much of it. Everything happened very fast,
Speaker 2: there were many, many people involved, and the only thing
Speaker 2: that we were told was that there was a strong
Speaker 2: suspicion that Uncle Gonzales Ramos, Lilliana's ex boyfriend, that he
Speaker 2: was a person that the police was looking for as
Speaker 2: the main person of interest in the case.
Speaker 1: Did you and your family have faith in the police
Speaker 1: in Mexico City that they would follow through on all
Speaker 1: of this, because I'm assuming that was the main suspect.
Speaker 1: Like you've said, we.
Speaker 2: Had our doubts definitely now looking at the records, though,
Speaker 2: what I realized is that they did what they were
Speaker 2: supposed to do at the beginning, and then I suppose
Speaker 2: my interpretation is that they just didn't consider this to
Speaker 2: be an important case, so they after a couple of
Speaker 2: months of doing what they were supposed to be doing,
Speaker 2: you know, they just quit. They didn't continue.
Speaker 1: Because he vanished. Is that right escaped?
Speaker 2: Yeah. We didn't know exactly where he had gone, but
Speaker 2: we knew that he was no longer in Tuluca, and
Speaker 2: perhaps he was no longer in Mexico.
Speaker 1: At what point do you discover all of this material
Speaker 1: and when does it start clicking in your head that
Speaker 1: this would be a book that would shine a light
Speaker 1: on an issue that's clearly been in the dark all
Speaker 1: over the world, but in Mexico too well.
Speaker 2: One of the major obstacles to even think or to
Speaker 2: go through this experience is that when this kind of
Speaker 2: violence gets framed as a passionate crime, pretty much this
Speaker 2: is a way of intrinsically blaming the victim and acceenerating
Speaker 2: the perpetrator. So it's very hard to talk about is
Speaker 2: a story that is very hard to write about in
Speaker 2: the language of patriarchy, the system that is both causing
Speaker 2: the problem and silencing the problem at the same time.
Speaker 2: So you have to do a lot to language, a
Speaker 2: lot to the narratives that we live by in order
Speaker 2: to truly honor the victims in this story. So it
Speaker 2: was very hard for me, both as a sister, as
Speaker 2: a human being, and as a writer to even think
Speaker 2: about the possibility of writing this story. But over the
Speaker 2: last twenty thirty years, there has been a very strong
Speaker 2: feminist movement in Mexico, throughout Latin America, women's mobilizations in general,
Speaker 2: placing a greater emphasis on gender violence and specifically on femicide,
Speaker 2: the most little of these violences. So I think all
Speaker 2: these years after the fact, I found myself now with
Speaker 2: the language that I needed to tell the story. And also,
Speaker 2: very importantly, I had been thinking about reopening the case
Speaker 2: since more or less twenty nineteen. But then it came
Speaker 2: twenty twenty, and the COVID pandemic had us, and then
Speaker 2: we all knew that we could die at any moment.
Speaker 2: And at that point I knew that I needed to
Speaker 2: write this book, that this was a book, that I
Speaker 2: didn't want to die without having written it, and that
Speaker 2: there was a commitment of myself side of responsibility, that
Speaker 2: I had to tell my sister's story because otherwise she
Speaker 2: would have been erased by the violence that took her
Speaker 2: from us.
Speaker 1: Tell me about the research, so we know the journal
Speaker 1: entries anything that your sister's written. You had access to
Speaker 1: and you interviewed friends and neighbors. Were the police at
Speaker 1: all helpful? Were court records helpful? Did you want to
Speaker 1: learn more about Ramos?
Speaker 2: Many things happened at the same time. I knew that
Speaker 2: we had boxes with Lillana's belongings in our home. They
Speaker 2: had been there for three years, no one had there
Speaker 2: to touch them. I came down in January of twenty
Speaker 2: twenty to my parents' house looking, in fact, for some
Speaker 2: kind of day book, some kind of address book that
Speaker 2: might help me locate Llana's friends. In Mexico City. I
Speaker 2: didn't know their names. I didn't know if they were alive.
Speaker 2: I didn't know if they were still living in Mexico City.
Speaker 2: I didn't know what had happened to them. So my
Speaker 2: husband and I started to do all We became these detectives.
Speaker 2: We were trying to locate people, we were trying to
Speaker 2: gather as much evidence as we were able to do.
Speaker 2: That took a lot of time and a lot of efforts,
Speaker 2: and I'm really very thankful to my husband. So I
Speaker 2: will learn on this Baragos who really I mean, he's
Speaker 2: a visual artist that now we know that he is,
Speaker 2: he could be a really good detective too. He was
Speaker 2: the one who located most of Liliana's friends, and once
Speaker 2: he was able to do that, I proceeded to talk
Speaker 2: with them to have long phone interviews which I transcribed.
Speaker 2: I didn't record any of that. I transcribed them. I
Speaker 2: talked to them very openly about what I was doing.
Speaker 2: I told him that I was going to be sharing
Speaker 2: with them the drafts of this book and that they
Speaker 2: would have a say in whatever I was writing, and
Speaker 2: that if they didn't agree with what I was writing,
Speaker 2: that at any point I could stop it was their
Speaker 2: work what I really wanted to be able to bring
Speaker 2: into page, and the same happened with my parents. Obviously,
Speaker 2: we had had many conversations about this, specifically in the
Speaker 2: latter years, and they also got a chance to read
Speaker 2: the draft before I even sent it to the press.
Speaker 2: I think it was very important to me just to
Speaker 2: create that trust between us, knowing that the final goal
Speaker 2: was not only to uncover and to share Lilliana's life,
Speaker 2: but also that at that point I was very much
Speaker 2: trying to catch the killer. I worked with the police,
Speaker 2: I hired a lawyer because it was very hard to
Speaker 2: even get the police case. Many years had passed that
Speaker 2: some members of the General Attorney's office, some workers that
Speaker 2: had told me, well, you know, it's been such a
Speaker 2: long time, we might have destroyed that file. So all
Speaker 2: these issues really propelled me into writing the book. This
Speaker 2: is a book, by the way, that I wanted to
Speaker 2: write from the very beginning of my writing career, and
Speaker 2: it's a book that I tried to write several times prior,
Speaker 2: and I failed utterly every single time that I tried
Speaker 2: to write it. But when I actually came across her
Speaker 2: own writings, this effective archive as I'm calling it. I
Speaker 2: knew that I finally was going to be able to
Speaker 2: do it. I had the time, I had all the materials,
Speaker 2: I had all these other voices around, and I knew
Speaker 2: that this time I was strong enough also personally to
Speaker 2: go through the experience of bringing her life back to us.
Speaker 1: But it must have been incredibly painful to hear her
Speaker 1: voice and you know, to know her so well, and
Speaker 1: to be able to sort of visualize it. I'm assuming
Speaker 1: she wrote about very difficult things involving Romos at the time,
Speaker 1: or did she not She did.
Speaker 2: It was very painful, no doubt about that, even uncovering
Speaker 2: you know, her talents, her wisdom, her humor, even the
Speaker 2: happy things were painful because she's no longer less right, obviously,
Speaker 2: this is the most difficult world that I have ever written.
Speaker 2: But at the same time, just having the opportunity to
Speaker 2: get so close to her and to be able to
Speaker 2: recreate this kind of community within which she is very
Speaker 2: much alive, I think that compensates also for the pain.
Speaker 1: Your parents, I can't imagine thought participating in this book
Speaker 1: was easy. What do you think is the most difficult
Speaker 1: thing that you either asked them or that they felt
Speaker 1: compelled to explain to you in the book.
Speaker 2: I had no idea how they were going to be
Speaker 2: reacting when I first approached the issue. When I told
Speaker 2: them I was trying to do this, I was incredibly careful.
Speaker 2: For many years, it was very difficult for us even
Speaker 2: utter her name. So I had no idea. Really, when
Speaker 2: I say I had no idea, I'm very honest. I
Speaker 2: didn't know what they were going to think, and I
Speaker 2: was quite surprised when their very first reaction. Both of
Speaker 2: them were not only Willings, but also eager to participate
Speaker 2: in the whole process, the legal process and the writing
Speaker 2: process as well. I think for them it was as
Speaker 2: important as it was for me to take Leleana's life
Speaker 2: out of that passionate crime narrative, to restitute her voice
Speaker 2: and her perspective, and to tell the story of her
Speaker 2: life according to her own words and values. And I
Speaker 2: think that that's been incredibly helpful too for all of
Speaker 2: us as a family, just to be able to tell
Speaker 2: a story that honors her life, that pays attention to
Speaker 2: the way in which she died, but that is not
Speaker 2: only concentrated on that. This is something that that happens
Speaker 2: very often when violence is involved, the whole story evolves
Speaker 2: and develops around the violent act, and at times we
Speaker 2: forget that there are entire, complicated, complex, beautiful lives too.
Speaker 2: So this is something that I'm trying to do very
Speaker 2: consciously in this book.
Speaker 1: I can't imagine that families don't have some level of
Speaker 1: feeling of I don't know if regrets the right word,
Speaker 1: but just a mourning that they would feel over the circumstances,
Speaker 1: like as if they could have stopped it, which I
Speaker 1: think probably everyone knows would not be the case. I
Speaker 1: don't think you could stop this.
Speaker 2: You are right. I think experts on this kind of
Speaker 2: violence would agree that families they go through these experiences
Speaker 2: are very hard on themselves. They blame themselves, and I
Speaker 2: think this is something that happened to us. There is
Speaker 2: a lot of guilt and there's a lot of shame
Speaker 2: in a mourning process that actually never quite begins. So
Speaker 2: because if the story cannot be told, if you cannot
Speaker 2: wrest this story from the patriarchal narrative that essentially involves silencing,
Speaker 2: then you cannot mourn properly. Right, So I think that
Speaker 2: understanding the mechanisms going through all these different witnesses, looking
Speaker 2: at the story from as many perspectives as I was
Speaker 2: able to do through interviews and archival research and field
Speaker 2: research and all that, I think it finally gives us
Speaker 2: an opportunity to articulate the story in a way that
Speaker 2: did not involve blaming the victim and certainly did not
Speaker 2: involve eccenerating the perpetrator. The femicider, as we say in Spanish,
Speaker 2: it's famous. See that. Interestingly enough, there is not a
Speaker 2: word in English that fully translates this one, femsida. So
Speaker 2: I'm getting to say lately the word femicider, which is
Speaker 2: you know, it would be the closer translation. The word
Speaker 2: is not necessarily in vogue or in use in the
Speaker 2: American English. But I think that as we see domestic
Speaker 2: violence cases grow also in the United States, even enough
Speaker 2: to be called a siling epidemic, I think that the
Speaker 2: language as to adapt to and perhaps just by calling
Speaker 2: the killer a femicider, we will be contributing to create
Speaker 2: more awareness about a violence that is pretty much a
Speaker 2: problem across the world.
Speaker 1: Well, let's talk about your pursuit of Ramos. Did you
Speaker 1: have help from the police in Mexico City thirty years
Speaker 1: later or do you still feel like the same attitude
Speaker 1: about femicide is pervasive within the police department in Mexico
Speaker 1: all over the country.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Well, look, fortunately or unfortunately, the number of femicides
Speaker 2: is growing so much in Mexico. The data is well
Speaker 2: known about ten women are killed in Mexico on a
Speaker 2: daily basis, and there is now a unit of femicides
Speaker 2: specifically devoted to femicides in Mexico City. And the unit
Speaker 2: is led by a lawyer that I admire very much. Sayurira,
Speaker 2: that's her name, and so I've had long conversations with
Speaker 2: herd that have been extremely useful. That doesn't mean that
Speaker 2: other areas of General Attorney's Office are equally concerned or
Speaker 2: even efficient about justice. When I published the book, I
Speaker 2: created a Gmail account. When I published the book in Spanish,
Speaker 2: I should say in every interview that I gave, I
Speaker 2: mentioned that I was going to be using this Gmail
Speaker 2: account to receive tips or any kind of information than
Speaker 2: my leaders to these consale lums. Eventually, I learned one
Speaker 2: of these anonymous sources sent me a link and that
Speaker 2: took me to a funeral, a digital funeral of someone
Speaker 2: whose name was michel Angelo Giovanni. These link contained pictures
Speaker 2: from Michelle Angelo Giovanni, who had died drowned in southern
Speaker 2: California on May the second, twenty twenty. The pictures belonged
Speaker 2: to him. In my view, I communicated with the police
Speaker 2: in Mexico because, regardless of what I believed, this is
Speaker 2: something that they should be able to confirm. I was
Speaker 2: told that they were going to do all they could
Speaker 2: in order to confirm this information. This happened more or
Speaker 2: less a year and a half ago, and to this
Speaker 2: day I have not received any kind of information regarding
Speaker 2: this case.
Speaker 1: Did you reach out to Ramos's family in Mexico after
Speaker 1: this happened or was that something you just wanted to
Speaker 1: stay away from.
Speaker 2: I wanted to stay away from that because.
Speaker 1: It was part of the active investigation exactly.
Speaker 2: It was an active investigation, and I didn't want to
Speaker 2: interfere with that.
Speaker 1: So what's the next step? Is there a next step
Speaker 1: if we are assuming that Giovanni is Ramos and he
Speaker 1: is dead, never seen justice for Liliana's murder in that way,
Speaker 1: if we assume that, is there any bit of closure
Speaker 1: for your family at all?
Speaker 2: That's such a good question, and I'm glad I mentioned
Speaker 2: earlier as Sayuriaretra the lawyer, because once I learned about
Speaker 2: this possibility that the killer had died, I was, as
Speaker 2: you can imagine, very distraught, and that was a situation
Speaker 2: that was not expecting. I was not expecting that. So
Speaker 2: I talked to Sayuriaretta in something that she said, and
Speaker 2: for me it was very important to hear there are
Speaker 2: other aspects of justice. Justice is not only punitive in
Speaker 2: the law of victims. This is a law that exists
Speaker 2: in Mexico. It's equally important the issue of memory and
Speaker 2: truth and the restitution of that. And I think, obviously
Speaker 2: we're not going to get Lillana back, but is extremely
Speaker 2: important just to be able to have the truth, and
Speaker 2: in this case, her truth, her perspective, her view on
Speaker 2: this full story, and for us to be able to
Speaker 2: fully mourn her death and to build a collective memory
Speaker 2: of Lilliano Rivera Garza among us. This is not a
Speaker 2: minor dead. This is where a mourning that was forcibly
Speaker 2: silenced has become a collective practice. So the more people
Speaker 2: remember Lilliana, the more her name is pronounced in public
Speaker 2: spheres in life, the more she is she remains with us,
Speaker 2: and I think that's very important for me, for my family,
Speaker 2: for those of us who believe that the dead continue,
Speaker 2: that some part of them continue to be materially close
Speaker 2: to us.
Speaker 1: I understand I think now the impact of the book
Speaker 1: on you and your family and you personally, as this
Speaker 1: experience of becoming closer with your sister and like you said,
Speaker 1: putting her name out there so that there can be
Speaker 1: some healing. Was there any unexpected benefit of this book?
Speaker 1: Do you think, as far as the narrative that we've
Speaker 1: been talking about, where you actually see people and hear
Speaker 1: people saying this book could make a difference in this country.
Speaker 2: I was not expecting that, to be honest with you,
Speaker 2: and I've been so pleasantly surprised by the way in
Speaker 2: which young women specifically but in general readers of the
Speaker 2: book have embraced Lilliana. She's been part of international women's
Speaker 2: stay demonstrations, her name is being graffited on different places
Speaker 2: on walls of Mexico City. Not long ago, I visited
Speaker 2: Wadalajara in Mexico, where a very important book fair takes
Speaker 2: place every year, and students from different high schools, having
Speaker 2: read the book, organized a demonstration a procession of sorts
Speaker 2: throughout the city, just honoring her name and honoring her life.
Speaker 2: And so I think she would have been very happy
Speaker 2: just to learn that her experience might be illuminating to others,
Speaker 2: that might help others to articulate their own stories, to
Speaker 2: go through experiences that are very hard to enunciate, and
Speaker 2: so feeling that embraced, that embraced, it is very real.
Speaker 2: I think has been more than I expected.
Speaker 1: In my writing. When I write books, I write about
Speaker 1: crime and history, and a requirement for me is I
Speaker 1: have to have memoirs and journals and letters to feel
Speaker 1: closer to the people to really be able to sort
Speaker 1: of rebuild their world. I sometimes feel like I'm invading
Speaker 1: their privacy, and these are people who have died one
Speaker 1: hundred or more years ago. Did you struggle with that
Speaker 1: when you were piecing together this book, that there were
Speaker 1: things that you were reading that clearly no one was
Speaker 1: meant to read except for Lilliana to a certain extent.
Speaker 1: And for me, I try to pack those feelings away
Speaker 1: because I feel like the greater good of what my
Speaker 1: book would do needs this to resonate with people, needs
Speaker 1: these details. Did you feel like that did you really
Speaker 1: struggle at all with publishing any of the things that
Speaker 1: you found.
Speaker 2: That is such an important question. Thank you for asking.
Speaker 2: I think it's always very difficult to write about violence,
Speaker 2: precisely because it's such a slippery terrain. It's very easy
Speaker 2: to banalyze, to make it banal right, It's very easy
Speaker 2: to put so much emphasis on the power of the
Speaker 2: perpetrators that you render your victim boiseless and pass it
Speaker 2: right there are there are so many ways of getting
Speaker 2: this thing wrong, and I think that requires a lot
Speaker 2: of ethical attention. Yeah, I had to consider all those possibilities.
Speaker 2: And that's the reason why when I was even interviewing people,
Speaker 2: I told them I was only going to write whatever
Speaker 2: they felt comfortable with. That I would never betray them.
Speaker 2: That was essentially my message to them, and I think
Speaker 2: I was. There was a conversation that I had with
Speaker 2: my sister while I was writing this book. I essentially
Speaker 2: felt her presence very close to me. I felt her,
Speaker 2: you know, her head over my shoulder, kind of saying, oh, no,
Speaker 2: that is so cheasy, you don't write that. She was
Speaker 2: always against this kind of excessive expression of sentimentality and
Speaker 2: things like that.
Speaker 1: She doesn't like flourishes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. That's another reason why I asked my parents
Speaker 2: too that because this is this is her life, but
Speaker 2: this is our life as well, is the life of
Speaker 2: a community. So I tried to make sure as much
Speaker 2: as I could that I was serving the book as such,
Speaker 2: but mostly that I was serving this community that was
Speaker 2: surrounding Liliana and protecting Liliana as well. I wanted her
Speaker 2: to be the true protagonist of this book, and that's
Speaker 2: the reason why my presence in the book is very discreet.
Speaker 2: I didn't want to editorialize Lilliana. I didn't want to
Speaker 2: assume that I knew more than she knew at that time.
Speaker 2: But at the same time, I didn't want to leave
Speaker 2: her all alone by herself in the book, so I
Speaker 2: had to incorporate myself just in order to be as
Speaker 2: vulnerable as she was becoming with the very writing of
Speaker 2: the book. So those were my ways of dealing with
Speaker 2: with this issue that is so important. The one is
Speaker 2: an ethical issue, and to me, both the aesthetics of
Speaker 2: the book and the ethics of the book are interwoven.
Speaker 2: They're equally relevant. So asking that question was what I
Speaker 2: did every single day that I wrote the book, and
Speaker 2: it is embedded in every single paragraph of that book,
Speaker 2: and the selection of words, the scenes that made it
Speaker 2: into the book and the ones that didn't because some
Speaker 2: didn't of course, and all that selection. It's very much
Speaker 2: related to the care with which I wanted to approach Leana. Now.
Speaker 1: Oftentimes, when I'm reading a journal or a memoir or
Speaker 1: something and that's going into my book from the protagonist,
Speaker 1: from the main person in the book, there's a phrase
Speaker 1: or an anecdote or something that just echoes with me.
Speaker 1: Was there anything like that in her writings that sort
Speaker 1: of echoed to you as the theme that resonated with
Speaker 1: you as sort of It's like, these lines are what
Speaker 1: defined my sister and her vivaciousness or the theme of
Speaker 1: her life.
Speaker 2: She spoke of freedom very very often. Freedom and a
Speaker 2: new kind of love, said us several times. Other kind
Speaker 2: of love should be possible. And I think those two components,
Speaker 2: freedom and love, are which he's leaving us with after
Speaker 2: reading the book, the importance of both.
Speaker 1: If you love historical true crime stories, check out the
Speaker 1: audio versions of my books The Ghost Club, All That
Speaker 1: Is Wicked, and American Sherlock. This has been an exactly
Speaker 1: right production. Our senior producer is Alexis a Morosi. Our
Speaker 1: associate producer is Alex ch This episode was mixed by
Speaker 1: John Bradley. Curtis heath Is our composer. Artwork by Nick Toga.
Speaker 1: Executive produced by Georgia Hartstark, Karen Kilgarriff and Danielle Kramer.
Speaker 1: Follow Wicked Words on Instagram and Facebook at tenfold more
Speaker 1: Wicked and on Twitter at tenfold more. And if you
Speaker 1: know of a historical crime that could you some attention
Speaker 1: from the crew at tenfold more Wicked, email us at
Speaker 1: info at tenfoldmore wicked dot com. We'll also take your
Speaker 1: suggestions for true crime authors for Wicked Words