Speaker 1: Forgotten is a production of iHeartMedia and Unusual Productions Before
Speaker 1: we start. This podcast contains accounts which some listeners will
Speaker 1: find disturbing, but without them, this story can't be fully understood.
Speaker 1: Please take care while listening. Last time on Forgotten, would
Speaker 1: run around the house and shout her name with all
Speaker 1: my strength and the silence of the night. I felt
Speaker 1: she could hear me, so I would call to my daughter.
Speaker 1: The authorities have the responsibility for solving these crimes. They
Speaker 1: have not done this, and perhaps never intended to do it.
Speaker 1: I pick it up, and then all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: there's this electric saw sound chaminion. They took my phone
Speaker 1: to try and see they could trace it call, and
Speaker 1: they traced it back to Mexican military intelligence. Diana was
Speaker 1: disconcerted by that threatening cool, but it wasn't immediately clear
Speaker 1: just how frightening it really was. How long after you
Speaker 1: received that call? Did your source trace it back within
Speaker 1: a month. At first, I wasn't sure what to do
Speaker 1: that phone call, and I casually mentioned to this officer,
Speaker 1: and he said, you know what, can we have your
Speaker 1: telephone to check it out? Lecture tracing that cool back
Speaker 1: helped Diana understand that the threats against her were not idle,
Speaker 1: and then she got a visit. A friendly source came
Speaker 1: over one time till pass on. We met for coffee
Speaker 1: and the source was told to convey to me. After
Speaker 1: this source met with three police officers in Huadis municipal,
Speaker 1: state and federal and the message to me was not
Speaker 1: to bother to come to Huadas all right. So I
Speaker 1: think that was a very good indicator that I needed
Speaker 1: to start backing way. Yeah. Din attracts the escalation of
Speaker 1: the threats to starting to publish articles about the connection
Speaker 1: between the victims and the Echo computer schools. The computer
Speaker 1: schools suggested that some kind of network was involved in
Speaker 1: these crimes, and the threats suggested that the authorities might
Speaker 1: be protecting the network. But all of this time, the
Speaker 1: Egyptian chemist Abdel Latif Sheriff Sharif had been languishing in jail,
Speaker 1: accused of being the serial killer and continuing to mastermind
Speaker 1: murders from jail. As far as the authorities and even
Speaker 1: some of the local press were concerned, the case was closed.
Speaker 1: Then in two thousand and one, something happened that made
Speaker 1: it clear the crimes were not just ongoing but escalating.
Speaker 1: The Mexican press had decided that the big nightmare of
Speaker 1: the femicides had ended. And I remember and one of
Speaker 1: the reporters in Huadis who had covered the murders from
Speaker 1: the very beginning at turning to me at a press
Speaker 1: conference saying, to me, your problem, Diana, is that you
Speaker 1: do not believe that the Egyptian Shadif Shahdif killed all
Speaker 1: those women. And it's over. It's ended, all right. I
Speaker 1: just looked at him, you know, and I started to think, well,
Speaker 1: perhaps he's right, maybe it's over. And then a month later,
Speaker 1: eight bodies are discovered, and everybody like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: this is like starting over again. For the first time
Speaker 1: in five years, a mass grave of women had been
Speaker 1: discovered in Juarez, and even Diana was shocked. I remember
Speaker 1: it was in our past with the time there was
Speaker 1: a report about bodies had been discovered. Women's bodies had
Speaker 1: been discovered. This is horrible. Not only is it just
Speaker 1: one more murder, it's eight bodies planted in one place.
Speaker 1: What is happening to our young ladies. The horrific discovery
Speaker 1: at the cotton Field came at a time when Diana
Speaker 1: still believed it was safe for her to travel to Juarez,
Speaker 1: so as soon as she heard about it, she jumped
Speaker 1: in her car and headed for the border. First of all,
Speaker 1: I had to figure out where this place was. I
Speaker 1: imagine something on the edge of the city. And so
Speaker 1: when I got directions and I saw where this graveyard
Speaker 1: was located as it, I can't believe it. It's in
Speaker 1: the middle of the city and across the street is
Speaker 1: the Association of Makilolaus, the organization that represents all the
Speaker 1: assembly plans in SuDS. It's in the middle of a
Speaker 1: very active commercial zone next to housing development. I just
Speaker 1: couldn't believe it. Somebody has to have seen something. Why
Speaker 1: choose this site to dump, literally dump eight bodies of women.
Speaker 1: This was November two thousand and one. Just nine months earlier,
Speaker 1: in February, Lili Alejandra had been abducted and murdered, and
Speaker 1: because of the witnesses and the physical evidence from the autopsy,
Speaker 1: Diana believed there were enough leads to finally solve the murders.
Speaker 1: That didn't happen. But now there were eight bodies in
Speaker 1: a well trafficed part of town known locally as the
Speaker 1: cotton Field. Just two miles from where Lili Alejandra's body
Speaker 1: had been found. The cotton Field discovery ignited a global
Speaker 1: interest in solving the murders. ABC News at a special
Speaker 1: edition of twenty twenty, and the eyes of the world
Speaker 1: were on Juarez. The cotton Field murders presented an opportunity
Speaker 1: for the authorities to conduct a good and thorough investigation
Speaker 1: that leads to the killers, a sol these cases maybe
Speaker 1: prevent more. I'm Azveloshim and I'm Monica, or this is
Speaker 1: forgotten the women of Baramo La No no masque hala Feliciva.
Speaker 1: With the cotton Fields discovery, Diana felt like the murders
Speaker 1: might finally be solved. The pressure was building, The Mother's
Speaker 1: protest movement had the urgency, the international press was demanding answers,
Speaker 1: and her trusted source, Oscar Manees, was once again overseeing
Speaker 1: the crime scene. I mean, if you have a bodies
Speaker 1: in an area, you can add denize seriality in these murders.
Speaker 1: Isn't that a chance that they appear anybody next to
Speaker 1: each others? You know, had you ever seen anything like
Speaker 1: that when you stepped out onto this cotton field and
Speaker 1: saw the bodies, Well, I seen many bodies not in
Speaker 1: the same area. For me, it was a highly organized crime.
Speaker 1: You can see it. And when you're talking about organization,
Speaker 1: took it a group. If you have a group, you
Speaker 1: have a leader, You have a leader, you have a hierarchy,
Speaker 1: you have resources. So this is not like a lon
Speaker 1: wall for a couple of kids. When Oscar first began
Speaker 1: overseeing the autopsies of young women in Huarez, he believed
Speaker 1: that a serial killer in the vein of a Ted
Speaker 1: Bundy was responsible, but after Lee Alexander's autopsy, he began
Speaker 1: to suspect something more organized, perhaps even a group. We
Speaker 1: drove out to the cotton Field with Oscar to learn
Speaker 1: more about a crime scene that seemed to confirm his theory.
Speaker 1: We surrounded by hotels, businesses. He supposed to the New
Speaker 1: America councilor he has some commercial businesses next to it.
Speaker 1: Were you very shocked when you when you heard what
Speaker 1: these bodies were? Yes, because I was expected to find
Speaker 1: the bodies. On the Oscar of the city that there
Speaker 1: was a dry dish and there were three bodies position
Speaker 1: in line, and then we started just looking around and
Speaker 1: then we started lifting rocks and then we found five
Speaker 1: more bodies those were buried, they were not out on
Speaker 1: the open. Oscar had been sounding the alarm, and now
Speaker 1: multiple bodies have been discovered in a single location. He
Speaker 1: was determined to make sure the forensic work was unimpeachable,
Speaker 1: to demonstrate once and for all how all these crimes
Speaker 1: were connected. It was like archaeologist, not with that, but
Speaker 1: I just slowly clear and the dirt in order to
Speaker 1: preserve the skeletons, because when you have a yeah, the
Speaker 1: skeletons to war, which you need to look at every aspect,
Speaker 1: every legion of the vie to try to determine the
Speaker 1: because of death. So and then how long did that
Speaker 1: process take? Like an hour? No? No, they take a
Speaker 1: couple of this night, and they how did this discovery
Speaker 1: compare to say, the discovery of the body of Lilia Lehundra, well,
Speaker 1: the case of Leandra, it was the same part. I
Speaker 1: believe that those cases were related, same people killed. This
Speaker 1: was a bombshell to me, Monica. I mean, Lili Alejandra's
Speaker 1: autopsy had suggested all these leads that weren't properly followed
Speaker 1: up on, and here you have this crime scene that
Speaker 1: suggests Oscar and Diana were absolutely right to insist on
Speaker 1: the importance abilitious case. How did the crime scene first emerge.
Speaker 1: It was a Tuesday morning, November sixth, two thousand and one,
Speaker 1: and there was a man who worked as a bricklayer.
Speaker 1: He was taking a short cut across a vacant lot
Speaker 1: not far from a main intersection in a commercial area
Speaker 1: of Wadis and he told the local newspaper that he
Speaker 1: smelled something funny and went in for a closer look,
Speaker 1: and that's when he saw the body of a woman.
Speaker 1: And so he goes and he alerts the police, who
Speaker 1: show up and find two more bodies. By the time
Speaker 1: the forensic team is on the scene, there's a total
Speaker 1: of eight bodies. They show various stages of decomposition. Some
Speaker 1: look like they've been dead for perhaps a couple of
Speaker 1: weeks and others for as much as a few months.
Speaker 1: And one of the bodies is nay kid except for
Speaker 1: a pair of torn white socks, and just like the
Speaker 1: other cases before, her hands are tied behind her back
Speaker 1: with shoelaces. It appeared that this body had been kept
Speaker 1: in cold storage. The fact that it's a place which
Speaker 1: people passed through often, and then all of a sudden
Speaker 1: disguise finds the body. It feels like they probably weren't
Speaker 1: there all along, right, someone would have noticed them. The
Speaker 1: fact that they show up all at once, you know,
Speaker 1: kind of points to the strong possibility that they were
Speaker 1: placed there at the same time. And what do we
Speaker 1: know about who these eight victims were? Yeah, So the
Speaker 1: first body that the bricklayer discovered was identified as fifteen
Speaker 1: year old Esmeralda Erra Montreal. Esmeralda's family came from the
Speaker 1: state of Sacatecas. Her mom worked at a Phillips factory
Speaker 1: in Wadis and as Medala. At the time, she was
Speaker 1: saving up money for her kin Senera, to save up
Speaker 1: money for this party. As Meralla starts working as a housekeeper,
Speaker 1: and like so many others, she goes to work one
Speaker 1: day and is never seen again. Diana interviews as Miralda's mother,
Speaker 1: Irma at some point, and one of the eerie details
Speaker 1: that surfaces from that interview is that an Echo recruiter
Speaker 1: had stopped by their neighborhood and left them a brochure
Speaker 1: at their house. Some of the connections between these women
Speaker 1: are chilling uncanny. Even another woman who's identified from the
Speaker 1: cotton field is a twenty year old woman named Claudia
Speaker 1: Yvette Gonzales. And Claudia worked at a maquila owned by
Speaker 1: Lear Corporation. So the day Claudia went missing, she showed
Speaker 1: up to work a few minutes late and the factory
Speaker 1: turned her away. After that, she was never seen again.
Speaker 1: You have all these details that point to a connection,
Speaker 1: that point to an organized network behind these killings. We'd
Speaker 1: heard about the shoelaces from Lily Alejander's autopsy. We'd heard
Speaker 1: about the connection to the Echo computer schools, and we'd
Speaker 1: heard about victims being snatched at moments of maximum vulnerability,
Speaker 1: just like Cloudier Yvette, who was turned away from the
Speaker 1: makil for being late and then found herself alone on
Speaker 1: the streets of Juarez. The crime scene seemed to confirm
Speaker 1: so much of the evidence that had already piled up
Speaker 1: about how these crimes were connected. Then something truly extraordinary happened.
Speaker 1: Just days after the bodies were sound, two suspects confessed
Speaker 1: to all eight murders at the cotton fields. About every month,
Speaker 1: we would snatch them a total of all, take them
Speaker 1: by force, rape them and later strangle them. That is
Speaker 1: a translation of a video made by the Horres police
Speaker 1: in which two men confess to the murders of those
Speaker 1: eight women. It appears to be a decisive break in
Speaker 1: the case. When we come back, we find out who
Speaker 1: they are. After the cotton Fields mass grave was discovered,
Speaker 1: two men confessed to the murders. They were bus drivers,
Speaker 1: Gustavo Siles Mezza, known as La Foca or the Seal,
Speaker 1: and Javier Garcia Uribe, known as Elio the Match. Their
Speaker 1: job was to drive the young women who worked in
Speaker 1: factories to and from work. Bus drivers had access and
Speaker 1: opportunity to identify when a young woman like Sagari Gonzalez
Speaker 1: started to commute alone. So the suspects seemed plausible, but
Speaker 1: were they actually responsible. Well, when the mass grave was
Speaker 1: discovered and the suspects confessed, Fredrick Crawford was the FBI
Speaker 1: Special Agent in charge of El Paso. His office was
Speaker 1: just a few miles away from the site of the
Speaker 1: mass grave, and he'd taken a special interest in the
Speaker 1: murders of women in Juarez and was following this case
Speaker 1: closely as a potential breakthrough. You could sense that the
Speaker 1: pressure was mounting. Political pressure, public pressure, international pressure. The
Speaker 1: families and relatives and friends of the disappeared women were allowed.
Speaker 1: Those women would hold the marches, mourning the deaths and
Speaker 1: drawing attention to that. That was huge. There was a crescendo,
Speaker 1: it was building. The international community was fully aware. So
Speaker 1: the pressure must have been enormous on the other side
Speaker 1: of the border. Politically. It was in this context that
Speaker 1: the Office of the Attorney General, known as the PGR,
Speaker 1: produced two suspects. I remember the PGR announced they had
Speaker 1: made a rest the bus drivers, the bus drivers atisode.
Speaker 1: That's them, the bus drivers, and he was showed the
Speaker 1: bus drivers. They had him in custody. So I have
Speaker 1: my agents come in, all right, give me the real
Speaker 1: story and we see what's on there. Immediately, yes, I
Speaker 1: wasn't sure. I was thinking seventy thirty it's BS in
Speaker 1: favor of the BS, and so I wanted the agents
Speaker 1: tell me what's going on. They said, hey, Boss, I
Speaker 1: just says they confessed. They said, Boss, don't ask us
Speaker 1: where we got this, but these are photos of their torsos.
Speaker 1: And I said, well, what are those what are those
Speaker 1: round circle marks burn marks? They said, that's cattle Pride's Boss.
Speaker 1: So forget those confessions. I said, oh my god. Okay,
Speaker 1: so they're under pressure to solve the crime, and so
Speaker 1: they tortured the confessions. I say, well, I'm not one
Speaker 1: to laugh because many African American was tortured in the
Speaker 1: Deep South to confess the crimes that he didn't do.
Speaker 1: Because of that, I know full well it's not reliable
Speaker 1: when you tort you somebody. In the very moment that
Speaker 1: it seemed most likely that the crimes could finally be sold,
Speaker 1: two innocent men have been co esced into taking the
Speaker 1: full In the video produced in house by the Wires
Speaker 1: Police Department, the bus drivers appeared dazed, and later they
Speaker 1: managed to get in front of the media themselves and
Speaker 1: show the world what had happened to them. One had
Speaker 1: a knee swollen to several times its normal size. There
Speaker 1: were those burn marks that Hardrick described, and there were
Speaker 1: also allegations of suffocation and waterboarding. So a few years
Speaker 1: before Monica Sharif had been pinned with these crimes, why
Speaker 1: did the authorities go to such lengths with the bus drivers?
Speaker 1: Every time a mass graves turned up in Wattis of
Speaker 1: women's bodies. It's been a turning point for the city
Speaker 1: and it's been a moment when suddenly people paid attention
Speaker 1: and there was great fear. The police can sort of
Speaker 1: sweep these individual murders under the rug up until the
Speaker 1: point where these mass graves are discovered. So they had
Speaker 1: to do something to show they were taking these crime seriously,
Speaker 1: because rightly so, the community was terrified. The first discovery
Speaker 1: of a mass grave happened in late summer of nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety five. There were nine bodies found in a deserted
Speaker 1: terrain in the southern outskirts of Wadez, not far from
Speaker 1: the airport, in a plot of land called Lotte Bravo,
Speaker 1: and bravo in Spanish means wild or untamed. Two months later,
Speaker 1: Shadif is arrested. He was declared as a primary suspect
Speaker 1: in the women's murders, and when he was questioned about this,
Speaker 1: he was stunned. He told the Washington Post. I've hung
Speaker 1: around with a lot of prostitutes and drunks and topless dancers.
Speaker 1: I'm not proud of it. I'll admit to my sins,
Speaker 1: but I never killed anybody. Sharif is the perfect scapegoa,
Speaker 1: given his outsider's status and his violent criminal history. The
Speaker 1: police kept building up cases against him that were subsequently
Speaker 1: thrown out in court until he died in jail in
Speaker 1: two thousand and six. In nineteen ninety five, the first
Speaker 1: mass grave of women in Juarez was discovered, and shortly
Speaker 1: afterwards Sharif was jailed. In nineteen ninety six, another mass
Speaker 1: grave of women was discovered, and the authorities claimed Shariff
Speaker 1: was orchestrating the murders from prison to prove his innocence,
Speaker 1: using a gang called the Rebeldez. Now it was two
Speaker 1: thousand and one and another mass grave had been discovered,
Speaker 1: and even before seeing the images of torture, Dinah believes
Speaker 1: that the process of scapegoating that usually followed such discovery
Speaker 1: was happening all over again. They were obviously given the script.
Speaker 1: They seemed frightened. To me, you know, to just nonchalantly
Speaker 1: admit to eight murders is quite a feat. And that
Speaker 1: again spoke to the idea that here we go again scapegoats.
Speaker 1: All right, they have the boilerplate language. Somebody is in
Speaker 1: charge of right now, the the novella of how this
Speaker 1: is going to play out. You know, someone in law enforcement,
Speaker 1: and here's what you're going to say. In period, it
Speaker 1: was just a matter of like two days after the
Speaker 1: human remains were gathered and taken to the morgue, and
Speaker 1: already they had two men that the authorities that were
Speaker 1: responsible to bus drivers, and we saw that as very suspicious.
Speaker 1: I mean, how can you have suspects already five days
Speaker 1: after the bodies had been discovered at the cotton Field,
Speaker 1: Diana attended a press conference where she got a sickening
Speaker 1: sense that history was repeating itself. One of the reporters
Speaker 1: from white As asked the state attorney general, Jesus he
Speaker 1: is it possible that Shadif is involved in these murders too?
Speaker 1: And he turned to the rest of the reporters. This
Speaker 1: state attorney general is said, you know, we're looking into that.
Speaker 1: Here we go again. But they have the perfect scapegoat.
Speaker 1: He's been in jail this whole time, and they may
Speaker 1: try to find a way to link him to these
Speaker 1: bus drivers, and then the bus drivers, of course to
Speaker 1: the eight murders of these young women. One of the
Speaker 1: things you can't fail to notice in Juarez is buses,
Speaker 1: often repurposed American school buses which are everywhere and which
Speaker 1: I used to transport maquila workers to and from their jobs.
Speaker 1: When you and I went to downtown Juarez. We went
Speaker 1: to Mina Street, which is where many of the young
Speaker 1: women were last seen alive, but also the central bus
Speaker 1: exchange in Juarez. So it's easy to see how bus
Speaker 1: drivers might have the access or the opportunity to kidnap, abduct,
Speaker 1: and kill women. How much of that drove the authority's
Speaker 1: decision to focus on these two men. There is evidence
Speaker 1: to support the notion that the victims were scouted and
Speaker 1: selected in the same way it appears the scapegoats were
Speaker 1: also scouted and selected because they themselves had vulnerabilities that
Speaker 1: made them less able to defend themselves. And why bus drivers, Well,
Speaker 1: it so happened that before the cotton Fields, a woman
Speaker 1: had survived an attack by a bus driver on her
Speaker 1: way home from work, and so bus drivers were already
Speaker 1: seen as an enemy in the public's eye, and so
Speaker 1: police just kind of picked up on that threat and
Speaker 1: arrested two more bus drivers, saying these guys are responsible
Speaker 1: for the deaths of those women found dumped in the
Speaker 1: cotton field. You could say they were easy targets, just
Speaker 1: like Sharif we don't hear as much about the individuals
Speaker 1: who are falsely accused of committing the crimes, and one
Speaker 1: of those who was accused was the bus driver named
Speaker 1: Javier Garcia Uribe no relation to me. I went digging
Speaker 1: through news archives around the time they were arrested, and
Speaker 1: I came across this article written by a reporter named Minervacanto,
Speaker 1: and she traveled to Hawadis and spent several days with
Speaker 1: the bus driver's wife. Her name is Miriam Garcia. The
Speaker 1: couple they have two children, and so one night in
Speaker 1: two thousand and one, all of a sudden, they are
Speaker 1: surrounded by armed men whose faces are covered with Halloween masks,
Speaker 1: and they threaten Javier, Miriam and their two kids and
Speaker 1: eventually take Kavier, stuff him in a car and take
Speaker 1: him away while Miriam protests, but she's really helpless to
Speaker 1: do anything these men are armed. She spends the next
Speaker 1: three days desperately searching for her husband, just like the
Speaker 1: mothers are searching for the daughters. The next time that
Speaker 1: Miriam sees her husband is on television confessing to the
Speaker 1: murder of these eight women who were found in the
Speaker 1: cotton field. Miriam, just like Baola, She's desperate to come
Speaker 1: to the rescue of her husband, who she firmly believes
Speaker 1: is being scapegoated. On one of the Governor's visits to Wattis,
Speaker 1: she manages to push her way to the front of
Speaker 1: the crowd and denounces her husband's arrest and please with
Speaker 1: the governor, show me one shread of evidence, one shread
Speaker 1: of evidence to prove my husband's guilt. And she surrounded
Speaker 1: and moved away from the governor. Just the brazenness by
Speaker 1: which this is all playing out that inspires this passion,
Speaker 1: in these rage and these loved ones that are like,
Speaker 1: how dare you? How dare you? And they call him
Speaker 1: out in these very passionate public ways. All of this
Speaker 1: scapegoating raises a very serious question. Why would the authorities
Speaker 1: do it? Well, they're trying to protect the real killers
Speaker 1: all along, and if so, how could the killers have
Speaker 1: so much power over the authorities. When we come back,
Speaker 1: we hear from Oscar Mines about some strange details of
Speaker 1: the cotton Field crime scene that revealed the extent of
Speaker 1: what the killers might be capable of, and Heredrik Crawford
Speaker 1: takes the case to the very top of the FBI
Speaker 1: in whirez the women's murders and scapegoating seemed to be
Speaker 1: two sides of the same coin, but not every official
Speaker 1: was content to let the true killers go free, and
Speaker 1: before the bus drivers confessed, Oscar Minez was generating some
Speaker 1: telling leads at the crime scene about a sinister network
Speaker 1: responsible for the murder. We started working on now Thursday.
Speaker 1: By Sunday, the attorney of the state gave up press interviews,
Speaker 1: saying that he had apprehended the murders and that the
Speaker 1: whole day victims have been identified. What I mean, we're
Speaker 1: just in the process of I mean, those are not
Speaker 1: the guys. This is not their profile I'm looking for.
Speaker 1: It was clear from Dinah's reporting that at least one
Speaker 1: of the ways the victims were selected using Echo computer
Speaker 1: schools was highly methodical, and Oscar saw clear signs that
Speaker 1: the way the women in the cotton field had been
Speaker 1: killed and dumped was also organized. Who could be capable
Speaker 1: of these kinds of crimes and why would they leave
Speaker 1: bodies in such a brazen spot. Those were the questions
Speaker 1: on Oscar's mind as he worked the crime scene. Then
Speaker 1: all of a sudden he became aware of something suspicious
Speaker 1: and disconcerting. I noticed that there were these men with
Speaker 1: nice cars, clean and shape, and everything in Bermudas and
Speaker 1: they were very happy. I mean they seem suspicious. I mean,
Speaker 1: these people were too quickly to arrive there. And if
Speaker 1: you had to guess who they were, these people they
Speaker 1: don't have like a ninety five yeard in that you know,
Speaker 1: and like so I don't know, the fact that these
Speaker 1: sharply dressed men could turn up to the crime scene
Speaker 1: suggested they didn't have an office job or a factory job,
Speaker 1: and also wanted to learn more about who they might be.
Speaker 1: I took picture with the telescopic lens, and I took
Speaker 1: the photographs of the license plates. Like I said, their
Speaker 1: leads that you follow for reasons that will become clear.
Speaker 1: Oscar wasn't able to follow up on that lead, But
Speaker 1: the men weren't the only unexplained presence at the crime scene.
Speaker 1: There were a lot of areas of research in this
Speaker 1: case that could have led to something relevant. Bosom was promising.
Speaker 1: I believe there was connection with some construction companies because
Speaker 1: the second globle of bodies, the ones who were buried,
Speaker 1: they were buried under rubble, and it was enough material
Speaker 1: to cover the bodies. You need like a dump truck
Speaker 1: to do that. The people who do this have access
Speaker 1: to equipment for a constructure company, you can identify that
Speaker 1: where their rubble came from. The cotton field had so
Speaker 1: many promising leads, the connection between the victims, the license
Speaker 1: plates of the men who turned up at the crime scene,
Speaker 1: and then there's this rubble from a construction site. But
Speaker 1: the authorities never pursued those lines of investigation because the
Speaker 1: bus drivers had already confessed. Then the crime scene gets
Speaker 1: even weirder. The families, in their demand for justice and
Speaker 1: Monica are one of the key engines that keeps pressure
Speaker 1: up on the authorities in Huarez. What do the families
Speaker 1: do about this crime scene? Three months after the cotton
Speaker 1: field discovery, a group of a volunteers and international reporters
Speaker 1: went back to the scene of the crime to do
Speaker 1: a sweep at the request of the families. One of
Speaker 1: those volunteers was an American professor who describes how they
Speaker 1: lined up and combed the lot in one long, single row.
Speaker 1: They carried sticks with pointed ends and were instructed to
Speaker 1: put anything they found in a plastic bag, And it
Speaker 1: turns out they found quite a lot women's underwear, book bags, purses,
Speaker 1: a high heeled shoe, clumps of hair, But the most
Speaker 1: significant thing they found that day was a pair of overalls.
Speaker 1: A teenage boy found them in a plastic bag, and
Speaker 1: one of the mothers saw them, and she ran over
Speaker 1: there and took those overalls in her arms. It turns
Speaker 1: out they belonged to her daughter, Claudia, who was turned
Speaker 1: away from the makila for being late. One of the
Speaker 1: students captured that moment in a photograph. It shows this
Speaker 1: mother sobbing, clutching the overalls, embracing them as if they
Speaker 1: were her daughter. What's odd about this sweep is that
Speaker 1: it happens three months after the bodies were discovered, and
Speaker 1: nobody has been able to explain how those items got there,
Speaker 1: especially the overalls, and how they could have been there
Speaker 1: this whole time without anybody discovering them sooner. This wasn't
Speaker 1: the first time evidence had turned up in suspicious circumstances.
Speaker 1: In the days after the cotton Field discovery, Oskaminez received
Speaker 1: a rice visit agent comes to my office and I
Speaker 1: need you to put this in the evidence of the case.
Speaker 1: And I said, no, dissent order by the Attorney General.
Speaker 1: I was saying, no, if he wants to do it.
Speaker 1: I skim to send bread in order. Oscar was being
Speaker 1: asked to plant evidence by a state official, and he
Speaker 1: was pushing back. What evidence was he asking you to plan?
Speaker 1: Apparently there were drugs and Braley hairs. I didn't even
Speaker 1: open the back because when the Attorney General gave the
Speaker 1: press conference, he said that this buzz driv drug addicts
Speaker 1: and they have found evidence in their van that the
Speaker 1: girls have been abducted there with the band. I believe
Speaker 1: it was drugs, and then some kind of evidence connecting
Speaker 1: the disease to the vehicle. Whoever it is, who doesn't
Speaker 1: want the truth of these murders to come to night.
Speaker 1: I want to stop at death threats or even torture.
Speaker 1: They also seem to have some sort of swam over
Speaker 1: the police and the Attorney General's office, and Oscar's resistance
Speaker 1: wasn't going unnoticed. I mean I received treads. I was careful.
Speaker 1: I didn't went to at night during that time. I'm yes,
Speaker 1: you know, but I didn't study or prepared to plant evidence.
Speaker 1: You know what I mean. It's like, but ask you
Speaker 1: the way you tell this to us, you say it
Speaker 1: come okay, very nonchalantly. Well, at that time I was
Speaker 1: very angry. I don't tend to get scared, geted to
Speaker 1: get angry. So I was very angry. And when you're angry,
Speaker 1: you don't stop to think clear of the consequences. What
Speaker 1: was it important to you to put your job at
Speaker 1: the least and at the most your safety on the
Speaker 1: line in this particular case, I mean, just because my
Speaker 1: jab is to get to the truth of the case.
Speaker 1: And also if we're talking about a serial killer or killers,
Speaker 1: or a group acting in this way, if you close
Speaker 1: a case with a scapegoat, this is not the end
Speaker 1: of it, and he's going to continue and continue and continue.
Speaker 1: But the order was coming from a powerful place, and
Speaker 1: when you don't obey those who are politically powerful, you
Speaker 1: tend to suffer the consequence I had to I quit.
Speaker 1: I tried to protect the file when the file went
Speaker 1: to the Josh is more difficult to manipulate that when
Speaker 1: I decided to present my resignation later, But like I said,
Speaker 1: I was out anyways. It was a matter of men
Speaker 1: as probably Oscar Health Firm, not just because of principle,
Speaker 1: but for very practical purposes. He knew the bus drivers
Speaker 1: would have to be tried, and he wanted to make
Speaker 1: it as hard as possible to secure a conviction, hoping
Speaker 1: that that would force the authorities to lead a real
Speaker 1: search for the guilty parties. If you see the file,
Speaker 1: the original file, there is not a single evidence that
Speaker 1: connects the bus drivers to the crime. There is no
Speaker 1: evidence that the victims that the state says belong to.
Speaker 1: There's no proof of that. And the only proof you
Speaker 1: find is that this guys were torture. That was a fact,
Speaker 1: even though it was clearly a case that was manipulated
Speaker 1: about the state. Even though Oscar was essentially forced to
Speaker 1: resign within days of the discovery of a crime scene
Speaker 1: that he felt could finally have exposed who was killing
Speaker 1: the woman in Huarez, his protection of the bus driver's file,
Speaker 1: his refusal to plant evidence, was consequential. It made the
Speaker 1: state's case much harder to prove, especially when a prominent
Speaker 1: father and son team of lawyers, Mario Escobedo Senior and Junior,
Speaker 1: took them honest clients his dinner again. They were probably
Speaker 1: the first lawyers to be so open about what they
Speaker 1: understood about the femicides in Huais, and they started to
Speaker 1: mention that there were people getting away with murder, but
Speaker 1: this resistance to the official narrative bring heat Mightio became
Speaker 1: aware that he was being followed. He called his father
Speaker 1: in the cell phone and said to help me, help me. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: across the border in El Paso, Modred Crawford couldn't believe
Speaker 1: what he was seeing, and he was more determined than
Speaker 1: ever to do something about the crimes. I'm stunned and
Speaker 1: amazed at the response of our colleagues in Mexico to
Speaker 1: an enormous crime on my numbing cry. Andrew couldn't intervene
Speaker 1: directly in the affairs of another sovereign nation, but in
Speaker 1: two thousand and two he visited the jay At Cahoover
Speaker 1: Building in Washington, DC because he wants to get approval
Speaker 1: to keep digging from his boss, Robert Mueller. Oh, yes,
Speaker 1: director Robert Muller. And I was in the director's office
Speaker 1: on the seventh floor. We call it Mahogany Row, all
Speaker 1: the mahogany tables, and I expressed concern that my outspoken
Speaker 1: activities interaction with my colleagues on the other side of
Speaker 1: the border. I was concerned that I was doing something
Speaker 1: that they did not find to be in the best
Speaker 1: entrance of the FBI and Deputy Director Bruce Gappard said
Speaker 1: just keep doing what you're doing, and the director just
Speaker 1: nodded affirmatively. It wasn't long before Hendrik Crawford clearly understood
Speaker 1: that something even darker was happening in Juarez than his
Speaker 1: initial hypothesis about a cross borders serial killer. And although
Speaker 1: the bus drivers were in jail, the true killers remained free.
Speaker 1: So as the investigations continued on both sides of the border,
Speaker 1: so did the killings of women in Huirez. In our
Speaker 1: next episode, death threats against investigators graduate into outright murder.
Speaker 1: Imoz Veloschen and see you next time, que Halla Felicia Forgotten.
Speaker 1: The Women of Juarez is co hosted by Me Monica
Speaker 1: and me oswald Oshan Forgotten is executive produced by Me
Speaker 1: and Mangesh Hatigia. Our producers are Julian Weller and Katrina Norvelle.
Speaker 1: Sound editing by Julian Weller and Jacopo Penzo. Lucas Riley
Speaker 1: is our story editor. Caitlin Thompson is our consulting producer.
Speaker 1: Production support from Emily Maronoff and Aaron Kaufman. Recording assistance
Speaker 1: this episode from Melissa Kaplan. Music by Leonardo Hablom and
Speaker 1: Hakkabo Libermann. Additional music by Aaron Kaufman. Special thanks to
Speaker 1: Cecilia Vai and Minerva Canto, whose research and reporting contributed
Speaker 1: to this episode.