Speaker 1: Congratulations to the winners of the two thousand fifteen Goldman Prize.
Speaker 1: It's the biggest prize and environmental activists can get, and
Speaker 1: this is the awards ceremony. Thousands of people are packed
Speaker 1: into San Francisco's Grand Opera House, and in the middle
Speaker 1: of the front row, tonight's big winner is waiting for
Speaker 1: her name to be called. Berta Casarengs from Honduras. It's April,
Speaker 1: and Berta Cassras is being honored for her fight against
Speaker 1: a proposed hydro electric dam in western Honduras. Foreign investors,
Speaker 1: the Honduran government, and some of the wealthiest business leaders
Speaker 1: in the country have backed the project. Barta has worked
Speaker 1: with a native community known as the Linka to oppose it.
Speaker 1: They've filed legal complaints arguing the damn will destroy aid
Speaker 1: their way of life. They've stacked logs and stones on roads,
Speaker 1: blocking construction equipment from reaching the work site, and Berta
Speaker 1: has been credited with driving the world's largest hydro electric contractor,
Speaker 1: China's Sino Hydro Corporation, to pull out of the project.
Speaker 1: It's been a grizzly battle. Protesters and security guards have clashed.
Speaker 1: A couple of people have been killed. A few more
Speaker 1: have been wounded and scarred. Bart To herself says she's
Speaker 1: been constantly harassed. Threatening text messages have popped up on
Speaker 1: her phone. Strangers have followed her, mysterious vehicles have tried
Speaker 1: to drive her off the road. But on this night,
Speaker 1: as she walks onto the opera house stage, none of
Speaker 1: that seems to rattle her. She unfolds her speech at
Speaker 1: the podium and adjust the mic when I'm familiar on
Speaker 1: her closest friends have never seen her like this. The
Speaker 1: bear To, they know, wears jeans and T shirts. Tonight
Speaker 1: she's wearing a sparkling, pale rose gown, but her smiles
Speaker 1: the same. And that smile is something her friends and
Speaker 1: colleagues have always talked about, how the smile has a
Speaker 1: way of making people feel comfortable, and how as soon
Speaker 1: as that happens, there to switch his things up tries
Speaker 1: to make those same people feel a little uncomfortable. Agitation, disruption, provocation,
Speaker 1: that's what she's going for, despertemos temple. It's a call
Speaker 1: to action, she says. The world needs to wake up.
Speaker 1: It's running out of time, she says. Greed, racism, and
Speaker 1: old patriarchal systems are destroying us. Racis theatre art has
Speaker 1: been delivering that message in different ways for decades. As
Speaker 1: a kid, she tag along with her mom to protests.
Speaker 1: She co founded her own human rights organization when she
Speaker 1: was just twenty two. Now, at forty four years old,
Speaker 1: she's reached the pinnacle of her career, the request Premio
Speaker 1: al Puelo linca Ario Lenco alcop. She closes the speech
Speaker 1: by dedicating the award to all the rebels out there,
Speaker 1: to her mother, to the Linka indigenous community, and lastly
Speaker 1: to all the martyrs who have lost their lives defending
Speaker 1: natural resources. In a lot of stories, this would be
Speaker 1: the end a grassroot environmental activists achieves international acclaim after
Speaker 1: years of struggling for her cause. But this isn't one
Speaker 1: of those stories. Tonight's award puts a spotlight on Barton.
Speaker 1: The anger and resentment she's inspired over the years, intensified
Speaker 1: under its glare. Barton will go back to Honduras after this.
Speaker 1: She'll continue to speak out against the dawn, but in
Speaker 1: less than a year she'll be silenced. A prominent environmental
Speaker 1: rights activists was shot dead in Honduras on Thursday. She
Speaker 1: was killed like well the one hundred other activists. It's
Speaker 1: two thousand and ten and what's become the deadliest country
Speaker 1: in the world for environmental defenders. My name is Monte Real,
Speaker 1: an investigative journalist for Bloomberg Green. This is Blood River.
Speaker 1: It's the story of a murder, a murder her in
Speaker 1: a place where murderers thrive. We're about of all killings
Speaker 1: are left unsolved and unpunished, where environmental activists have become
Speaker 1: irresistible targets. The homicide investigation was full of surprises from
Speaker 1: day one. Now, more than four years on, it keeps
Speaker 1: revealing new twists. We think it's quite possible that there's
Speaker 1: more to this crime then has been exposed so far.
Speaker 1: I always felt like the government wouldn't dare to touch her.
Speaker 1: I always felt that she would be threatened and she
Speaker 1: would be famed, and they try and sender to prison.
Speaker 1: But I never actually thought that the government would dare
Speaker 1: kill her. We'll dive into those accusations, will follow strands
Speaker 1: of evidence on a zig zagging path that will lead
Speaker 1: towards some of the most powerful institutions in Honduras. Before long,
Speaker 1: foreign governments and international investors will have to confront the
Speaker 1: same question, who in the end is really responsible for
Speaker 1: the death of Bear to Cassarus, And as more people
Speaker 1: get drawn into that mystery, more blood will be shed.
Speaker 1: It's not a good situation when people can literally get
Speaker 1: away with murder. Convicting people previously thought to be untouchable
Speaker 1: of serious crimes and having them pay the consequences can
Speaker 1: send a very very important message. This is a test case. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is so important. This. I'm walking up to the
Speaker 1: house where Berta was killed. It's early, almost four years
Speaker 1: after her murder. She had bought this place with some
Speaker 1: of the one and seventy dollars she was awarded for
Speaker 1: winning the Goldman Prize. At the time of her murder,
Speaker 1: she hadn't fully moved in yet, She was only staying
Speaker 1: here a couple of days a week. The subdivision sits
Speaker 1: at the far south end of the city of La Speranza.
Speaker 1: It's a new development, flat, treeless, with plenty of lots
Speaker 1: that remain empty. Her house is small and simple, a
Speaker 1: green stucco exterior, white trim red metal roof. A six
Speaker 1: ft high chain link fence surrounds it. From the front door,
Speaker 1: you look across a dirt road and over a Aaron Fields.
Speaker 1: It's a subdivision that's very isolated and abandoned, with very
Speaker 1: few houses. That was Gustavo Castro's first impression of the place.
Speaker 1: He's an environmental activist from Mexico. Barta invited him to
Speaker 1: Las Baranza in March to speak at a conference she organized.
Speaker 1: She told me, no, don't worry because anyway, I don't
Speaker 1: sleep here all the time. It's not like it's my
Speaker 1: permanent fixed address lexio Ica Tempo. That didn't put him
Speaker 1: at ease, especially when Berta started telling him how nasty
Speaker 1: her fight against the Awazarka Damn Project had gotten at
Speaker 1: one protest. Security guards for the Damn shot and killed
Speaker 1: a demonstrator. They claimed self defense. Bear To herself had
Speaker 1: recently been getting threats, cryptic messages saying she should watch
Speaker 1: her back, that sort of thing. She filed a complaint
Speaker 1: to the Organization of American States. It's sort of like
Speaker 1: the United Nations for the Americans. That organization declared that
Speaker 1: the Honduran government had a responsibility to provide security for
Speaker 1: bart To. She chatted a lot about the attention she
Speaker 1: was getting the threats, about the complaint she had filed
Speaker 1: and how about how sometimes the police officers that were
Speaker 1: supposed to be protectively weren't protecting. During that conference in
Speaker 1: La Esperanza, Gustavo had planned to stay at the house
Speaker 1: of another activist, one who lived in the center of
Speaker 1: the city, but when he saw Barta's place and how
Speaker 1: vulnerable she seemed there, his plans changed. Barta said he'd
Speaker 1: be well come to stay with her, so Gustavo lugged
Speaker 1: his suitcase into the house and settled into the spare bedroom.
Speaker 1: The next evening, they grabbed dinner in a restaurant in town.
Speaker 1: It was about ten o'clock when bear To drove them
Speaker 1: back to the house. She passed a little security booth
Speaker 1: in front of the subdivision. A guard watched them pull
Speaker 1: up an older man in his seventies. Maybe he raised
Speaker 1: the crossbar that blocked the entrance road. The man nodded
Speaker 1: at Barta as she passed. After that, upon arriving at
Speaker 1: the house, we grabbed chairs and sat out on the
Speaker 1: front porch to talk. I had a drink and smoked
Speaker 1: a cigarette, and we stayed out there talking until maybe
Speaker 1: eleven o'clock or so. Mostly it was small talk. Mostly
Speaker 1: it had been a long day, and she was very hired,
Speaker 1: and she said, okay, let's get some rest. I'll show
Speaker 1: you to your room, and so we went in for
Speaker 1: the night. I did a little work on my room
Speaker 1: in the computer. You. Yes, I don't know if she
Speaker 1: was already asleep, but I heard some noises coming from
Speaker 1: around the house or inside the house, and I thought
Speaker 1: maybe she was doing something like Yeah. By now, it
Speaker 1: must have been a little past eleven thirty. That's when
Speaker 1: he heard a much louder noise, good a bag, very loud.
Speaker 1: I thought maybe Bait had dropped something in the kitchen,
Speaker 1: and I was getting ready to get up to go
Speaker 1: help because it sounded very loud. But immediately the door
Speaker 1: of my room was kicked open, and at the same time,
Speaker 1: bit yells from her room, who's out there? Everything happened
Speaker 1: at once. Gustavo her gunshots coming from bear To's room,
Speaker 1: and when he looked up, a man was standing in
Speaker 1: his room, no more than six or seven feet away.
Speaker 1: He looked young, nineteen twenty years old, a thin guy,
Speaker 1: dark complexion, black hair, wide eyes, and he was holding
Speaker 1: a gun. Nquist told Mann, I threw myself towards the
Speaker 1: side of the bed, in my room to protect myself,
Speaker 1: and the gunman shot me in the head side. I
Speaker 1: think it was a miracle because when I saw his
Speaker 1: eyes and saw his decision to shoot me, I instinctively moved,
Speaker 1: and the gunman evidently thought that the shot had caused
Speaker 1: that scar. Gustavo had thrown his hand up in front
Speaker 1: of his face a protective reflex. The bullet tore through
Speaker 1: the skin of his hand, then it buzzed the side
Speaker 1: of his head, clipping a piece of his ear. Gustavo
Speaker 1: fell to the floor, stunned, bleeding and still betoas okay.
Speaker 1: He evidently thought that I was already dead. Gustavo sprawled
Speaker 1: on the floor, heard footsteps retreat down the hallway, then silence.
Speaker 1: No more than a minute passed, maybe as I was
Speaker 1: down on the floor and be yelled for me. So
Speaker 1: I realized that she was alive and got up to
Speaker 1: go to the room to help her. She was there
Speaker 1: on the ground bleeding. I couldn't tell where the gunshots were,
Speaker 1: only a lot of blood. Little by little, she was
Speaker 1: drowning over the thing. Gustavo was kneeling over bear to
Speaker 1: in shock. Somehow, just before beart to faded out. She
Speaker 1: managed to mouth the final message to him, call Salvador.
Speaker 1: She said that was her ex husband. They'd split years before,
Speaker 1: but he's the father of her four children and he
Speaker 1: remained a major presence in their lives. Gustavo was searched
Speaker 1: for bear to cell phone and found it on a table. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I also had a lot of It was a very
Speaker 1: modern phone, one that I didn't know how to use
Speaker 1: very well. And with all the nerves and and and
Speaker 1: the tension, I was trying to search for familiar telephone numbers,
Speaker 1: but nobody was answering. Gustavo look back at Barton. She
Speaker 1: was gone. Now he was alone, terrified that the killers
Speaker 1: might come back. He grabbed his own phone to make
Speaker 1: the calls. Sometimes he left voicemail messages, and sometimes he
Speaker 1: didn't wait. He just punched in another number from his room.
Speaker 1: He also sent emails to friends and colleagues in Mexico,
Speaker 1: begging them to contact anyone in Honduras who might be
Speaker 1: able to come to the house and help him out.
Speaker 1: I was lying in my bed at one in the
Speaker 1: morning on March three, and I was into Goosey Galpa,
Speaker 1: and I received a phone call from Ann number. Karen
Speaker 1: Spring is a Canadian human rights activist who lives into
Speaker 1: Goosey Galpa, the Honduran capital. It's about a four hour
Speaker 1: drive from Las Beranza. So I was alone in the
Speaker 1: house and I received this phone call and then I
Speaker 1: was like, okay, well that's weird. I wonder who's calling me.
Speaker 1: And then somebody else called me again, and so I
Speaker 1: was like, okay, that's weird. I'm gonna listen to the voicemail.
Speaker 1: That first call had been Gustavo. He didn't leave a voicemail.
Speaker 1: The second caller was an activist in Mexico who had
Speaker 1: received a panicked message from Gustavo. The activist called Karen
Speaker 1: to see if Karen might be able to help him.
Speaker 1: And so when I listened to the voicemail, my friend,
Speaker 1: who is very active in the you know, mining networks
Speaker 1: in Mexico, was just saying Berto is dead and Gustavo
Speaker 1: is in her house and he shot and he really
Speaker 1: needs help. And I was like, holy shit. I listened
Speaker 1: to the voicemail and I was like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: Oh my god. And I just picked up the phone
Speaker 1: and called Bert to phone number, not even you know,
Speaker 1: thinking thinking twice about it and and I was just
Speaker 1: Gustavo like like, are you okay? It is Bertha dead? Yeah,
Speaker 1: she's dead. I'm like, are you sure? You know? Are
Speaker 1: you are you sure? And he's like, yeah, she's she's dead.
Speaker 1: Karen was the first person to speak directly with Gustavo
Speaker 1: that night. She could hear that he was crying, and
Speaker 1: I asked him if he was okay, and he said,
Speaker 1: that is dead, and um, she's and and I'm I'm okay,
Speaker 1: but I'm bleeding and can you please find help. I've
Speaker 1: been calling people and nobody's been picking up, and you know,
Speaker 1: can you send people to the house. I don't know
Speaker 1: what to do. And then he asked me if he
Speaker 1: should call the police, and I said, don't call the police. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, because calling the police and Honduras is like
Speaker 1: calling the mafia to a crime scene and you can't
Speaker 1: trust them. It might sound kind of crazy you witness
Speaker 1: a murder, you're alone with the body, and then you
Speaker 1: go out of your way to avoid calling the police
Speaker 1: for help, But in Honduras it's not that crazy. A
Speaker 1: few months before Berta was killed, a survey funded by
Speaker 1: the US government suggested that a solid majority of Hondurans
Speaker 1: simply assumed the police officers were on the payrolls of
Speaker 1: assassins and other bad guys. Almost no one trusted the cops.
Speaker 1: These institutions were not at the service of the people.
Speaker 1: They were at the service of some other interest, uh
Speaker 1: financial or criminal. James Neilon was appointed US Ambassador to
Speaker 1: Honduras in his priorities had been clearly outlined for him well.
Speaker 1: I arrived in Honduras in August of two thousand and fourteen,
Speaker 1: and if you'll recall, that was the height of the
Speaker 1: of the first so called unaccompanied miners crisis, when there
Speaker 1: were New York Times headlines and and cable news reports
Speaker 1: of huge numbers of Central Americans unaccompanied children streaming across
Speaker 1: our Southwest order and my marching orders as I headed
Speaker 1: down to Honduras or to or to do something about that.
Speaker 1: He believed the driving force behind the migration was violence.
Speaker 1: In Honduras set a world record. This was the deadliest
Speaker 1: place ever if you didn't count countries at war for
Speaker 1: several years in a row. The country's murder rate was
Speaker 1: about sixteen times higher than in the United States. Honduras
Speaker 1: wasn't only the murder capital of the world at that time.
Speaker 1: But I guess you could also label at the impunity
Speaker 1: capital of the world at that time, because very few
Speaker 1: murders were actually successfully investigated to a conclusion. In other words,
Speaker 1: it was very rare for someone to actually go to
Speaker 1: jail for committing murder. In Honduras, everyone knew the Honduran
Speaker 1: National Police had a corruption problem. Local newspapers were full
Speaker 1: of stories about uniformed officers getting tangled up in drug deals,
Speaker 1: or stealing cars, or even committing murders. Calls for reform
Speaker 1: were gathering steam both inside and outside of Honduras. Just
Speaker 1: before Berta was killed in twenty sixteen, the U. S
Speaker 1: Embassy threw its weight behind an effort to purge the
Speaker 1: Honduran Police of its dirty cops. The Honduran government called
Speaker 1: it the Special Commission for the Purge and Transformation of
Speaker 1: the Honduran National Police. The Commission met for the first
Speaker 1: time after Berta's murder. Over the next two years, from
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen to twenty eighteen, the Honduran government ended up
Speaker 1: firing almost half of its national force. More than five
Speaker 1: thousand officers out of about thirteen thousand were expelled. Most
Speaker 1: were accused of corruption or ties to criminal groups. It
Speaker 1: wasn't just the rank and file. Of the nine top
Speaker 1: officers in the National Police, six were pushed out. Forty
Speaker 1: seven active police commissioners, about half were fired. Today there's
Speaker 1: still a lot of controversy over that purge, but it's
Speaker 1: not that the commission went too far. It's that they
Speaker 1: might have been too easy on the police. Each of
Speaker 1: the three top ranking police commanders appointed after the purge
Speaker 1: would later be accused of meeting with drug traffickers who
Speaker 1: paid the officers to protect their shipping routes. However you
Speaker 1: interpret the end result of that purge, remember it hadn't
Speaker 1: even really begun when Barta was killed. All of those
Speaker 1: thousands of corrupt cops that would soon lose their jobs,
Speaker 1: they were still on the force. So Karen Spring wasn't
Speaker 1: being paranoid when she told Gustavo Castro not to call
Speaker 1: the police for help. She was using common sense. When
Speaker 1: Karen hung up on that first call with Gustavo, she
Speaker 1: could tell he was terrified. He was alone with a
Speaker 1: murdered friend inside a house that now felt more isolated
Speaker 1: and vulnerable than it ever had. I was repeatedly calling
Speaker 1: Gustavo to make sure he was okay, because you know,
Speaker 1: he was really scared that the assassins were going to
Speaker 1: come back and finished the job, and that they if
Speaker 1: they knew that he was alive. And so I also
Speaker 1: told him that we need to be very careful about
Speaker 1: who knew that he was still alive at that time
Speaker 1: until he was, you know, in a safe place. Karen
Speaker 1: started calling members of Copeine Barrett's organization in La Speranza.
Speaker 1: One was a man named Thomas Gomez. He agreed to
Speaker 1: drive to Berta's and get Gustavo to safety in case
Speaker 1: the killers returned. Yes, Emilia, it's something like two thirty
Speaker 1: in the morning when Tomas from Gulping arrives to get me.
Speaker 1: I heard the horn from the Gulping pickup truck and
Speaker 1: I told myself, that's Tomas coming from me. This is
Speaker 1: Gustavo stepped out of the bedroom to meet him. The
Speaker 1: back door of the house connected to the kitchen was open.
Speaker 1: The killers had busted through it. That must have been
Speaker 1: the first loud noise he'd heard. I went out through
Speaker 1: the front door. The gate to the fence was locked,
Speaker 1: so I decided to jump the fence and I left
Speaker 1: with Domas. It was around this time when Tomas called
Speaker 1: the police to tell them about the murder. Then he
Speaker 1: and Gustavo drove to the guard station at the entrance
Speaker 1: of the subdivision. Gustavo recognized the old man from earlier
Speaker 1: when he and Bartsa had passed him. Tomas asked the
Speaker 1: guard if he'd seen anything out of the ordinary. He
Speaker 1: said he hadn't. Tomas drove towards the center of town.
Speaker 1: On the side of the road, they spotted a cluster
Speaker 1: of people walking. They were members of Berta's indigenous rights
Speaker 1: organization Copeine. They'd heard about what happened. They didn't have cars,
Speaker 1: but they wanted to help somehow, so Moss told them
Speaker 1: to hop in the truck and he gave them a
Speaker 1: lift back to Berta's house. He told them to guard
Speaker 1: the place to make sure it wasn't disrupted before the
Speaker 1: police got there. We dropped the people off and we
Speaker 1: took off to leave again. The crossbar was now raised
Speaker 1: and the old man, we don't know what happened to him.
Speaker 1: So Mass and Gustavo found two more groups of Copeine
Speaker 1: members walking along the road and offered them rides. When
Speaker 1: they returned to the house with the last group, they
Speaker 1: saw that the police had now arrived inspecting the house.
Speaker 1: Many of the Copine members were also inside with them.
Speaker 1: Gustavo couldn't believe it. People were walking through the blood,
Speaker 1: leaving fingerprints everywhere agreement. Obviously the whole scene of the
Speaker 1: crime had been altered. That's when Berta's lawyer arrived. He
Speaker 1: told Gustavo that a prosecutor wanted to speak to him
Speaker 1: and that he should just wait in the truck. Gustava's
Speaker 1: ear in hand were still bleeding and throbbing with pain.
Speaker 1: More police and army soldiers were now streaming into the
Speaker 1: crime scene. The media soon arrived. They too were walking
Speaker 1: into the house, but no one could see Gustavo behind
Speaker 1: the tinted windows of the trucks matros a few meters away.
Speaker 1: I could hear them giving the news reports, saying there
Speaker 1: was one Gustavo Castro and he's wounded because there was
Speaker 1: a lot of blood in my room. But I wasn't there.
Speaker 1: I just I couldn't be okay. They must have found
Speaker 1: his suitcase in the spare room. His name was printed
Speaker 1: on the luggage tack back into Gooseagalpa. Karen Spring was
Speaker 1: racing to get to the crime scene. I put out
Speaker 1: a communicate that Berta had been killed, and I got
Speaker 1: in my car at I think like three o'clock in
Speaker 1: the morning, and I drove to Lesperanza. And when I
Speaker 1: got there, her body had been taken from the crime scene,
Speaker 1: and it was in the back of a pickup truck
Speaker 1: outside of the public Prosecutor's office in Lesperansa. It was
Speaker 1: about eight o'clock in the morning. Now crowds were gathering
Speaker 1: around that truck, people trying to get a glimpse of
Speaker 1: Berta's body. Berta was probably less Speranza's most well known citizen.
Speaker 1: People were mourning. They carried pictures of her. They spray
Speaker 1: painted her name on walls and sidewalks, and their sadness
Speaker 1: was edged with anger. It had been more than seven
Speaker 1: hours since the murder, and her body was right there
Speaker 1: in the back of a truck in the middle of
Speaker 1: a public square, covered only with a dingy gray blanket.
Speaker 1: To Karen, this was an insult heaped on top of
Speaker 1: a tragedy. She started looking for Gustavo. Someone said he'd
Speaker 1: been taken to a local priest's house where the police
Speaker 1: were guarding him, and I insisted with the police that
Speaker 1: they let me in to see him. They wouldn't let
Speaker 1: me right away, and then they finally allowed me in,
Speaker 1: and Gustavo was in a room. He was bleeding from
Speaker 1: his ear, and he was sitting with Berta's oldest daughter,
Speaker 1: telling her what had happened. Gustavo's nerves were shot as
Speaker 1: he told the story to bears his family, Karen recorded
Speaker 1: everything on her cell phone. He said he didn't know
Speaker 1: where to begin, but he went on to give them
Speaker 1: a detailed account of the evening, where he and Berta
Speaker 1: had gone out to eat, how they returned to the house,
Speaker 1: sat on the porch, went to their rooms. As he spoke,
Speaker 1: he kept his voice low, sometimes dipping into a whisper.
Speaker 1: He didn't trust the government types hovering around him, the
Speaker 1: ones who had been questioning him for hours. People kept
Speaker 1: coming in and out of the room, interrupting. After about
Speaker 1: twenty minutes, Gustavo got into the details of the murder itself,
Speaker 1: how he had heard a very loud bang which he
Speaker 1: thought might have come from the kitchen, and how seconds
Speaker 1: later he heard three gunshots you. He then talked about
Speaker 1: how Berta called his name after the gunman left, how
Speaker 1: he found her on the floor, how he pleaded with
Speaker 1: her note bias, don't go and okay, that they called
Speaker 1: me go stay with me, and how she told him
Speaker 1: to call Salvador, her ex husband. Can shows you how
Speaker 1: you say that. Finally, he described how he struggled to
Speaker 1: use her phone and find her contact list, and then
Speaker 1: how he realized she was gone joy see that she
Speaker 1: wanted to see. In the middle of all of this,
Speaker 1: the police were still pressing Gustavo for more information, and
Speaker 1: so in that the couple of hours that I was
Speaker 1: with him, a person that was sent from the Public
Speaker 1: Prosecutor's office who was like going to sketch the face
Speaker 1: of the person that he could remember had shot him,
Speaker 1: showed up. Gustavo would describe the gunmen, and the police
Speaker 1: sketch artist would turn his words into an image said, Okay,
Speaker 1: I don't know anything about these sort of things, but
Speaker 1: I agreed to collapse, right, And so a person comes
Speaker 1: in and everything was pre arranged, very well planned, and
Speaker 1: the person the expert comes in who's going to do
Speaker 1: the drawing, and they're trying to convince me that he's
Speaker 1: really good, that he's an expert in these sort of things,
Speaker 1: you know, So they're trying to convince me that what
Speaker 1: he's going to draw was going to be good with
Speaker 1: Gustavo started describing the guy, the young face, the short
Speaker 1: dark hair that you know, the eyes, the lips. He
Speaker 1: registered all of it, and he started to make the drawing,
Speaker 1: and I told him, no, this isn't the person I saw.
Speaker 1: So he erases a little bit and then he re
Speaker 1: draws it more or less the same. That's why I say, no, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: that wasn't his hair, so he erased it, and then
Speaker 1: he went back to drawing essentially the same things. Gustavo
Speaker 1: hadn't slept in two days, as someone finally bandaged his
Speaker 1: ear in hand, but they still hurt. He hadn't eaten.
Speaker 1: Hippo reality want to look at Getter, I mean, so
Speaker 1: I was like, draw whatever you want, and so they
Speaker 1: asked me, okay, well, what's the percentage of similarity between
Speaker 1: this drawing and the person you saw? Eighty? I don't
Speaker 1: know whatever, just put eighty. I don't remember what I said,
Speaker 1: but obviously I approved it. I did not realize the
Speaker 1: importance of that piece of evidence, you know, quill prop.
Speaker 1: The police knew something that Gustavo didn't. A couple of
Speaker 1: hours before he sat down to do the sketch. They'd
Speaker 1: arrested someone in connection with the murder, but they withheld
Speaker 1: this news from Gustavo. The man they'd detained was Berta's
Speaker 1: ex boyfriend. His name was Aureliano Molina, but friends called
Speaker 1: him by his nickname Lito. Gustavo had never met Lito,
Speaker 1: but Lito had been one of the people he'd spoken
Speaker 1: to on the phone after the murder when he was
Speaker 1: calling everyone in Berta's contacts. When Gustavo eventually saw a
Speaker 1: picture of Lito, it was a mug shot, and that
Speaker 1: photo shocked him. That's because the police sketch he'd done,
Speaker 1: the one that didn't really look like the gunman he'd seen,
Speaker 1: well it looked a lot like Lito, So it was
Speaker 1: all a set up on during authorities have always denied
Speaker 1: any wrongdoing in the investigation, and police at the time
Speaker 1: said that they were following several leads, but that's not
Speaker 1: the way Gustavo saw it. To him, it seemed the
Speaker 1: investigators were convinced the killer was someone close to Berta.
Speaker 1: Like her ex boyfriend. Lito had been one of the
Speaker 1: first people that Karen Spring had called after she spoke
Speaker 1: with Gustavo. She had reached him at his house in
Speaker 1: a town called San Francisco, Limpira, that's a three hour
Speaker 1: drive from Berta's house in La Speranza. I called our
Speaker 1: Liana Molina, you know, forty five minutes into my whole
Speaker 1: slew of phone calls that I made in response to
Speaker 1: the phone call I were received from Mexico, and I
Speaker 1: called our Liona Molina and I the first thing I
Speaker 1: asked him was where are you? And he said, I'm
Speaker 1: in San Francisco. What happened? And Isa Berta was murdered?
Speaker 1: And so I had I knew that he wasn't even
Speaker 1: in La Speranza that night, so I knew too that
Speaker 1: he wasn't involved at all in the murder. Lito had
Speaker 1: called Gustavo at about two a on the night of
Speaker 1: the murder. He told Gustavo that he'd heard what happened
Speaker 1: from Karen. He said he'd drive to La Speranza to
Speaker 1: try to help him. Shortly after Lito arrived at about
Speaker 1: five in the morning, police arrested him. Lito's relationship with
Speaker 1: Berta had ended just a few months before. Some members
Speaker 1: of Berta's inner circle, including her mother and her oldest daughter,
Speaker 1: didn't get along with him, But it wasn't anyone from
Speaker 1: Berta's family that pointed the finger at Lito. To them,
Speaker 1: the idea of him murdering Berta was absurd, But someone
Speaker 1: did place Lito at the scene of the crime. It
Speaker 1: was the old guard at the entrance to the subdivision.
Speaker 1: He said he saw Lito flee the area before police
Speaker 1: first got there. The old man that guarded the entrance
Speaker 1: declared that Tomas, instead of driving me of the subdivision
Speaker 1: that morning, had actually taken Leto out, so his testimony
Speaker 1: didn't match those given by Tomas and me, but it
Speaker 1: was absurd, Gustavo says. The old man's description of Leto
Speaker 1: included physical details that would be impossible to catch from
Speaker 1: a quick glimpse through tinted windows in the dark, So
Speaker 1: there were lots of ways in which it became evident
Speaker 1: that this old man had been threatened or tortured or something.
Speaker 1: But his testimony was false, so that it's squared with
Speaker 1: the version that said lethal was guilty of this murder.
Speaker 1: Protests erupted in the Honduran capital after Barth's murder. Students
Speaker 1: demanding justice hurled rocks at riot police. Those police shot
Speaker 1: tear gas and rubber bullets back at them. Berta's murder
Speaker 1: instantly became international news, partly because of the attention she
Speaker 1: just received from the Goldman Prize. Senators were on the
Speaker 1: floor of the U S Capital urging Honduras to conduct
Speaker 1: a full, sincere investigation. Celebrities jumped in. Leonardo DiCaprio tweeted
Speaker 1: about Berta. Susan Sarandon posted a video I'm calling on
Speaker 1: the Honduran government to conduct a thorough and transparent investigation
Speaker 1: into the tragic murder Alberta Cassarez, and I demand that
Speaker 1: the perpetrators beheld accountable. Environmentalists all over the world were
Speaker 1: now talking about Ahwa Zarca, the name of the hydro
Speaker 1: electric dam that Berta had been fighting. They talked about
Speaker 1: the violence that had surrounded the project, about the threats
Speaker 1: Berta had received, about the security protections she was supposed
Speaker 1: to have received. The day after the murder, the Minister
Speaker 1: of Security held a press conference. He said the government
Speaker 1: was willing to protect her whenever she asked for it.
Speaker 1: The minister suggested that the night she was killed, Berta
Speaker 1: had not reached out to them. But we're not here
Speaker 1: to say whether the security failed, but the assassination occurred.
Speaker 1: The police were responsible for protecting her. Patrols were sent
Speaker 1: to her home to protect her at her request. We
Speaker 1: always tried to comply with her demands and protect her.
Speaker 1: Unfortunately this happened, and we're working to investigate it. Bear
Speaker 1: to his family interpreted statements like that as scapegoating, as
Speaker 1: if it were Bart's fault, as if she'd failed to
Speaker 1: specifically ask for protection. The night of her murder, Vert's
Speaker 1: oldest daughter, Olivia, spoke at a candlelight vigil for her mother.
Speaker 1: It was a political crime. She had been threatened, She
Speaker 1: had declared many times, I'm being followed by hitman. It's
Speaker 1: a farce when they claimed she was murdered because she
Speaker 1: renounced the protective measures granted her. She never renounced those
Speaker 1: protective measures. The only people who seemed uninterested in the
Speaker 1: threats she had received were the investigators. As far as
Speaker 1: the family could tell, it seemed that the police considered
Speaker 1: this an open and shut case. It was a crime
Speaker 1: of passion, a spat between Berta and an ex boyfriend.
Speaker 1: Any evidence that gotten the way of that theory was ignored.
Speaker 1: The day after the murder, a reporter cornered the security
Speaker 1: minister and asked about the other victim. The activist said
Speaker 1: to have been in the house with Berta without my own. Yes,
Speaker 1: we do have knowledge of this person, but we don't
Speaker 1: want to divulge more details from that because this is
Speaker 1: an important person, one who cause us to step back
Speaker 1: and take a pause in the investigation. I don't think.
Speaker 1: After his encounter with his sketch artist, Gustavo became convinced
Speaker 1: that the evidence wasn't guiding the investigators. Instead, he believed
Speaker 1: the investigators must have been guiding the evidence because it
Speaker 1: was a planned killing. They wanted a clean murder, one
Speaker 1: shall we say, where she was alone, a clean job,
Speaker 1: without any witnesses, and the story was going to be
Speaker 1: that it had been an assault. Nobody would be able
Speaker 1: to contradict that the problem would have ended there. But
Speaker 1: the second scenario is there was a witness who survived,
Speaker 1: who saw one of the gunmen. I saw him from
Speaker 1: just a few meters away, so their Plan B was
Speaker 1: going to be blame someone from Coping and so Gustavo
Speaker 1: is sitting there alongside the police, and the puzzle pieces
Speaker 1: of an elaborate conspiracy seemed to be falling into place,
Speaker 1: then breaking apart, then recombining into new shapes. Plan A
Speaker 1: was to kill Baranta without any clues whatsoever, but they
Speaker 1: hadn't counted on a witness. Plan B then was to
Speaker 1: blame someone who worked with Barrita and Copeine, like Lito
Speaker 1: the ex boyfriend, to frame it as a classic crime
Speaker 1: of passion. The problem was, the longer the police held Lito,
Speaker 1: the more people vouch for him. His alibi was sound.
Speaker 1: He hadn't been anywhere near Berta's house at the time
Speaker 1: of the murder. In the end, they had to let
Speaker 1: him go, and so the third scenario was, Okay, now
Speaker 1: we can't do that. So Plans C is blame Gustavo.
Speaker 1: For three days, he answered their questions. He led investigators
Speaker 1: through Barton's house, recreating the events as he remembered them.
Speaker 1: Step by step. He sorted through countless police mug shots.
Speaker 1: Diplomats from the Mexican embassy and Honduras arrived to try
Speaker 1: to help. At the end of the third day, he'd
Speaker 1: given police all he could. Now it was time to
Speaker 1: go home. His embassy helped him reserve a ticket back
Speaker 1: for early the next morning. The met To can ambassador
Speaker 1: send a message that night to the lead Honduran investigator
Speaker 1: with all the travel details. He never responded to that message.
Speaker 1: So when we were ready for the flight, we left
Speaker 1: for the airport, thinking, okay, they're not interested in us anymore.
Speaker 1: You know, it wasn't a big deal. When we got
Speaker 1: to the airport with the security people from the embassy
Speaker 1: and the ambassador and well also the consul. At the
Speaker 1: time of departure, five in the morning, all the investigators
Speaker 1: and the police were hiding in the airport. They came
Speaker 1: out and they blocked the gate and they told me
Speaker 1: you cannot leave, no brave. He felt like he was
Speaker 1: trapped in a horror movie. But the script kept changing. First,
Speaker 1: he was cast as the lone witness, a victim, one
Speaker 1: who had been shot and whose blood was all over
Speaker 1: the crime scene. Now, in a twist, Gustavo couldn't quite
Speaker 1: believe he somehow had become the prime suspect. Coming up
Speaker 1: on Blood River, we'll venture into a community that was
Speaker 1: torn apart by the battle over the dam, where neighbors
Speaker 1: bought neighbors. They told me, okay, woman, what we're going
Speaker 1: to do is kill you. And when they told me
Speaker 1: they were going to kill me, that's when I felt
Speaker 1: the first blow. The first strike of the machete hit
Speaker 1: me in the head, and after that another machete hit
Speaker 1: me here in the chest. That violence, years later, would
Speaker 1: lead investigators to new clues into new suspects in Barts
Speaker 1: his murder. That's next time on Blood River. Blood River
Speaker 1: is written and reported by me Monte Reel Top Foreheads
Speaker 1: is our senior producer. May A Quava is our associate producer.
Speaker 1: Our theme was composed and performed by Senia Rubinos. Special
Speaker 1: thanks to Eduardo Thompson and Helen Navas and Carlos Rodriquez.
Speaker 1: Francesca Levi is the head of Bloomberg Podcasts. Be sure
Speaker 1: to subscribe if you haven't already, and if you like
Speaker 1: what you hear, please leave us a review. It helps
Speaker 1: others find out about the show. Thanks for listening.