Speaker 1: Hi podcast listeners. A previous version of this episode misidentified
Speaker 1: the voices of David Castillo and Hacobo Atala when describing
Speaker 1: a recorded telephone exchange between them. That mistake has been corrected.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening. Yes, this is a cell phone call
Speaker 1: that was intercepted on May two. There are two men
Speaker 1: on this call. One is Hacobo Tala. He's a member
Speaker 1: of the Itala Zablas, a well known business family in Honduras.
Speaker 1: The other person on the line is David Castillo. You'll
Speaker 1: recall that David is the CEO of Dessa. Dessa is
Speaker 1: the hydro electric company that was planning to build a
Speaker 1: damn in western Honduras, but then it ran into protests
Speaker 1: from environmental activist Berta Cassarras. At the time of this
Speaker 1: call between David and Jacobo, it has been two months
Speaker 1: since Berta was assassinated in her home Acum On this morning,
Speaker 1: David tells Jacobo he has Unamala Noticia, some bad news.
Speaker 1: Police have raided the offices of Dessa, and that can
Speaker 1: only mean one thing that investigators suspect Dessa had something
Speaker 1: to do with Berta's murder. The police also have arrested
Speaker 1: one of the company's employees, a manager who had worked
Speaker 1: on the Damn project. The two men seemed stunned and
Speaker 1: it can't be, Jacobo SAIDs impossible. This call marks the
Speaker 1: moment when David Castillo's life changes dramatically, when he and
Speaker 1: his colleagues realize that their company is at the center
Speaker 1: of the murder investigation. It marks the start of a
Speaker 1: journey that ends with David in a courtroom facing charges
Speaker 1: that he planned Berta's murder non nos m h. In
Speaker 1: the five plus years since Berta's death, lots of people
Speaker 1: in Honduras and around the world have urged the country
Speaker 1: to bring her killers to justice. Seven people have already
Speaker 1: been sentenced for their roles in the killing. These included
Speaker 1: the hitman who pulled the trigger to Kilberta, as well
Speaker 1: as a few middlemen who helped plan the logistics. But
Speaker 1: to the Cassar's family and their supporters, that wasn't enough.
Speaker 1: Punishing low level triggerment is one thing. Going after the
Speaker 1: powerful accused of paying them to kill is another, and
Speaker 1: that kind of accountability is extremely rare in Honduras. This trial,
Speaker 1: in the eyes of many in the international human rights community,
Speaker 1: is a test of the country itself. When you last
Speaker 1: heard from us, David was preparing for his day in court.
Speaker 1: Now that moment has come, David says he's innocent, that
Speaker 1: he and Berta were friends. The prosecution says they'll prove
Speaker 1: he was a manipulative killer. Over the next two episodes,
Speaker 1: we'll walk you through key moments in the trial of
Speaker 1: David Castillo, from the opening statements all the way to
Speaker 1: the final verdict. I'm monte Reel and this is blood River.
Speaker 1: It has taken a long time for David's case to
Speaker 1: make it to court. Exactly two years after Barton's murder
Speaker 1: in David was detained as a suspect. He was kept
Speaker 1: in a prison to await trial, but then the case
Speaker 1: got stuck. Nothing happened, and under Honduran law, if a
Speaker 1: suspect is held for two and a half years with
Speaker 1: no trial, the suspect goes free. In August of the
Speaker 1: Honduran courts ruled that David would at last face his accusers.
Speaker 1: Arts eighty eight year old mother broke down in tears
Speaker 1: at the news as he that would change. Consumedly, she
Speaker 1: said it was a tireless fight against the most powerful
Speaker 1: economic forces in Honduras. To her, it felt like the
Speaker 1: last five years, all the demonstrations and the protests demanding
Speaker 1: justice for her daughter, we're paying off. At that time,
Speaker 1: the trial seemed imminent. The prosecutors believed it would be
Speaker 1: scheduled in a few weeks. That's where our previous episode
Speaker 1: left off. But right after that, David's defense team begins
Speaker 1: filing numerous appeals. Each one gets kicked to a higher
Speaker 1: court to be resolved. That takes months. Summer turns to fault.
Speaker 1: At the same time, the pandemic is wreaking havoc in Honduras.
Speaker 1: Judges and other court officials are getting sick. The court
Speaker 1: system is jammed with cases. Fault turns to winter. In
Speaker 1: January of this year, a long deferred evidence hearing is
Speaker 1: called to order. The hearing commences, David's lawyers register a
Speaker 1: new appeal. The appeal has to go to a higher court,
Speaker 1: and the higher court shoots it down. This happens week
Speaker 1: after week. The hearing is called to order and then
Speaker 1: suspended no fewer than eleven times in the first months
Speaker 1: of David's lawyers say this is just due diligence. They
Speaker 1: say the appeals are against a legal system that's stacked
Speaker 1: against him. The trial has been assigned to the same
Speaker 1: branch of the federal courts that already had convicted one
Speaker 1: of David's employees for his role in the murder. The
Speaker 1: defense believes the case should be moved to another branch.
Speaker 1: Their appeals are dismissed one after another. David himself has
Speaker 1: always insisted he wants this case to go to trial.
Speaker 1: He says he had nothing to do with this murder,
Speaker 1: and he wants to clear his name and regain control
Speaker 1: of his life. This has been terrible, horrible if I've
Speaker 1: lost everything, everything. Nine months after it was decided David's
Speaker 1: case would be tried, the judges scheduled the actual date.
Speaker 1: They reserve a courtroom for April six. That's the sound
Speaker 1: of a microphone test inside a federal courtroom in Tegucigalpa,
Speaker 1: the capital of Honduras. Three judges take their places at
Speaker 1: the bat h They look out upon a small room.
Speaker 1: Teams of prosecutors lying one side of the chamber. The
Speaker 1: defense attorneys face them from the opposite side. In the
Speaker 1: middle of the floor. Between them is the wood paneled
Speaker 1: witness box. A rotating cast will take turns inside that
Speaker 1: box they'll include police investigators, colleagues of Berta and colleagues
Speaker 1: of David. Technical analysts will summarize tens of thousands of
Speaker 1: pages of telephone records for the judges. The courtroom has
Speaker 1: been reserved for three weeks, enough time the judges think
Speaker 1: to work through all the evidence and hear all the arguments.
Speaker 1: But just like everything else in this case, the trial
Speaker 1: does not finish on schedule. It doesn't end in late
Speaker 1: April or May or June. That's because there's a lot
Speaker 1: of new evidence. Well here secretly recorded phone calls and
Speaker 1: read previously unreleased text messages. We'll have a clearer view
Speaker 1: than we've ever had of the events that led up
Speaker 1: to the murder. It'll all be laid out before the judges,
Speaker 1: and after five years, a case that has been watched
Speaker 1: and argued about all over the world will finally be closed.
Speaker 1: Before we sort out that evidence, I need to explain
Speaker 1: how a trial like this works in Honduras. It's a
Speaker 1: little different than the kind you might be familiar with.
Speaker 1: First of all, it's not a jury trial. The three
Speaker 1: judge panel, here's the evidence, and they're the ones to
Speaker 1: decide if David is guilty or not. David is represented
Speaker 1: by his defense attorneys and the case against him is
Speaker 1: argued by prosecutors. But there are multiple teams of prosecutors.
Speaker 1: First you have the state. These are the federal prosecutors
Speaker 1: from the Honduran Public Ministry, roughly equivalent to the Justice
Speaker 1: Department in the United States. But next to them, at
Speaker 1: separate tables set the private prosecutors. These attorneys represent not
Speaker 1: the state but the surviving victims of the crime, Berta's
Speaker 1: family members. In other words, they'll argue their own cases
Speaker 1: independent of the federal prosecutors. They'll call their own witnesses
Speaker 1: to the stand and present their own evidence. They'll take
Speaker 1: part in questioning and cross examination of all the witnesses,
Speaker 1: separate from the public prosecutors. At first blush, this might
Speaker 1: sound a little like the system in the United States,
Speaker 1: where the state directs a criminal trial and the families
Speaker 1: of victims can bring separate civil suits to court. But
Speaker 1: that's not what this is. The judges in this case
Speaker 1: won't issue two verdicts, one for the public prosecutors and
Speaker 1: another for the private team. They'll only be one verdict.
Speaker 1: It's just that the state and the private prosecutors will
Speaker 1: have a voice in the courtroom. Joseph Barra is a
Speaker 1: law professor at u c l A, specializing in human
Speaker 1: rights law. He's part of an international observer mission monitoring
Speaker 1: the trial. He says that the private prosecutors might be
Speaker 1: thought of as a sort of legal insurance policy against corruption.
Speaker 1: Imagine a case where a public prosecutor might be paid
Speaker 1: off or influenced by a wealthy, well connected defendant. A
Speaker 1: team of private prosecutors might help counter the possibility of
Speaker 1: a fixed trial. Ideally, their interests should in some ways
Speaker 1: merge with the public interests in getting to the root
Speaker 1: of the crime, finding the truth, and achieving justice. And
Speaker 1: they have a specific kind of moral high ground in
Speaker 1: wanting to achieve that justice because they are the ones
Speaker 1: who have been victimized by the crime. Trials like this
Speaker 1: are required to be open to the public according to
Speaker 1: Honduran law, but the law didn't foresee the outbreak of
Speaker 1: a global pandemic. The judges ruled that only the separate
Speaker 1: teams of attorneys, as well as one member from Barton's
Speaker 1: family and one from David's could watch from inside the
Speaker 1: courtroom to satisfy the requirement that the trial be public.
Speaker 1: The judges made it available via live stream. The audio
Speaker 1: isn't the best quality. At times it sounds completely distorted.
Speaker 1: The camera doesn't show the judges. More often than not
Speaker 1: it's pointed at the backs of the public prosecutors, so
Speaker 1: it's not that great at capturing whatever visual drama might unfold.
Speaker 1: But when you call up the video, there's a column
Speaker 1: where observers can type in comments in real time, and
Speaker 1: instantly David's family members and sympathizers start to get into
Speaker 1: sparring matches with Barreta's side. As the trial gets underway,
Speaker 1: someone using an account linked to Copeene Bart's organization types
Speaker 1: of comment, may justice be done and may David pay
Speaker 1: for his crime. The name of David's mother, do Norah
Speaker 1: appears on screen. You might remember her from previous episodes.
Speaker 1: She's always been her son's most unwavering defender. Everything will
Speaker 1: come out, Everything will come out some day. I am
Speaker 1: more than true. My faith is like an breakable and
Speaker 1: I know that somehow, somewhere someone will be able two
Speaker 1: to tell the truth about all this and how everything
Speaker 1: has been manipulated. Donorra types her response in the margin.
Speaker 1: She says, God will never allow David to be punished
Speaker 1: for this crime because he's innocent. Someone snaps back and
Speaker 1: tells her to leave God out of it. That triggers
Speaker 1: backlash from other backers of David. One says Berta was
Speaker 1: a fraud, someone who stoked conflict for personal gain. The
Speaker 1: running commentary never stops. It appears as a constant scroll,
Speaker 1: unrolling throughout the trial, and it will only get nastier.
Speaker 1: It's apri two days after the trial was supposed to
Speaker 1: have ended, but new appeals and complaints by the defense
Speaker 1: have had to be sorted out and dismissed in turn. Finally,
Speaker 1: it's time for the opening statements. The public prosecutors go first,
Speaker 1: and I'm not just woman. They explain that they're going
Speaker 1: to present hard evidence that will leave no doubt of
Speaker 1: David's involvement in this killing. He was in communication with
Speaker 1: some of the people who have already been convicted for
Speaker 1: taking part in the murder. Their most important witnesses will
Speaker 1: be the government telephonic investigators who extracted those communications and
Speaker 1: who have mapped out the connections that they say put
Speaker 1: David at the center of the crime. Next, the private
Speaker 1: attorneys representing Berta's family have a turn. They'll argue that
Speaker 1: David's company, DESA was essentially a criminal organization. They say
Speaker 1: it used political and economic connections to harass and terrorize Berta. Finally,
Speaker 1: it's the defenses turn. They reject everything the prosecutors have
Speaker 1: implied in their statements. They argue that the Honduran investigators,
Speaker 1: the same ones that the prosecutors consider their star witnesses,
Speaker 1: are the ones who need to be brought to justice.
Speaker 1: The defense says these investigators felt pressure from the victims
Speaker 1: family and from the international community to appear as if
Speaker 1: they were solving this crime. Serious irregularities. David's attorneys say
Speaker 1: the state's telephone experts manipulated the evidence to implicate David,
Speaker 1: and in doing so, the investigators ignored other clues, clues
Speaker 1: that might have led them to the real murderers. The
Speaker 1: defense strategy is clear from day one. David, they argue,
Speaker 1: is the victim of a state sponsored conspiracy. The next day,
Speaker 1: the first witnesses for the prosecution are called. A police
Speaker 1: investigator places his right hand on the Honduran constitution and
Speaker 1: swears to tell the truth, only the truth. After him
Speaker 1: comes a medical examiner and a ballistics expert. Together they
Speaker 1: established the facts of the case that aren't in dispute.
Speaker 1: On March two, three men broken too Berta's house at
Speaker 1: about even pm. They shot her dead, and they also
Speaker 1: shot Gustavo Castro, a Mexican environmentalist who was staying with
Speaker 1: Berta in a guest bedroom. He survived. In the weeks
Speaker 1: following the murder, investigators examined data from nearby cell phone towers.
Speaker 1: They identified a few cell phones that didn't belong to
Speaker 1: local residents, but we're active in Bartas Subdivision near the
Speaker 1: time of the murder. Those suspicious phones had been in
Speaker 1: contact with individuals connected directly or indirectly to David's company Dessa.
Speaker 1: Two months after the murder, police arrested the alleged hitmen.
Speaker 1: That was the same day they also arrested to DESSA
Speaker 1: employees with connections to David. The same day that hecobo
Speaker 1: Atala called David with the news. One of the men
Speaker 1: arrested that day was the former head of security for
Speaker 1: the Damn Project that bear to opposed. He was an
Speaker 1: ex military officer named Douglas Bustillo. You'll hear Bustillo's name again.
Speaker 1: That's because the text messages and call logs that were
Speaker 1: extracted from his cell phone are vital keys to the
Speaker 1: prosecution's case against David. There are thousands of pages of
Speaker 1: these communications. During the trial, experts spend days on the
Speaker 1: stand reading aloud individual messages. He has the name of
Speaker 1: Plan Decontinencia Passiva. That message, for example, is from a
Speaker 1: WhatsApp chat group that included David. A Death employee at
Speaker 1: the time, says he has been in contact with people
Speaker 1: he refers to as quote informants. The state prosecutors explained
Speaker 1: Thedessa for three years had cultivated paid informants to monitor
Speaker 1: bar To his movements. This included some people who claimed
Speaker 1: to be part of Bart's organization. In one message, sent
Speaker 1: less than a month before the murder, Adessa manager writes
Speaker 1: to David and the others saying, quote, she said again
Speaker 1: that some of their people tell us everything. But she
Speaker 1: didn't refer to any particular person. She said, David Castillo
Speaker 1: knows everything when she goes there. The prosecutors want to
Speaker 1: underscore this idea. David Castillo knows everything. Remember his background.
Speaker 1: He's a graduate of West Point who returned to Honduras
Speaker 1: to serve as a military intelligence officer. Bar to his
Speaker 1: friends and family believe that history is deeply significant. They
Speaker 1: say he's the kind of person you can never take
Speaker 1: at face value, a spy, someone who tries to get
Speaker 1: close to people only to get information that he can
Speaker 1: use to his advantage. And they say he leveraged his
Speaker 1: military and political contacts against Berta. The prosecutors sift through
Speaker 1: some of the text messages to illustrate this. They point
Speaker 1: to one exchange between David and Danielle Atala. Danielle is
Speaker 1: the CFO of Deessa and he's also a member of
Speaker 1: the Tala Zabla family, the company's principal investors. David writes, Danny,
Speaker 1: I need the cash for the afternoon meetings. Witnesses for
Speaker 1: the prosecution suggests those meetings may have involved politicians. At
Speaker 1: the time, the president of Honduras was named Pepe Lobo.
Speaker 1: David writes, the air just as Peppe to resolve death's
Speaker 1: problem caused by Copeene. They just saw him in the
Speaker 1: Council of Ministers. We have a mayor, daniel Atala responds,
Speaker 1: the one from Intibuka went yes. David writes, The prosecutors
Speaker 1: have no proof that any payments were actually made, no
Speaker 1: bank statements or canceled checks or corroborating testimony, and they
Speaker 1: present no evidence that those politicians actually did them many favors.
Speaker 1: About ten days after that exchange, David sends a message
Speaker 1: asking for cash to take to Antibuka in court. The
Speaker 1: expert reads Daniel's response. Remember he says there's only sixty
Speaker 1: because the rest is for the minister. Prosecutors also offer
Speaker 1: other messages that they say suggests Deessa was paying off
Speaker 1: lawyers and witnesses to protect itself from legal troubles. In
Speaker 1: one exchange between David and the other officials, they discuss
Speaker 1: an incident that threatened to land someone connected to the
Speaker 1: company in hot water. One of them rights, the woman
Speaker 1: making the accusation and the supposed witnesses are from via
Speaker 1: da Anhelis and we need to work them in a
Speaker 1: subtle way. This has to be done through third parties
Speaker 1: to avoid them saying that there's coercion, threats, extortion, bribes
Speaker 1: invalidating the witnesses or the evidence. The message continues, and
Speaker 1: take care of the bosses, take care of ourselves and
Speaker 1: of course protect our company. David has maintained that Deessa
Speaker 1: sometimes appealed to police and other officials for help, and
Speaker 1: that they had every right to do so because Barton
Speaker 1: and Copeine were waging a violent and completely illegal campaign
Speaker 1: against it. Last year, from his jail cell, David told
Speaker 1: me that of course he contacted the police and other
Speaker 1: officials asking for their support. People from Bart's organization had
Speaker 1: vandalized his work site, he said, destroying equipment and setting
Speaker 1: buildings on fire. They had to be stopped. That's what
Speaker 1: we think is normal. But we are criticized saying that
Speaker 1: we manipulated or that we uh influenced the police. You
Speaker 1: see one people going into your site or to your house,
Speaker 1: aren't with much chittis and with um molotop bombs, with
Speaker 1: fire and gasoline, and you get scared. And what you
Speaker 1: do is you call the police and you let them
Speaker 1: know these people are invading my property. Please come here,
Speaker 1: do something, get them out. But these messages being read
Speaker 1: in court now we're new and some reference that vandalism
Speaker 1: against deaths a by members of Copeine. They don't reflect
Speaker 1: even a hint of the same serious concerns that David
Speaker 1: expressed to me after the fact. Less than two weeks
Speaker 1: before the murder, David and other DESSA officials were Corresponding
Speaker 1: via group chat, one employee mentioned that the protesters aligned
Speaker 1: with Berta damage some Dessa property near the damn site.
Speaker 1: He suggested that the company highlight the damage and publicize
Speaker 1: pictures of it. David writes to the group, we have
Speaker 1: to take advantage of the evidence. Someone else chimes in.
Speaker 1: The damages are insignificant, but the information that we possess
Speaker 1: is convincing in order to crush them. A few minutes later,
Speaker 1: David writes, with a lot of strategy, this information has
Speaker 1: to explode. I spoke with David numerous times over the
Speaker 1: course of several months. The very first time I met
Speaker 1: him in January, he was in a prison cell outside
Speaker 1: of to Gooseagalpa. That day he was ready for my visit.
Speaker 1: He pulled out a notebook he'd written in very small
Speaker 1: and neat handwriting, a detailed outline with bullet pointed subheadings.
Speaker 1: These were notes of all the ideas he wanted to
Speaker 1: make sure to get across. For the first hour and
Speaker 1: a half or so, I'd ask a question and he'd
Speaker 1: respond at length, consulting the outline and making his way
Speaker 1: through his notes. One of the headings in that outline
Speaker 1: concerned his relationship with Berta. He wanted to emphasize that
Speaker 1: he and Berta had genuine affection for each other. The
Speaker 1: public might assume an executive trying to build a dam
Speaker 1: and an environmentalist fighting against it wouldn't get along. There
Speaker 1: seems a perfectly natural antagonism there. But right from the
Speaker 1: start he wanted to chip away at that assumption. You
Speaker 1: have to separate the idea that David Castillo as a
Speaker 1: person is design the project and that Berta Casares is coping.
Speaker 1: David and Verta were really good friends, but the state
Speaker 1: tries to undermine this notion of friendship before the defense
Speaker 1: even gets a chance to make it. The state calls
Speaker 1: a woman named Roussalina Dominguez to the stand. She lives
Speaker 1: near the damn site by the Guacake River. Russellina was
Speaker 1: one of Berta's most loyal allies in that community. Yeah okay.
Speaker 1: Russellina explains that Berta told her about threat she'd been
Speaker 1: receiving in the months before her murder, text messages that
Speaker 1: she believed were related to her opposition to the damn being.
Speaker 1: Rosalina is quoting Bertech in a conversation she'd had with
Speaker 1: her shortly before her death quote, if something happens to
Speaker 1: me along the way Berta had told her, it's David
Speaker 1: Castillo's fault. David's direct correspondence with Berta did seem friendly.
Speaker 1: He tells her in messages that he values her friendship
Speaker 1: and her responses are often equally polite. But the prosecution
Speaker 1: reads other messages, but David privately exchanged among colleagues in
Speaker 1: a group chat, these strike a different tone. In one
Speaker 1: written less than two weeks before her murder, David writes,
Speaker 1: it's an opportune moment to expose Berta and Copeine. She's
Speaker 1: said that our communication activities are the biggest cause of
Speaker 1: headaches for them. Someone responds, it's so great, We're a
Speaker 1: pain in the butt of that woman. Paha. Someone else adds,
Speaker 1: in my opinion, we should publish photos of the car
Speaker 1: that she drives around in, photos of her house, and
Speaker 1: details about all sorts of luxuries she has, including that
Speaker 1: she has kids who are studying in Argentina. In summary,
Speaker 1: that she's getting rich at the cost of others. Some
Speaker 1: of the message strings that the experts read in court
Speaker 1: textas exchange directly between David and Berta don't seem that
Speaker 1: note were the at first. One is an exchange between
Speaker 1: the two of them where they're making arrangements to meet.
Speaker 1: Berta is visiting to Gooseagalpa, where David lives. That's a
Speaker 1: state expert witness reading messages between Berta and David. The
Speaker 1: expert is taking care to match each message to the
Speaker 1: exact geographic location of their telephones. She's establishing exactly where
Speaker 1: David and bart were at the time of the exchanges.
Speaker 1: The expert, an electronic forensics analyst named Brenda Barjona, makes
Speaker 1: an interesting observation observation when David Castillo wanted information about
Speaker 1: protest activities and Beta cass his movements, he treated her
Speaker 1: cordially and referred to her as my esteemed he would
Speaker 1: also show interest and available to meet with her. Barjona
Speaker 1: reads some more exchanges to the court. In these, David
Speaker 1: tells Aberta that he won't be able to meet her
Speaker 1: because he's traveling, but Barjona explains to the judges that
Speaker 1: cell phone tower data indicates that he wasn't telling her
Speaker 1: the truth. He was in fact in town. This leads
Speaker 1: the expert to offer some new insights observations. When Berta
Speaker 1: is proposed meeting with David Castillo, and the meetings were
Speaker 1: not planned by him or were not in his interest.
Speaker 1: It is observed that David was unable to take part
Speaker 1: in such meetings, claiming to be outside of the Galpa
Speaker 1: and in other occasions. Ill Barjona says these messages cast
Speaker 1: the friendship between David and Berta in a different light.
Speaker 1: It could be concluded that his friendship with her is
Speaker 1: not sincere and that he simply uses it as a
Speaker 1: means to monitor and in a way to control Brenda.
Speaker 1: Barjona spends several days in the witness box. She walks
Speaker 1: the judges through a four hundred page analysis of the
Speaker 1: telephone records. She says it exposes a plot to kill Barton.
Speaker 1: We've already discussed some of her findings in previous episodes,
Speaker 1: but during the trial she reveals new details. Hello, that's
Speaker 1: a phone call between a man named Mariano Diaz and
Speaker 1: another named Henry Hernandez. Both of them are now in prison.
Speaker 1: Diaz was convicted for acting as a middleman between DESSA
Speaker 1: employees and the hitman hired to carry out the murder.
Speaker 1: Henry Hernandez was convicted for being the ringleader of the
Speaker 1: team of hitman. Investigators had access to this conversation, which
Speaker 1: took place before Barton's murder, because diass phone was being
Speaker 1: tapped as part of another unrelated investigation, so they were
Speaker 1: able to go back and listen to Henry tell Diaz
Speaker 1: tango el gataero, I have the hitman. Prosecutors say that
Speaker 1: while Diaz is coordinating the hiring of the gunman with Henry,
Speaker 1: phone record show, he's also in regular contact with Douglas Bustillo,
Speaker 1: his former head of security at the Damn site. Hey
Speaker 1: hand you. This conversation takes place in January, about seven
Speaker 1: weeks before the murder. Diaz is informing Boustillo that he
Speaker 1: spoke with Henry in court. Barajona concludes that the three
Speaker 1: men are deep into the planning of Berte's assassination at
Speaker 1: this point. A text exchange between Boustillo and Diaz a
Speaker 1: week later in mid January offers more detail. Bustillo, with
Speaker 1: a security rites to Diaz, the middleman, I need the chie.
Speaker 1: Sparrow In Spanish, sparrow is a word that usually refers
Speaker 1: to a small incendiary device, like a lighter or a sparkler.
Speaker 1: Prosecutors believe that in this case, Bustillo was talking about
Speaker 1: a gun, so Barajna says, the men are planning a
Speaker 1: murder that will occur in early February. Bustillo meets with
Speaker 1: Henry Hernandez. Barajona discovered that during this encounter, Boustillo calls
Speaker 1: up several photos of Bear to store it on his phone,
Speaker 1: and it's during this meeting she says that Bustillo gives
Speaker 1: Henry a gun. According to records from cell phone towers,
Speaker 1: Henry then travels to La Speranza, where Bear to live.
Speaker 1: At the same time, Douglas Bustillo is in contact with David,
Speaker 1: a man he refers to in some messages simply as
Speaker 1: a leader. This is the connection Barrajona wants to highlight.
Speaker 1: She suggests David is using Bustillo to pull the strings
Speaker 1: of Berta's murder. The prosecutors explained that on the day
Speaker 1: of the planned murder, when Henry is in La Speranza,
Speaker 1: David writes a message to Boustillo. David tells him to
Speaker 1: quote remember the accidents and the scene. Barajona says, Henry
Speaker 1: Hernandez is monitoring Berta at this time, and he discovers
Speaker 1: that Berta isn't alone at her house. Henry writes to
Speaker 1: Daz informing him that there is quote bastante traffico dente
Speaker 1: too many people around. Barjonas says that's when this first
Speaker 1: attempt to assassinate Berta is abandoned, and the following morning,
Speaker 1: Henry Hernandez and Douglas Bustillo exchange seven telephone calls between them.
Speaker 1: Shortly after the last of those phone calls, Bustillo messages David,
Speaker 1: mission aborted today. It wasn't possible today. I'll await for
Speaker 1: what you say because I don't have the logistics. I'm
Speaker 1: at zero. David responds, copy that mission aborted. A couple
Speaker 1: of weeks later, Douglas Bustillo travels to La Speranza. He's
Speaker 1: days there for three days. Barajna suggests that during this
Speaker 1: time he secretly follows Berta using his phone. He takes
Speaker 1: photos of Berta walking on the street. For example, he
Speaker 1: goes to her subdivision, the place where she'd be killed,
Speaker 1: about a week later and takes pictures of the entrance.
Speaker 1: And then on February, three days before the murder, Bustillo
Speaker 1: again messages David. Barajna says they discussed payment and set
Speaker 1: up a meeting. The prosecutors say this is when David
Speaker 1: provided the funds to carry out the killing Douglas. Bustillo
Speaker 1: himself takes the stand and swears to tell nothing but
Speaker 1: the truth, but as prosecutors start to ask him questions,
Speaker 1: he doesn't tell them much at all. Prosecutors asked Boustillo
Speaker 1: to describe his relationship with David normal, he says, how
Speaker 1: about Berta. He never had any interactions with her, he says.
Speaker 1: The prosecutors asked him to explain those messages he sent
Speaker 1: to David before bar To his murder, The mission aborted messages.
Speaker 1: Boustillo doesn't seem to remember them. The only messages he
Speaker 1: recalls from that time, he says, had nothing to do
Speaker 1: with a murder. They were about a security job that
Speaker 1: David had asked him to do in a different part
Speaker 1: of Honduras. Bustio doesn't give an inch. He leaves the
Speaker 1: stand and is driven back to prison, where he's already
Speaker 1: serving a thirty year sentence for his role in Barton killing.
Speaker 1: None of the others who have already been imprisoned for
Speaker 1: bear To His murder are called to testify, but a
Speaker 1: state from Mariano Diaz, the convicted middleman, is read out
Speaker 1: loud to the court. A special agent testifies that he
Speaker 1: took this statement from Diaz on the day of his
Speaker 1: arrest back in In this statement, Diaz is proclaiming his innocence,
Speaker 1: but he says Douglas Bustillo had proposed to him the
Speaker 1: idea of killing Barton. Diaz says Bustillo offered him about
Speaker 1: twenty dollars to help coordinate the assassination plan. Diaz states
Speaker 1: to the police that Boustillo told him the money for
Speaker 1: the murder would come from Dess's DIRECTORSA Joven, a young person.
Speaker 1: That young person, according to prosecutors, David Castillo, who became
Speaker 1: the CEO of Deessa when he was still in his twenties.
Speaker 1: Brenda Barajona, the state's telephone expert, weaves all of this
Speaker 1: evidence together on the stand, and it's her testimony upon
Speaker 1: which the state's case rests. She's the one who made
Speaker 1: those observations about David and Berta's relationship earlier. She's the
Speaker 1: foundation of the case. As it happens, I've been hearing
Speaker 1: Barrojona's name for more than a year. David and his
Speaker 1: lawyers would bring it up in interviews with me and
Speaker 1: also with the local Honduran media on shows like Lion Travista,
Speaker 1: but in the Barona to them, the name was a slur.
Speaker 1: They publicly complained that Barrijona was biased against David. They
Speaker 1: accused her of twisting evidence, of taking messages out of
Speaker 1: context and purposefully manipulating them to implicate David. As the
Speaker 1: trial progresses, it's clear that the defense wants to put
Speaker 1: Brenda Barahona on trial. David's lawyers hired their own telephone
Speaker 1: experts from Mexico and the United States. Those experts, they say,
Speaker 1: used advanced technologies to extract messages that Brenda Barrigona had
Speaker 1: somehow overlooked or suppressed. David had told me that this evidence,
Speaker 1: which would be revealed in detail in court, would destroy
Speaker 1: Barjona's credibility. When we saw her report, we noticed inconsistencies
Speaker 1: that we knew they were not true, and you will
Speaker 1: be surprised that we have found out more evidence that
Speaker 1: she has manipulated, more our phone calls and more phone data.
Speaker 1: As the trial concludes, David's team will launch an all
Speaker 1: out assault on the case that the prosecutors have assembled.
Speaker 1: We'll hear David's tearful plea to the judges, and we'll
Speaker 1: hear the verdict that's next time on Blood River. Blood
Speaker 1: River is reported and written by me monte Reel Gopher
Speaker 1: Foreheads is our senior producer. Our theme was composed and
Speaker 1: performed by Senia Rubinos. Special thanks to Carlos Rodriguez. Francesca
Speaker 1: Levi is the head of Bloomberg Podcasts. Be sure to
Speaker 1: subscribe if you haven't already, and if you like what
Speaker 1: you hear, please leave us a review. It helps others
Speaker 1: find out about the show. Thanks for listening.