June 1, 2020 • 40 mins
Episode 1 - For the last three decades, women have gone missing in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, right across the border from El Paso, Texas. Some are found later, bearing the telltale signs of a serial killer. Hosts Oz Woloshyn and Mónica Ortiz Uribe begin their investigation into who could be responsible for these horrific crimes. We speak with the FBI’s former top agent on the border, as well as the journalist who’s gone the farthest in investigating the killings, Diana Washington Valdez. And we visit the family of Sagrario González Flores, whose murder remains unsolved.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Forgotten is a production of iHeartMedia and Unusual Productions Before
we start. This podcast contains accounts which some listeners will
find disturbing, but without them, the story can't be fully understood.
Please take care while listening. A couple of years ago,
(00:25):
I went to El Paso, Texas because I was making
a documentary about the US Mexico border. While I was there,
I asked one of the producers a question. I said,
if you could tell any story about this place, what
would it be. He told me that right across the
border from where we stood, there were young women who
(00:47):
worked in American owned factories in the Mexican city of
Silt Wires, and they were being killed with horrific brutality.
The victims were often found half naked in the desert,
someone found in mass graves with strange symbols left on
their bodies. The producer told me there were all kinds
(01:09):
of theories about what was happening to the women, but
that no one knew for sure. So I asked him
if I could interview him on the record. When he
thought about it and said no, it was too dangerous.
But others did speak and it became clear that the deaths.
The disappearances of these women, they aren't random. They seem
(01:32):
to follow a pattern. You'd have women or girls even
fifteen seventeen nineteen, And they have a similar look the
slem in Darker you know, which suggests they may have
been selected. All from poor families, all from mostly poor neighborhoods.
They hold the same types of jobs, usually students, factory workers,
(01:57):
and commute regularly alone on public buses through downtown Juarez.
And then they're never seen again, at least not alive.
I quickly realized I'd never be able to understand the
depth and complexity of this story without a partner. I
(02:18):
asked a friend if they knew anyone who might be
prepared to work with me. It turned out they knew
the perfect person. In the first three weeks of twenty twenty,
there have been more murders in Quaddas than days in
the new year, when a crush of Central American families
has overwhelmed officials at the southern border. We're going down
to the basement where other migrants are hanging out at
(02:41):
this hotel. There's a horrific history of violence against women
insou thout Quads in the last three decades, hundreds of
women have been brutally murdered here. Many of their cases
remain unsolved, and that's how I first got to know
my co host, Monica Quarter from El Paso, a regular
(03:01):
voice on public radio and an authority on the region.
Together will explore who is responsible for the deaths of
so many women in Juarez and why the crimes have
remained unsold for decades. I'm as Volosha and I'm Monica.
This is forgotten the women in Juarezcano Barama. You known
(03:36):
Sisque la Felicia. I've always been fascinated by borders, and
(04:05):
something about El Paso called to me long before I
ever went there. It was this city of several hundred
thousand people in the desert, surrounded by mountains, whose name
literally means the pass right across the dry bed of
the Rio Grand River, separated by a twenty foot metal fence,
(04:25):
is el Paso's twin city, Sulad Juarez. When you drive
along the highway in El Paso, the barrier becomes a
brown blur of rusted metal, but if you stop and look,
you can see right through the slats. In Juarez, there's
a cathedral originally built by Spanish colonialists. There's the Kentucky Club,
(04:48):
a bar that claims to have invented the margharita and
that traces its name to the city's history of whiskey
distilling and smuggling during Prohibition. There are huge, colorful murals
celebrating local ledge like the musician Juan Gabriel. And for
all the things you read about the cartel violence, the
desert landscape has a stark beauty, and Juarez is chaote
(05:12):
and bustling, a city of over a million people and
a city of dreams. People come here to find education,
to find work. I had come here because I wanted
to know what living on this divide meant. But then
I heard about the women. Young women who have been
going missing and turning up dead since the nineteen nineties,
(05:35):
often dumped in the desert. At first, the authorities tried
to claim the murders were random and individual, but then
in nineteen ninety five, the first mass grave was discovered
in a place called Lotte Bravo. Nine women's bodies were
discovered in this deserted plot of land, not far from
(05:57):
the airport. The bodies were around as if the killer
hadn't even made an effort to hide them. Some of
the victims had their hands tied with shoelaces, others had
a severed left breast. One had a triangle carved on
her back. Who could be capable of this? Speculations ran
(06:18):
from a satanic cult to a serial killer. Then, in
nineteen ninety six, another mass grave was discovered, and then another,
and another and another. The most recent was in twenty
and twelve. These were crimes that shopped people in both cities,
(06:38):
and that made it clear how powerfully a border can
shape a person's fate. I needed to know more, so
I sent Monica an email to ask if she'd consider
working with me, and well, I received a cool reception.
I was very guarded at the beginning, because, yeah, this
is a story that I called close to my heart,
(07:01):
and I was very hesitant to work with anybody I
didn't know. With a stranger, I just presumed you were
a gringo, even though you're not quite a gringo. I
don't know. For us border ladies, I suppose we're naturally
suspicious of gringo's coming in from the outside. Telling the
most sensitive story of our careers, the story takes an
(07:26):
incredible emotional toll on you, and you're suffering all this
distress because of it, so much so that I was
ready to walk away. But then I get this email.
So what made you agree to work on this together? Well, honestly,
because I've got this conscience that's eating away at me
and won't let me go. When I started reporting in Wattis,
(07:50):
there was one day when I was getting into the car.
My mom followed me into the garage and got into
the passenger seat with me, and she said, if you're
going to go over there and put yourself in danger,
then I'm going to go over there and put myself
in the same danger. I can't let you go and
expose yourself alone. Wow, that moment really forced me to
(08:10):
grapple with what are you willing to give up for
this story? The hottest that I knew growing up is
not the hottest that exists today. It's really sad, But
today I think twice before I go to hottas because
of the dangers. So why did I let you pull
(08:33):
me back in? Well? Because I identify so strongly with
the victims. There are women there that look like me,
that are my same age, but confront a completely different
horrific reality. The border between El Paso and Juarez is
(08:53):
increasingly militarized, but the line between the two cities has
always been poorous. Every year, millions of people cross back
and forth over the three bridges that connect them. For
this reason, it wasn't long before the murders of the
women in Huarez made it onto the radar of the
FBI's El Paso office. It strikes the heart when you
(09:15):
see women being left like their garbage. That's Heredrik Crawford
Junior speaking. He was the FBI Special Agent in charge
of El Paso from two thousand and one to two
thousand and three. He first learned about the crimes when
he was preparing for his assignment at the FBI's headquarters.
You look at the newspaper clips and one of the
(09:37):
things that jumped out at me was the murder of
women in wars. To me, it's a crime on the
level of the war crimes in Bosnia, in Croatia, you know,
ethnic cleansing. It hit me on a personal level, more
soul than it did on a professional level. It sounds funny,
but I thought, okay, now I know why Goad sent
(09:57):
me to ol Perso. Was this, This was the reason
I was sent here. Nowadays, Hardrick lives in the suburbs
of Washington, d C. The day we pay him a visit,
he's taking care of his grandchildren. But he was once
one of the country's top law enforcement agents protecting the
real He spent years investigating some of the world's most
(10:18):
dangerous criminal networks, fair guys, evildoers. He went under cover
to bus Columbian organized crime at Miami while wearing a recorder.
It was kind of dacy. In nineteen ninety eight, he
set up the FBI's command post in Nairobi, Kenya. After
I saw him in Laden bombed the embassy there. I
was a senior man in the continent. But the assignment
that he can't stop thinking about is El Paso, Texas.
(10:44):
Just a sheer number of women was alarming that The
most unsettling fact was the lack of tracking or information
gathered as to the number of women when they occurred.
Their motive stopper, What were the women doing? No database?
The lack of official data presented Hardrick with a concrete problem.
(11:08):
In fact, at least six of the murdered women in
Huarez were US citizens, and meanwhile, there was a letter
to the editor of the El Paso Times in two
thousand and two suggesting that the number of sex offenders
paroled to the city from elsewhere had become a crisis.
Could they have been drawn by the proximity to the
border and the possibility of crossing back and forth into Mexico.
(11:31):
Well in this binational community. A big part of Hardrick's
responsibility was solving binational crimes. If you look out of
your office at the FBI, you could see warriors in
downtown El Paso. Driving you could see warriors. It's there,
it's looming large. Shortly after he arrives at the border,
(11:53):
a chilling hypothesis about who might be killing the women
begins to take hold his hard Giving an interview to
ABC News in two thousand and one, there is a
real possibility then an American or someone who is residing
on our side of the border is conducting these murders.
(12:16):
Hardrick goes on to describe Juarez as a killing field
for young women. We discussed the fact that it would
be easy for an El Paso based predator to walk
across the border every day, commit a terrible crime, and
then come back to El Paso and live a life
(12:37):
with nobody to be the wiser. I mean, if you've
ever been to warres, disposing of bodies is really easy.
You don't have to dig through hard dirt. You're digging
through sand. Uarez is surrounded by desert. Law enforcement is
under resourced, and you can walk that from El Paso
(12:58):
in a matter of minute. All of this was on
Hadrick's mind when he worried that it could be a
hunting ground for an American serial killer. And there was
something else too. Juarez was a city of migrants, young
women in their families who had moved from rural Mexico
to this industrial metropolis drawn by the many factories or maculadoras,
(13:21):
and they didn't always have people to look out for them.
It was like a perfect storm. You have the women
coming from southern Mexico, from Central America, desperate for work
to help their families, to come work at the micheladoras.
They're alone. The flip side of the coin is you'd
have to be a Cretan if you're a Cereal murderer
(13:43):
or you're a psychopath not to understand. Wow, it's like
antelopes at the water hole. What a great opportunity for
a serial killer. Once you start focusing on Warrez and
El Passel, you can't miss it. Diana Vell does was
written about it. Dina Washington Valdez is the reporter who
(14:04):
has gone deeper into this story than perhaps any other.
She wrote the defining book on the topic called The
Killing Fields Harvest of Women, and she noticed something that
Hedrick Crawford picked up on about how the killers selected
their victims. When we come back, Diana tells us what
she pieced together. I didn't think about the danger in
(14:37):
the beginning, probably intentionally because if I focused on the danger,
then I would immovely create a barrier for myself to
hold me back. It was not unusual to find myself
in White Is eleven twelve pm, one am in order
to interview certain police officers who are getting off their
shift and had agreed to share a confidential what they knew, Simonica,
(15:04):
if you ask anybody from the area about these crimes,
the name they mentioned is Diana Washington Valdez. Who is she? Yeah,
so Diana like me as a reporter. She was born
in Mexico, raised in al Paso, and spent most of
her career at the Al Paso Times. And when I
did a college internship at the al Paso Times, Diana
(15:27):
was one of my first teachers in journalism. And what
was your first impression of Diana when you met her
in the office. I saw her as a badass, so
much so that I felt intimidated the first time I
met her and put my hand out to shake hers,
and she just laughed it off and said, no, no,
don't be intimidated. I'm here for whatever you need. I
(15:49):
think part of also what helped her reporting in Whatez
is this stern exterior, this discipline that comes with military training,
and what exactly to Dina do in the military. She
served in the Army and then the National Guard for
a total of twenty years. Wow. And that training and
the discipline that comes with it helped her with her reporting.
(16:12):
In the scariest moments, she says, her training would kick
in and help her set her emotions aside and focus
on the mission before her. So we went to pay
Diana a visit at her home in El Paso, near
the foot of the Franklin Mountains, some distance north of
(16:33):
the border. There's your hot water for tea in the
cuss wonderful thank you so much. Nice Diana welcomes us
into her home with a generosity and warmth that belies
a tough exterior. We were there to learn what her
reporting on connections between the murders in Juarez might reveal
(16:57):
about who was committing them. As we settled around her
coffee table, I was curious about what I'd made. Diana
connects so deeply to this story. When I was a
young woman, I could have been one of the victims
because of my look and the long hair and wandering
around what is naively when I was eighteen and nineteen.
(17:19):
You know, they're my compatriots. I'm part of them. They're
part of me. Never in a million years I could
imagined writing about teenage girls who were brutally murdered and
whose deaths are unsolved and always could have been prevented.
You know, I never would have imagined it. As a
(17:40):
reporter at the El Paso Times, Diana started to notice
a pattern of young women in Huirez disappearing and turning
up dead. It was a golden age of local journalism,
and she had the platform to shine a light on
these unsolved murders and perhaps, in doing so, prevent more
As she had to figure out exactly what was going on.
(18:03):
We kept seeing reports about X number of bodies found,
another woman found dead, mutilated, very horrific murders, the brutality,
it was something we've never seen here in the border
neither side. But what I had been reading in the
Mexican press did not tell me who was killing the
women and why. So I got involved in investigating the murders.
(18:26):
When was the very first time when he thought there's
something connecting these crimes. The fact that multiple bodies were
left in specific sits, in sites where the bodies could
be found. This was unseen and unheard of. In some cases,
we had what it called a sense of overkill because
(18:47):
we would have a victim, for example, that was strangled, stabbed,
and shot. Also, these strangulations the medical examiners in what
is noted were for the purposes of sexual gratification of
the perpect traitor. That women were being strangled to achieve
this kind of sexual effect. It seemed that whoever was
(19:09):
killing the women in Huirez was not content merely to
end their lives. It seemed they wanted to completely dehumanize
them in the process. But who would want to do
this and why it seemed like whoever it was was
taunting investigators, purposefully leaving signatures the crime scenes. Yet the
(19:33):
symbols that law enforcements found on some of the victims
who were very intriguing. These were linked to possible serial killers.
And we know that serial killers have their own rituals
in the way that they kill the victims and the
way they positioned their bodies and the trophies that might
take from them, and in several cases these triangles were
(19:54):
carved on the backs of the victims. Those characteristics we're
terrifying to people and to the families because they will
look at it and say, it's not just a murderer.
There's something else going on here. It's scary. Did you
ever discover what that something else was? There were um no,
there were just speculations. There were only speculations that the
(20:17):
markings might have indicated the initials of a perpetrator or representative. Map.
You know, a map, a map of what a map
of murder, you know, geographical map, geographical map. That's that's
as far as I was able to ascertain the information
(20:38):
was provided. Could this possibly be true? A map of
murder left on the bodies of the victims, and if so,
where does that map lead Well. Despite a full plate
of assignments in El Paso from her editors, those questions
sent Diana into Juarez on her evenings, weekends, an even
(21:00):
vacation to answer. I know just from experience that someone
always knows something, someone knows what's going on. These murders
appeared to be taking place systematically. It's specific kinds of
victims or being selected and kidnapped or taken by force somehow,
(21:21):
or lured, and then their bodies found. Diana was struck
by the profile of the victims. They were young, they
come from elsewhere in such opportunity, and they seem to
disappear into thin air without witnesses. Standing at a memorial
erected by the parents of one of the murdered women,
(21:42):
Lilia Alejandra Andrade, Diana was momentarily overwhelmed. I walked through
that field where her body had been found, and I
saw the cross Lilia Lejandra, and it kind of just
all hit me at once that this is where a
young lady's life was snuffed out mercilessly, and it's just
(22:06):
like all the emotions that I had supprised up to
then about the victims. Just uh, just a damn burst
and then you know, I started sobbing uncontrollably. I couldn't
stop it. Just it just happened, and I cried and
I cried and I cried, and the people who walked by,
uh saw me, and you know, they thought something was
wrong and I couldn't tell them. I had a similar
(22:32):
momentum where the tears came and and it it was
it was something that I couldn't stop, and I was
surprised at myself, and um, yeah, the grief builds up
on you. Yeah, yes, where it was h Yeah, yeah, yeah.
(22:52):
It's like, you know, you think about the helplessness of
the victims. Look at what they were up against. Your
sixteen seventy year all you went downtown to or Nearrant
for your parents, or to try in some new shoes,
to apply for a job, and push, you know, grabbed
and lord and you're murdered. Diana and Herdrick established a
(23:23):
clear pattern in what type of victims the killer would
target and how they would kill them. And in fact,
there are so many murders of young women in huires
that fit this pattern that the reflex can be to
retreat into statistics this many women, that cause of death.
But you can't understand the full situation without getting to
(23:45):
know some of the victims. Victims like Cigario Gonzalez Flores.
Early on, when we were embarking on this story together, Monica,
you mentioned Sigario Gonzalez. Sagario Gonzalez story is the story
of so many other women who were murdered in Sulath. Howatis.
She was an immigrant, she was a factory worker, she
(24:08):
was a teenager. She went missing between her home and
her work, and her murderer transformed her family's life into
this fight to try to find out what happened. But
who is she? So she sang in the church choir
(24:30):
and taught Sunday school to kindergarteners. She has a boyfriend.
His name is Andres. She's got a notebook where she
writes poetry. She puts all kinds of stickers in this notebook,
like hearts and princesses and rabbits. And her handwriting is impeccable,
(24:54):
written in block print, very neat, and it's clear she's
sweet on Andres too. She's got his name and phone
number written on the front cover. And what was it
like looking into that book. Oh gosh, how do you
describe that? This is like a relic of someone who's gone.
It's the closest thing to her. I mean, it's so
(25:16):
precious just to see her name on there, her own
name written in her own handwriting. I don't have the
words for it. I don't have the words for it.
But she's the whole reason why I'm sticking around to
tell the story. Sigrio Gonzalez Flores was one of six sisters,
(25:38):
and she was seventeen years old when she left for
work at four am on Thursday, April sixteenth, nineteen ninety eight.
She arrived at the factory, completed her normal work day,
and then left to take the bus home, but she
never made it. Her body was discovered two weeks later,
dumped in the desert on the other side of town
from where she lived. When we come back, we travel
(26:03):
to Juarez to meet so Garrio's mother, Paula at her
home to learn more about her search for answers. Driving
(26:24):
into Mexico from El Paso is straightforward. Passports are rarely
checked and most cars are way through and now orders
to firsthand what Hardrick meant about how easy it would
be for an American citizen to slip back and forth
across the border. The part of Juare's closest to the
bridge from the United States has restaurants. When the elected
(26:46):
facades from the fifties, there's a strip of nightclubs and bars,
and there are billboards in English advertising cosmetic dentistry. But
as you drive west towards the Flora's household, paved streets
begin to give way to dirt roads, and urban infrastructure
turns to desert. The Florida's family lives in a colonia,
(27:09):
or neighborhood called Loma Zeppoleo. It's one of the first
communities in Mexico that isn't separated from the US by
the Rio Grande. That river travels south from New Mexico,
then takes a sharp turn east when it reaches Texas,
and that's where it becomes the US Mexico border. West
(27:32):
of that point, the landscape is mostly desert, so nothing
to divide the two countries, but a series of man
made barriers, each more severe than the last. Loma Zeppoleo
began as a squatter community founded by migrant families from
other parts of Mexico, and most of them came here
(27:55):
to work in the Makulagouas. As we drive through Lomas Deepoleo,
we pass house after house, each seemingly constructed from different materials.
There are a few street names and no street lights.
Powler's house is one of the more substantial in the
neighborhood and it has a gated dirt yard where we part.
(28:28):
We had an extremely warm welcome when we arrive at
Powla's house, from dogs to neighborhood children, to powder herself.
My name is Paula. We are at my house, which
is also yours here in Lomaspole. Paula has this cascade
(28:50):
of thick black hair almost to her waist, and her
wardrobe is very feminine. She carries herself with dignity and pride.
Her shoulders are back, her head is held high. Paula
is like the nucleus of her household. She's, without a doubt,
the matriarch in the family. So she is just telling
(29:19):
us about where her family came from and where we lived.
My husband Jesus, worked in the mountains. He was a
chainsaw operator, chopping pine trees for wood. In fact, in
lud Ago, that's what most people do for work. My
sister in law already lived here and she was the
one who invited us, saying that there was a lot
(29:40):
of work here. We didn't bring a whole lot. We
had what we were wearing and one change of clothing.
The truck we were in had a camper bed, so
in the back on top of a camper we packed
four chairs inside the camper where my daughters who lay
on a little mattress, along with a bin of dishes.
That's all we brought. It was nineteen ninety five, a
(30:07):
year after NAFTA was signed and free trade meant the
factories were booming. To this day, companies like General Electric
and Johnson and Johnson create things like medical gloves and
blood pressure cuffs in Juarez for export to the US.
But Whuire has had done little to prepare for the
arrival of migrants like Paula, her husband Jesus, and their
(30:31):
daughter Sagria. That's how neighborhoods like Lomester Poleo came into existence,
and to get the materials they needed to build their life,
many families salvage scrap from US dumps across the border.
This was at a time when the border was much
less harshly enforced. Why not positively? Well, Our primary need
(30:53):
was would because we wanted to put a roof over
our heads to live right. It was an unusual for
people who lived in Loma Zeppoleo to crawl under or
jump over this barbed wire fence, get to this American
landfill on the other side, and pick through it to
find material to construct their homes. There were a few
(31:19):
times that Sagaradio accompanied us to the American landfill. One
of those times it was in December and we were
there and some guys came to throw out trash. Right,
so one of the guys saw her and noticed she
was cold, so he took off his jacket and gave
it to her. Sagaradio was pale and her face turned
bright red and she told him no, no, thank you,
(31:41):
And I told her it's okay, take it, and Sagaradio
was blushing. She went over and took it even though
she didn't want to, and he gave it to her.
That moment always stuck with me. Despite having to build
(32:01):
the roof above their own heads, the Flores family did
find what they'd come in search of. Work Esus and
four of his kids, including Sagardrio worked the evening shift
at the same Makila making refrigerator parts. They traveled as
a group to and from work. Then the factory found
(32:23):
out that Sagardrio was under age. She was seventeen, so
she was told that in order to keep working, she
would have to switch to the day shift, and if
she did that, she would have to wake up before
dawn and make the two hour bus trip to work alone.
When they made the change, I told her to wait
(32:44):
instead of accepting it. April May June July. On July thirty,
first she would turn eighteen. I said to her, when
you turn eighteen, you can go with your daddy and Gilla, right.
She said no, that she wanted to help, that she
needed the money to support our home. So every morning
(33:05):
Sagario would wake up at three am. She'd lower her
bare feet onto a square of loose carpet that was
placed on the dirt floor of their home. Next to
the bed. There was a chair with her clothes folded
on top of it, and twenty Mexican pistoles bus fare
(33:26):
to get from home to work. Me Chu and a
sanchui would go and walk her to the number ten
bus and then in downtown she would take another bus
to work. When they changed her shift, she signed an
insurance policy like with beneficiaries, in case something happens. Remember that.
When she arrived with that paperwork, she said to me, Mamma,
(33:48):
they're going to give me life insurance and the maquila
joking around, she told me, if something happens to me, mamma,
they're going to give you a ton of money. He said,
don'cle saying that, honey, why do you say that to me? Yes, Mama,
if something happens to me, that Makuila will give you
lots of money. I always remember that so vividly. I
(34:10):
don't know if my innocent girl had a feeling that
something was going to happen to her, I don't know.
The Flores family moved to Juarez in nineteen ninety five,
the very same year that the first mass grave of
women was discovered. Paula's husband, Jesus, had moved to Huaires
(34:34):
with their son Cheui before the rest of the family,
and Jesus sent let Us home to Durango, encouraging Paula
and their six daughters to join Powder read them allowed
to us, my Paula, I want to tell you the following,
My love, We are in Luck. As soon as we
(34:54):
arrived we found work. I asked him how's the neighborhood,
Whether it was peaceful, because I heard it was dangerous,
and he said, no, it's peaceful. It's a new neighborhood.
All the people are just getting started. Ladian told him
they say they kill women there, they kill girls, and
he said no, no. I said, it's just that we're
(35:16):
bringing a lot you six daughters, No, no wining, and
he said no, no, there's no danger. Within three years
of arriving with big dreams of a brighter future, Paula's
worst fears has been realized. Sigario had been brutally murdered.
(35:39):
So people often ask me, what's the most difficult story
you've had to cover as a reporter, And my answer
is always the same, the missing and murdered women of whats.
It's a story that I've come back to throughout my career.
I was once at a gathering of activists outside a
(36:01):
courthouse in Wais and I remember this girl, no more
than seven or eight years old. She was singing a
song called the Richel Nacimiento or Birthright. It was in
memory of the slain women, women like Sagrario Gonzalez, Flores, Lilia,
(36:23):
Alejandra Andrade and Guadelupe Montes. I once made a silent
promise to these women that I would tell the world
who they were and why they mattered, so that they
would never be forgotten. In what these crimes have gone
(36:50):
on for so long that this most extreme form of
violence against women has a name femini sibo femicide, and
the crimes have been maddeningly hard to solve. Witnesses rarely
come forward, evidence goes missing, police are overstretched. But then
(37:14):
in two thousand and one, a case came along that
had all the pieces in place to be solved and
to uncover who was behind the rest of these murders.
That's in our next episode. I'm as velosh Anne would
even see you next time. You're not You're not I
(37:57):
La Felicia Forgotten. The Women of Juarez is co hosted
(38:22):
by me Monica and me Oswaloshin. We'd like to thank
Paula Flores and all the victims families, and thank you
to Diana Washington Valez and all the truth seekers and
activists who fight for justice, and to the many people
you won't hear on tape who contributed to this podcast.
Thank you to Natalia La Fe and Geta Calon for
(38:45):
their help with our theme song. Forgotten is executive produced
by me Oswaloshin and Mangesh Hatia. Our producers are Julian
Wela and Katrina Noval. Sound editing by Julian Weller and
Jacopo Penzo. Lucas Riley is our story editor. Caitlin Thompson
(39:07):
is our consulting producer. Production support from Emily Maronoff and
Aaron Kaufman. Recording assistance this episode from Melissa Kaplan. Music
by Leonardo Hablum and Hakkabo Liberman. Additional music by Aaron Kaufman.
Carla Tassara is the voice actor for Paula Flores Special.
(39:28):
Thanks to Angela Cocherga for introducing me to Monica, to
Weird Moved West for exceptional production support in El Paso,
Anti Jonah Descent for executive producing Bridging Us, the documentary
series that first brought me to the Border. This podcast
is dedicated to all the women lost to senseless violence
in Huadis and all around the world. Nuna Mass do
(40:01):
you me
Forgotten is a production of iHeartMedia and Unusual Productions Before
we start. This podcast contains accounts which some listeners will
find disturbing, but without them, the story can't be fully understood.
Please take care while listening. A couple of years ago,
(00:25):
I went to El Paso, Texas because I was making
a documentary about the US Mexico border. While I was there,
I asked one of the producers a question. I said,
if you could tell any story about this place, what
would it be. He told me that right across the
border from where we stood, there were young women who
(00:47):
worked in American owned factories in the Mexican city of
Silt Wires, and they were being killed with horrific brutality.
The victims were often found half naked in the desert,
someone found in mass graves with strange symbols left on
their bodies. The producer told me there were all kinds
(01:09):
of theories about what was happening to the women, but
that no one knew for sure. So I asked him
if I could interview him on the record. When he
thought about it and said no, it was too dangerous.
But others did speak and it became clear that the deaths.
The disappearances of these women, they aren't random. They seem
(01:32):
to follow a pattern. You'd have women or girls even
fifteen seventeen nineteen, And they have a similar look the
slem in Darker you know, which suggests they may have
been selected. All from poor families, all from mostly poor neighborhoods.
They hold the same types of jobs, usually students, factory workers,
(01:57):
and commute regularly alone on public buses through downtown Juarez.
And then they're never seen again, at least not alive.
I quickly realized I'd never be able to understand the
depth and complexity of this story without a partner. I
(02:18):
asked a friend if they knew anyone who might be
prepared to work with me. It turned out they knew
the perfect person. In the first three weeks of twenty twenty,
there have been more murders in Quaddas than days in
the new year, when a crush of Central American families
has overwhelmed officials at the southern border. We're going down
to the basement where other migrants are hanging out at
(02:41):
this hotel. There's a horrific history of violence against women
insou thout Quads in the last three decades, hundreds of
women have been brutally murdered here. Many of their cases
remain unsolved, and that's how I first got to know
my co host, Monica Quarter from El Paso, a regular
(03:01):
voice on public radio and an authority on the region.
Together will explore who is responsible for the deaths of
so many women in Juarez and why the crimes have
remained unsold for decades. I'm as Volosha and I'm Monica.
This is forgotten the women in Juarezcano Barama. You known
(03:36):
Sisque la Felicia. I've always been fascinated by borders, and
(04:05):
something about El Paso called to me long before I
ever went there. It was this city of several hundred
thousand people in the desert, surrounded by mountains, whose name
literally means the pass right across the dry bed of
the Rio Grand River, separated by a twenty foot metal fence,
(04:25):
is el Paso's twin city, Sulad Juarez. When you drive
along the highway in El Paso, the barrier becomes a
brown blur of rusted metal, but if you stop and look,
you can see right through the slats. In Juarez, there's
a cathedral originally built by Spanish colonialists. There's the Kentucky Club,
(04:48):
a bar that claims to have invented the margharita and
that traces its name to the city's history of whiskey
distilling and smuggling during Prohibition. There are huge, colorful murals
celebrating local ledge like the musician Juan Gabriel. And for
all the things you read about the cartel violence, the
desert landscape has a stark beauty, and Juarez is chaote
(05:12):
and bustling, a city of over a million people and
a city of dreams. People come here to find education,
to find work. I had come here because I wanted
to know what living on this divide meant. But then
I heard about the women. Young women who have been
going missing and turning up dead since the nineteen nineties,
(05:35):
often dumped in the desert. At first, the authorities tried
to claim the murders were random and individual, but then
in nineteen ninety five, the first mass grave was discovered
in a place called Lotte Bravo. Nine women's bodies were
discovered in this deserted plot of land, not far from
(05:57):
the airport. The bodies were around as if the killer
hadn't even made an effort to hide them. Some of
the victims had their hands tied with shoelaces, others had
a severed left breast. One had a triangle carved on
her back. Who could be capable of this? Speculations ran
(06:18):
from a satanic cult to a serial killer. Then, in
nineteen ninety six, another mass grave was discovered, and then another,
and another and another. The most recent was in twenty
and twelve. These were crimes that shopped people in both cities,
(06:38):
and that made it clear how powerfully a border can
shape a person's fate. I needed to know more, so
I sent Monica an email to ask if she'd consider
working with me, and well, I received a cool reception.
I was very guarded at the beginning, because, yeah, this
is a story that I called close to my heart,
(07:01):
and I was very hesitant to work with anybody I
didn't know. With a stranger, I just presumed you were
a gringo, even though you're not quite a gringo. I
don't know. For us border ladies, I suppose we're naturally
suspicious of gringo's coming in from the outside. Telling the
most sensitive story of our careers, the story takes an
(07:26):
incredible emotional toll on you, and you're suffering all this
distress because of it, so much so that I was
ready to walk away. But then I get this email.
So what made you agree to work on this together? Well, honestly,
because I've got this conscience that's eating away at me
and won't let me go. When I started reporting in Wattis,
(07:50):
there was one day when I was getting into the car.
My mom followed me into the garage and got into
the passenger seat with me, and she said, if you're
going to go over there and put yourself in danger,
then I'm going to go over there and put myself
in the same danger. I can't let you go and
expose yourself alone. Wow, that moment really forced me to
(08:10):
grapple with what are you willing to give up for
this story? The hottest that I knew growing up is
not the hottest that exists today. It's really sad, But
today I think twice before I go to hottas because
of the dangers. So why did I let you pull
(08:33):
me back in? Well? Because I identify so strongly with
the victims. There are women there that look like me,
that are my same age, but confront a completely different
horrific reality. The border between El Paso and Juarez is
(08:53):
increasingly militarized, but the line between the two cities has
always been poorous. Every year, millions of people cross back
and forth over the three bridges that connect them. For
this reason, it wasn't long before the murders of the
women in Huarez made it onto the radar of the
FBI's El Paso office. It strikes the heart when you
(09:15):
see women being left like their garbage. That's Heredrik Crawford
Junior speaking. He was the FBI Special Agent in charge
of El Paso from two thousand and one to two
thousand and three. He first learned about the crimes when
he was preparing for his assignment at the FBI's headquarters.
You look at the newspaper clips and one of the
(09:37):
things that jumped out at me was the murder of
women in wars. To me, it's a crime on the
level of the war crimes in Bosnia, in Croatia, you know,
ethnic cleansing. It hit me on a personal level, more
soul than it did on a professional level. It sounds funny,
but I thought, okay, now I know why Goad sent
(09:57):
me to ol Perso. Was this, This was the reason
I was sent here. Nowadays, Hardrick lives in the suburbs
of Washington, d C. The day we pay him a visit,
he's taking care of his grandchildren. But he was once
one of the country's top law enforcement agents protecting the
real He spent years investigating some of the world's most
(10:18):
dangerous criminal networks, fair guys, evildoers. He went under cover
to bus Columbian organized crime at Miami while wearing a recorder.
It was kind of dacy. In nineteen ninety eight, he
set up the FBI's command post in Nairobi, Kenya. After
I saw him in Laden bombed the embassy there. I
was a senior man in the continent. But the assignment
that he can't stop thinking about is El Paso, Texas.
(10:44):
Just a sheer number of women was alarming that The
most unsettling fact was the lack of tracking or information
gathered as to the number of women when they occurred.
Their motive stopper, What were the women doing? No database?
The lack of official data presented Hardrick with a concrete problem.
(11:08):
In fact, at least six of the murdered women in
Huarez were US citizens, and meanwhile, there was a letter
to the editor of the El Paso Times in two
thousand and two suggesting that the number of sex offenders
paroled to the city from elsewhere had become a crisis.
Could they have been drawn by the proximity to the
border and the possibility of crossing back and forth into Mexico.
(11:31):
Well in this binational community. A big part of Hardrick's
responsibility was solving binational crimes. If you look out of
your office at the FBI, you could see warriors in
downtown El Paso. Driving you could see warriors. It's there,
it's looming large. Shortly after he arrives at the border,
(11:53):
a chilling hypothesis about who might be killing the women
begins to take hold his hard Giving an interview to
ABC News in two thousand and one, there is a
real possibility then an American or someone who is residing
on our side of the border is conducting these murders.
(12:16):
Hardrick goes on to describe Juarez as a killing field
for young women. We discussed the fact that it would
be easy for an El Paso based predator to walk
across the border every day, commit a terrible crime, and
then come back to El Paso and live a life
(12:37):
with nobody to be the wiser. I mean, if you've
ever been to warres, disposing of bodies is really easy.
You don't have to dig through hard dirt. You're digging
through sand. Uarez is surrounded by desert. Law enforcement is
under resourced, and you can walk that from El Paso
(12:58):
in a matter of minute. All of this was on
Hadrick's mind when he worried that it could be a
hunting ground for an American serial killer. And there was
something else too. Juarez was a city of migrants, young
women in their families who had moved from rural Mexico
to this industrial metropolis drawn by the many factories or maculadoras,
(13:21):
and they didn't always have people to look out for them.
It was like a perfect storm. You have the women
coming from southern Mexico, from Central America, desperate for work
to help their families, to come work at the micheladoras.
They're alone. The flip side of the coin is you'd
have to be a Cretan if you're a Cereal murderer
(13:43):
or you're a psychopath not to understand. Wow, it's like
antelopes at the water hole. What a great opportunity for
a serial killer. Once you start focusing on Warrez and
El Passel, you can't miss it. Diana Vell does was
written about it. Dina Washington Valdez is the reporter who
(14:04):
has gone deeper into this story than perhaps any other.
She wrote the defining book on the topic called The
Killing Fields Harvest of Women, and she noticed something that
Hedrick Crawford picked up on about how the killers selected
their victims. When we come back, Diana tells us what
she pieced together. I didn't think about the danger in
(14:37):
the beginning, probably intentionally because if I focused on the danger,
then I would immovely create a barrier for myself to
hold me back. It was not unusual to find myself
in White Is eleven twelve pm, one am in order
to interview certain police officers who are getting off their
shift and had agreed to share a confidential what they knew, Simonica,
(15:04):
if you ask anybody from the area about these crimes,
the name they mentioned is Diana Washington Valdez. Who is she? Yeah,
so Diana like me as a reporter. She was born
in Mexico, raised in al Paso, and spent most of
her career at the Al Paso Times. And when I
did a college internship at the al Paso Times, Diana
(15:27):
was one of my first teachers in journalism. And what
was your first impression of Diana when you met her
in the office. I saw her as a badass, so
much so that I felt intimidated the first time I
met her and put my hand out to shake hers,
and she just laughed it off and said, no, no,
don't be intimidated. I'm here for whatever you need. I
(15:49):
think part of also what helped her reporting in Whatez
is this stern exterior, this discipline that comes with military training,
and what exactly to Dina do in the military. She
served in the Army and then the National Guard for
a total of twenty years. Wow. And that training and
the discipline that comes with it helped her with her reporting.
(16:12):
In the scariest moments, she says, her training would kick
in and help her set her emotions aside and focus
on the mission before her. So we went to pay
Diana a visit at her home in El Paso, near
the foot of the Franklin Mountains, some distance north of
(16:33):
the border. There's your hot water for tea in the
cuss wonderful thank you so much. Nice Diana welcomes us
into her home with a generosity and warmth that belies
a tough exterior. We were there to learn what her
reporting on connections between the murders in Juarez might reveal
(16:57):
about who was committing them. As we settled around her
coffee table, I was curious about what I'd made. Diana
connects so deeply to this story. When I was a
young woman, I could have been one of the victims
because of my look and the long hair and wandering
around what is naively when I was eighteen and nineteen.
(17:19):
You know, they're my compatriots. I'm part of them. They're
part of me. Never in a million years I could
imagined writing about teenage girls who were brutally murdered and
whose deaths are unsolved and always could have been prevented.
You know, I never would have imagined it. As a
(17:40):
reporter at the El Paso Times, Diana started to notice
a pattern of young women in Huirez disappearing and turning
up dead. It was a golden age of local journalism,
and she had the platform to shine a light on
these unsolved murders and perhaps, in doing so, prevent more
As she had to figure out exactly what was going on.
(18:03):
We kept seeing reports about X number of bodies found,
another woman found dead, mutilated, very horrific murders, the brutality,
it was something we've never seen here in the border
neither side. But what I had been reading in the
Mexican press did not tell me who was killing the
women and why. So I got involved in investigating the murders.
(18:26):
When was the very first time when he thought there's
something connecting these crimes. The fact that multiple bodies were
left in specific sits, in sites where the bodies could
be found. This was unseen and unheard of. In some cases,
we had what it called a sense of overkill because
(18:47):
we would have a victim, for example, that was strangled, stabbed,
and shot. Also, these strangulations the medical examiners in what
is noted were for the purposes of sexual gratification of
the perpect traitor. That women were being strangled to achieve
this kind of sexual effect. It seemed that whoever was
(19:09):
killing the women in Huirez was not content merely to
end their lives. It seemed they wanted to completely dehumanize
them in the process. But who would want to do
this and why it seemed like whoever it was was
taunting investigators, purposefully leaving signatures the crime scenes. Yet the
(19:33):
symbols that law enforcements found on some of the victims
who were very intriguing. These were linked to possible serial killers.
And we know that serial killers have their own rituals
in the way that they kill the victims and the
way they positioned their bodies and the trophies that might
take from them, and in several cases these triangles were
(19:54):
carved on the backs of the victims. Those characteristics we're
terrifying to people and to the families because they will
look at it and say, it's not just a murderer.
There's something else going on here. It's scary. Did you
ever discover what that something else was? There were um no,
there were just speculations. There were only speculations that the
(20:17):
markings might have indicated the initials of a perpetrator or representative. Map.
You know, a map, a map of what a map
of murder, you know, geographical map, geographical map. That's that's
as far as I was able to ascertain the information
(20:38):
was provided. Could this possibly be true? A map of
murder left on the bodies of the victims, and if so,
where does that map lead Well. Despite a full plate
of assignments in El Paso from her editors, those questions
sent Diana into Juarez on her evenings, weekends, an even
(21:00):
vacation to answer. I know just from experience that someone
always knows something, someone knows what's going on. These murders
appeared to be taking place systematically. It's specific kinds of
victims or being selected and kidnapped or taken by force somehow,
(21:21):
or lured, and then their bodies found. Diana was struck
by the profile of the victims. They were young, they
come from elsewhere in such opportunity, and they seem to
disappear into thin air without witnesses. Standing at a memorial
erected by the parents of one of the murdered women,
(21:42):
Lilia Alejandra Andrade, Diana was momentarily overwhelmed. I walked through
that field where her body had been found, and I
saw the cross Lilia Lejandra, and it kind of just
all hit me at once that this is where a
young lady's life was snuffed out mercilessly, and it's just
(22:06):
like all the emotions that I had supprised up to
then about the victims. Just uh, just a damn burst
and then you know, I started sobbing uncontrollably. I couldn't
stop it. Just it just happened, and I cried and
I cried and I cried, and the people who walked by,
uh saw me, and you know, they thought something was
wrong and I couldn't tell them. I had a similar
(22:32):
momentum where the tears came and and it it was
it was something that I couldn't stop, and I was
surprised at myself, and um, yeah, the grief builds up
on you. Yeah, yes, where it was h Yeah, yeah, yeah.
(22:52):
It's like, you know, you think about the helplessness of
the victims. Look at what they were up against. Your
sixteen seventy year all you went downtown to or Nearrant
for your parents, or to try in some new shoes,
to apply for a job, and push, you know, grabbed
and lord and you're murdered. Diana and Herdrick established a
(23:23):
clear pattern in what type of victims the killer would
target and how they would kill them. And in fact,
there are so many murders of young women in huires
that fit this pattern that the reflex can be to
retreat into statistics this many women, that cause of death.
But you can't understand the full situation without getting to
(23:45):
know some of the victims. Victims like Cigario Gonzalez Flores.
Early on, when we were embarking on this story together, Monica,
you mentioned Sigario Gonzalez. Sagario Gonzalez story is the story
of so many other women who were murdered in Sulath. Howatis.
She was an immigrant, she was a factory worker, she
(24:08):
was a teenager. She went missing between her home and
her work, and her murderer transformed her family's life into
this fight to try to find out what happened. But
who is she? So she sang in the church choir
(24:30):
and taught Sunday school to kindergarteners. She has a boyfriend.
His name is Andres. She's got a notebook where she
writes poetry. She puts all kinds of stickers in this notebook,
like hearts and princesses and rabbits. And her handwriting is impeccable,
(24:54):
written in block print, very neat, and it's clear she's
sweet on Andres too. She's got his name and phone
number written on the front cover. And what was it
like looking into that book. Oh gosh, how do you
describe that? This is like a relic of someone who's gone.
It's the closest thing to her. I mean, it's so
(25:16):
precious just to see her name on there, her own
name written in her own handwriting. I don't have the
words for it. I don't have the words for it.
But she's the whole reason why I'm sticking around to
tell the story. Sigrio Gonzalez Flores was one of six sisters,
(25:38):
and she was seventeen years old when she left for
work at four am on Thursday, April sixteenth, nineteen ninety eight.
She arrived at the factory, completed her normal work day,
and then left to take the bus home, but she
never made it. Her body was discovered two weeks later,
dumped in the desert on the other side of town
from where she lived. When we come back, we travel
(26:03):
to Juarez to meet so Garrio's mother, Paula at her
home to learn more about her search for answers. Driving
(26:24):
into Mexico from El Paso is straightforward. Passports are rarely
checked and most cars are way through and now orders
to firsthand what Hardrick meant about how easy it would
be for an American citizen to slip back and forth
across the border. The part of Juare's closest to the
bridge from the United States has restaurants. When the elected
(26:46):
facades from the fifties, there's a strip of nightclubs and bars,
and there are billboards in English advertising cosmetic dentistry. But
as you drive west towards the Flora's household, paved streets
begin to give way to dirt roads, and urban infrastructure
turns to desert. The Florida's family lives in a colonia,
(27:09):
or neighborhood called Loma Zeppoleo. It's one of the first
communities in Mexico that isn't separated from the US by
the Rio Grande. That river travels south from New Mexico,
then takes a sharp turn east when it reaches Texas,
and that's where it becomes the US Mexico border. West
(27:32):
of that point, the landscape is mostly desert, so nothing
to divide the two countries, but a series of man
made barriers, each more severe than the last. Loma Zeppoleo
began as a squatter community founded by migrant families from
other parts of Mexico, and most of them came here
(27:55):
to work in the Makulagouas. As we drive through Lomas Deepoleo,
we pass house after house, each seemingly constructed from different materials.
There are a few street names and no street lights.
Powler's house is one of the more substantial in the
neighborhood and it has a gated dirt yard where we part.
(28:28):
We had an extremely warm welcome when we arrive at
Powla's house, from dogs to neighborhood children, to powder herself.
My name is Paula. We are at my house, which
is also yours here in Lomaspole. Paula has this cascade
(28:50):
of thick black hair almost to her waist, and her
wardrobe is very feminine. She carries herself with dignity and pride.
Her shoulders are back, her head is held high. Paula
is like the nucleus of her household. She's, without a doubt,
the matriarch in the family. So she is just telling
(29:19):
us about where her family came from and where we lived.
My husband Jesus, worked in the mountains. He was a
chainsaw operator, chopping pine trees for wood. In fact, in
lud Ago, that's what most people do for work. My
sister in law already lived here and she was the
one who invited us, saying that there was a lot
(29:40):
of work here. We didn't bring a whole lot. We
had what we were wearing and one change of clothing.
The truck we were in had a camper bed, so
in the back on top of a camper we packed
four chairs inside the camper where my daughters who lay
on a little mattress, along with a bin of dishes.
That's all we brought. It was nineteen ninety five, a
(30:07):
year after NAFTA was signed and free trade meant the
factories were booming. To this day, companies like General Electric
and Johnson and Johnson create things like medical gloves and
blood pressure cuffs in Juarez for export to the US.
But Whuire has had done little to prepare for the
arrival of migrants like Paula, her husband Jesus, and their
(30:31):
daughter Sagria. That's how neighborhoods like Lomester Poleo came into existence,
and to get the materials they needed to build their life,
many families salvage scrap from US dumps across the border.
This was at a time when the border was much
less harshly enforced. Why not positively? Well, Our primary need
(30:53):
was would because we wanted to put a roof over
our heads to live right. It was an unusual for
people who lived in Loma Zeppoleo to crawl under or
jump over this barbed wire fence, get to this American
landfill on the other side, and pick through it to
find material to construct their homes. There were a few
(31:19):
times that Sagaradio accompanied us to the American landfill. One
of those times it was in December and we were
there and some guys came to throw out trash. Right,
so one of the guys saw her and noticed she
was cold, so he took off his jacket and gave
it to her. Sagaradio was pale and her face turned
bright red and she told him no, no, thank you,
(31:41):
And I told her it's okay, take it, and Sagaradio
was blushing. She went over and took it even though
she didn't want to, and he gave it to her.
That moment always stuck with me. Despite having to build
(32:01):
the roof above their own heads, the Flores family did
find what they'd come in search of. Work Esus and
four of his kids, including Sagardrio worked the evening shift
at the same Makila making refrigerator parts. They traveled as
a group to and from work. Then the factory found
(32:23):
out that Sagardrio was under age. She was seventeen, so
she was told that in order to keep working, she
would have to switch to the day shift, and if
she did that, she would have to wake up before
dawn and make the two hour bus trip to work alone.
When they made the change, I told her to wait
(32:44):
instead of accepting it. April May June July. On July thirty,
first she would turn eighteen. I said to her, when
you turn eighteen, you can go with your daddy and Gilla, right.
She said no, that she wanted to help, that she
needed the money to support our home. So every morning
(33:05):
Sagario would wake up at three am. She'd lower her
bare feet onto a square of loose carpet that was
placed on the dirt floor of their home. Next to
the bed. There was a chair with her clothes folded
on top of it, and twenty Mexican pistoles bus fare
(33:26):
to get from home to work. Me Chu and a
sanchui would go and walk her to the number ten
bus and then in downtown she would take another bus
to work. When they changed her shift, she signed an
insurance policy like with beneficiaries, in case something happens. Remember that.
When she arrived with that paperwork, she said to me, Mamma,
(33:48):
they're going to give me life insurance and the maquila
joking around, she told me, if something happens to me, mamma,
they're going to give you a ton of money. He said,
don'cle saying that, honey, why do you say that to me? Yes, Mama,
if something happens to me, that Makuila will give you
lots of money. I always remember that so vividly. I
(34:10):
don't know if my innocent girl had a feeling that
something was going to happen to her, I don't know.
The Flores family moved to Juarez in nineteen ninety five,
the very same year that the first mass grave of
women was discovered. Paula's husband, Jesus, had moved to Huaires
(34:34):
with their son Cheui before the rest of the family,
and Jesus sent let Us home to Durango, encouraging Paula
and their six daughters to join Powder read them allowed
to us, my Paula, I want to tell you the following,
My love, We are in Luck. As soon as we
(34:54):
arrived we found work. I asked him how's the neighborhood,
Whether it was peaceful, because I heard it was dangerous,
and he said, no, it's peaceful. It's a new neighborhood.
All the people are just getting started. Ladian told him
they say they kill women there, they kill girls, and
he said no, no. I said, it's just that we're
(35:16):
bringing a lot you six daughters, No, no wining, and
he said no, no, there's no danger. Within three years
of arriving with big dreams of a brighter future, Paula's
worst fears has been realized. Sigario had been brutally murdered.
(35:39):
So people often ask me, what's the most difficult story
you've had to cover as a reporter, And my answer
is always the same, the missing and murdered women of whats.
It's a story that I've come back to throughout my career.
I was once at a gathering of activists outside a
(36:01):
courthouse in Wais and I remember this girl, no more
than seven or eight years old. She was singing a
song called the Richel Nacimiento or Birthright. It was in
memory of the slain women, women like Sagrario Gonzalez, Flores, Lilia,
(36:23):
Alejandra Andrade and Guadelupe Montes. I once made a silent
promise to these women that I would tell the world
who they were and why they mattered, so that they
would never be forgotten. In what these crimes have gone
(36:50):
on for so long that this most extreme form of
violence against women has a name femini sibo femicide, and
the crimes have been maddeningly hard to solve. Witnesses rarely
come forward, evidence goes missing, police are overstretched. But then
(37:14):
in two thousand and one, a case came along that
had all the pieces in place to be solved and
to uncover who was behind the rest of these murders.
That's in our next episode. I'm as velosh Anne would
even see you next time. You're not You're not I
(37:57):
La Felicia Forgotten. The Women of Juarez is co hosted
(38:22):
by me Monica and me Oswaloshin. We'd like to thank
Paula Flores and all the victims families, and thank you
to Diana Washington Valez and all the truth seekers and
activists who fight for justice, and to the many people
you won't hear on tape who contributed to this podcast.
Thank you to Natalia La Fe and Geta Calon for
(38:45):
their help with our theme song. Forgotten is executive produced
by me Oswaloshin and Mangesh Hatia. Our producers are Julian
Wela and Katrina Noval. Sound editing by Julian Weller and
Jacopo Penzo. Lucas Riley is our story editor. Caitlin Thompson
(39:07):
is our consulting producer. Production support from Emily Maronoff and
Aaron Kaufman. Recording assistance this episode from Melissa Kaplan. Music
by Leonardo Hablum and Hakkabo Liberman. Additional music by Aaron Kaufman.
Carla Tassara is the voice actor for Paula Flores Special.
(39:28):
Thanks to Angela Cocherga for introducing me to Monica, to
Weird Moved West for exceptional production support in El Paso,
Anti Jonah Descent for executive producing Bridging Us, the documentary
series that first brought me to the Border. This podcast
is dedicated to all the women lost to senseless violence
in Huadis and all around the world. Nuna Mass do
(40:01):
you me
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