James Neelon is inside a bland, beige carpeted boardroom. He's sitting at a large round table under the dull glare of fluorescent light. In his role as the US Ambassador in Honduras, he spends a lot of time in rooms like this. Today's meeting is in Washington, d C. At the Council of the America's It's a group that promotes free trade and open markets. A couple dozen other diplomats from Central America and the Caribbean sit around the same table.
It's March, less than two weeks after the murder of Berte Cassiris. The killing is sure to be a topic of discussion today, and Kneelan knows the case well. He attended Berta's funeral and he's met with her family, promising them whatever support his embassy can provide. But before Kneelan can get into all of that, the room erup perfect of a gentleman stood up in the middle of it, and I think he unfurled a banner and he said, you know, pointing at me. He said, this man has
blood on his hands. And it was in reference to the Berta cass Race case. A couple of men grabbed the activists and began pushing them toward an exit door. The protesters fight back, One is shoved hard into a door frame on his way out of the room. In Honduras, the U s Embassy is a powerful institution. It's capable of exerting lots of pressure on local authorities, but for
some that influence wasn't always welcome. Barretts Or herself had been deeply critical of the US and especially it's military, ever since her days in El Salvador, when she aided leftist rebels there in their fight against the US backed government. That distrust of America's motives is shared by many of her friends and colleagues in Copaine. For decades, America has provided financial and tactical support so the military and security
forces of Honduras. The US government has also, through business development ventures and aid programs, supported private development projects like the one behind the Ahwa Zarca dam. Neeland says he doesn't mind being criticized, It's part of the job, but this kind of direct accusation that he was personally implicated in Barton's death struck a nerve. I guess I personally draw the line when people um accuse me of ill intent.
You know, all I can say is that it was always my intention to try and do everything I could to bring the resources of the United States to bear to help Honduras in our mutual interest. But in a way, those protesters were just amplifying a message Berta had been repeating for years. She often talked about the negative impact of the US, especially the US military, on her country. The Awazarka damn she opposed was one example. Some of the Dessa employees she'd clashed with had undergone US led
military training. This is Berta in a two thousand thirteen interview. This ex military, This as chief of security, he's ex military. And the guy who identifies himself as the head of Dessa you went to West Point and was a specialist in military intelligence. We're seeing that there is a connection in all of these mega projects, both in hydro electricity and mining, there's a connection to the military militaries. But Barta's relationship with America was complicated. She didn't really view
America itself as an enemy. She visited the country regularly. She had family, brothers, sisters, niece's nephews who lived there. She had forged partnerships with US based NGOs, and she had even met with several US congress members and senators. She didn't agree with a lot of what the US government did, but she understood that sometimes the best way to get Honduran politicians to hear you was to have people in America helped deliver the message. I'm monte Reel
for Bloomberg Green and this is ud River. Hidden away in the lower level of the Heart Building where U S senators have their offices. You walk down a cavernous hallway, turn a corner and find room one. Yellow post it notes with little arrows drawn on them are stuck on the walls and on the front desk, leading you towards someone named Tim Are. That's Tim Riser. If you're down in this corner of the US Capital Complex, you're probably
looking for him. He's the senior foreign policy adviser for the Democratic Senator from Vermont, Patrick Lahy, and Tim is the guy who runs much of the day to day business of a very important Senate subcommittee, the one that decides which countries get American aid dollars. The second I walk into his office, he nods to a poster sized picture of Berta's smiling face. It's hard to miss. The
poster sits in the window directly behind his desk. It's been here since almost the day that Berta Custus was killed. Riser was among those on Capitol Hill who had met Berta after she'd won the Goldman Prize. In having known her, even the slight amount that I did, made it all the more sort of personal and just a feeling that this was something that we absolutely had to respond to. Members of the Cassarus family visited Riser and others on
Capitol Hill. They spoke about the threats Barta had received and the false leads that were pursued in the early days of the murder probe. What we saw was first of all predictable, an attempt to cover up the crime. It's how the police behave in Honduras and countries like that all the time, to obscure what happened, or to frame somebody else, or to pretend to be investigating when really nothing is happening. Um and we saw all of that here. Rice Or knew of a very specific way
to send a message to the Honduran authorities. He could withhold the money his subcommittee controlled if the Honduran security state couldn't protect Berta and solve a crime like this, did it really deserve tens of millions of dollars in US financial support? And I think people up here saw this as emblematic of a much larger problem and something that could not be allowed to just be swept under
the rug the way these cases so often are. As a result, Senator lah He made clear that he was not going to allow US aid to Honduras, to the government of Honduras, particularly to the police and the armed forces, to continue, at least not the aid which this subcommittee provides until we saw a satisfactory resolution of this case. The U s Embassy in Honduras also offered to assist
local police. Honduras is a sovereign country in the US can just take over an investigation, but Ambassador Neelan told Berta's family that the embassy would try to help out around the margins. The embassy assigned a Justice Department officer to help the Hondurans with technical aspects of the investigation, such as telephone data retrieval. It also offered the use of the FBI crime Lab for analysis of evidence. Barta's older brother says the presence of a US Justice official
comforted him. He liked the idea that there might be someone keeping an eye on the Honduran police as the investigation progressed. Today, he believes that helped lead to the first arrests in the case, the ones we detailed in episode three. But others in the family were wary of US involvement, and they remain so to this day. They don't necessarily see the US embassy and the organizations that
work closely with its allies. Barretta's daughter, er Tita Isabelle, said as much during a rally on the streets of New York weeks after the murder. Little is he on with you? She repeated her calls for a new independent homicide investigation. She said the state run investigation was fatally flawed and nothing, not even the assistance from the US, would fix that. As Bertita Isabelle addressed people in the streets of New York, her colleagues were delivering the same
message inside Honduras. This is from a BBC report. The sun's beating down onto the tarmac here and a crowd of demonstrators, I'd say about two hundred people from Copeine, the organization that Berta cassid Is co founded, are assembled here in front of them a line of riot place. And what the people here are demanding is that there is an international commission of inquiry that will investigate the murder of Berta cassidy Is. They don't trust the hon
Jurn authorities. The Cassara's family and the protesters wanted to Human Rights Commission within the United Nations to conduct a parallel investigation, one that ran alongside the Honduran governments. There was a precedent for this. Forty three students disappeared in Mexico and the Commission did set up its own inquiry, but this time the Honduran government was not interested in more help. They didn't want a third set of eyes
looking into the case. The Hondurans said that they did not need the Inter American Commission support with the investigation because they had the FBI support. Roxanna Alfos is a professor at UC Berkeley's Law School and the co director of the International Human Rights Law Clinic. She says the Honduran government used the us IS limited involvement as a cover to try to derail a parallel investigation. The Cassarus
family decided to take matters into their own hands. They tapped into a network of international human rights advocates and identified several experts with extensive legal and prosecutorial experience. The family, with help from several Honduran and international NGOs, convinced those
experts to dig into the case. The family members decided to move forward, and so they chose a group of five legal experts to comprise a team to conduct an independent and partial investigation, and I was asked to be a member of that team. The group was called guy PAY. It's an acronym and translated from the Spanish, it stands
for the International Advisory Group of Experts. Its members included attorneys who prosecuted high profile human rights cases around the world, cases like the war crime tribunals in the former Yugoslavia and prosecutions of military and paramilitary abuse in Colombia. Roxanna herself had spent two decades litigating cases, mostly in Latin America. These included extra judicial killings and forced disappearances. At first,
she was reluctant to get involved in this one. She was raising two very young kids in California at the time, heading to Honduras to investigate murder and corruption seemed like a recipe for trouble. She declined, but then reconsidered. She says she felt an obligation to help, so in October she and the rest of the group got to work. So the first thing that we did was, you know,
begin to compile background information. They tried to put the crime in the larger context of violence against activists in Honduras, and specifically against activists aligned with Berta's organization Copeine. They focused only on a three year period from and they began compiling a list of instances where Dessa the hydro Electric company had threatened, harassed, or violated the rights of members of Copine under checkpoints their race. There was just
three years. We documented a hundred and thirty five incidents of violence. So that was the first step understand the context. The next step was to look at them criminal investigative file. That meant trying to review the evidence that the Honduran investigators had so far collected. Roxanna's team asked to see all of the tens of thousands of pages of the file.
The Honduran prosecutors resisted at first, but soon they handed over about three thousand pages of it Roxanna and the team studied the ballistics reports, the autopsy, and the statements that the Honduran investigators had collected. The interviewed witnesses, people who knew something about the context, knew something about the day of for the threats um and then in July of two thousand seventeen, after months and months of requests, we got access to about fifty five gigs of telephone data.
This was mostly data that had been collected during the raids we detailed in the last episode on May two, when police confiscated the phones of four suspects and searched Dessa's offices. Those fifty five gigs of data that the investigators got amounted to about forty thousand pay ages. Most of that was in the form of What's app text messages. These texts would become the center of the case, guilt
or innocence, imprisonment or freedom. Everything seemed to rest heavily on those messages, and even now, four years after the murder, it still does. Some of those what's app texts were sent as part of a group chat. The group, according to its what's App heading, was created to discuss matters of security at the Ahwa Zarka site. It included members of dessa's security team in Rio Blanco, as well as
some of dessa's high level executives and board members. These individuals were so sure of impunity that they texted back and forth and and pretty openly regarding their plans to neutralize the opposition, to eliminate the opposition to the Damn project. With thousands of pages of messages to wade through, there were a few obvious time stamps to check out first. For example, the morning after Berta was killed, there was
quite a bit of chatter. Then The members of the group seemed to be following the initial phases of the investigation closely to Roxanna's team. It seemed like DESSA was getting frequent updates from inside the crime scene. The message string from the day after the murder includes a text from ADESSA project manager who suggested he'd been in touch with a local police chief. He wrote, I've solicited the help of the commission her. He confirms his support. He'll
inform me of details of the murder. He also recommended we issue a press release to create some distance from these events. Then, just hours after Berts's body was found Sergio Rodriguez, Dessa's head of environmental standards and community Relations, received a police report on his phone. The report included descriptions of Berta's wounds and the bloodstains in the bedrooms and in the hallway of her house. It also identified two suspects, the ones that we talked about in episode one.
They were Berta's ex boyfriend, Oreleano Molina or Alto, and also Gustavo Castro, the Mexican activist who had also been wounded in the attack. Sergio forwarded the report to the others on the Dessa group chat Roxanna says telephone data showed that the report came directly from police in Santa Barbara, the province where the Ahwazarka Dam site was located. That
that information is highly confidential. There is no reason or justification that law enforcement should share their preliminary conclusions regarding a a murder with a company, But it was completely consistent with the relationship that the company had established with the police. The company treated the police like their private army. But the messages didn't just show a connection to local law enforcement. They also revealed that Dessa executives were in
contact with the Minister of Security himself. Adasay executive reported on the group chat that the Minister had assured the company that the murder was being treated as a Leo de filed us, or loosely translated, a skirt problem, a simple crime of passion, nothing more. Roxanna's team would trace the WhatsApp messages back in time for years. Those text messages allowed them to sketch a detailed narrative, the story of what they describe as a long running and sinister
corporate conspiracy. You have a treasure trove of evidence in this case because the perpetrators were absolutely sure they would never be held to account, not just for the murder, but for all the other crimes that were being committed. In November, more than a year and a half after the murder, Roxanna's team released the results of its investigation. The group handed its findings over to prosecutors. One of the key figures in the plot they outlined was Dootless Bustillo.
He was one of the four men arrested in May, two months after Berta's murder. He was a former lieutenant in the Honduran Army, and he'd also spent a couple of years as the head of security for Dessa in Rio Blanco, Berta had known Bustillo well. Even though they were on opposite sides of the protests, they sometimes exchanged messages. Before she died, beart To complained that the nature of his messages to her had changed from business like exchanges
to aggressive pestering that amounted to sexual harassment. In an interview with a Swedish journalists, she described it as abuse and called Bustillo out by Namestio. Even after that public complaint, Bustillo continued to send bear to message. Is. In one exchange, he said, along a couple of pictures he'd found of her online, who is this? Bear To respond, ha ha ha, Like you don't know, he replies. A few more lines are exchanged. He tells her she's very beautiful and that
many men must find her attractive. He writes, I like simple, charismatic slender women who are strong and stand up for themselves. He says he'd love to spend some time with her. He sends her a wink emoji. Take care, beautiful lady, he writes. Berta doesn't respond to that, but the next day bust is back at it. Hello, good morning, and Bone appetite since it's lunchtime. He sends a flower emoji again. Berta doesn't respond. Another day passes another Hello, Barta, Isabelle,
he says. Barta finally writes back, it seems you've sold your conscience and ideals and you've turned your back on the people of Latagra. Latagra that's the name of the cluster of homes in Rio Blanco where the opposition to Dessa is centered. Bear to ask Bustillo, are you not tired of being the frontman for Dessa. Boustillo had stopped formally working for Dessa a few months before, but in the context of these and other messages, it's clear he's
still involved in the company's activities. Bustillo replies to Berta, I am not a frontman for Dessa, nor do I even remember that company. He tells Berta she should encourage her people to stop being so ungrateful. Beart To replies that she's pretty sure. Boustillo remembers Dessa because he keeps repeating the company line. It's sad, she said, to see
the role that you've been relegated to. Bustio ends the exchange with a long string of ha has on November, about three and a half months before Barton's murder, Bustio sent a message to Adessa Executive. Roxanna's team did not identify him in its report because he hadn't been indicted. They called him Directivo Trace or Executive number three. Bustillo wrote to Executive number three, telling him complete the fifty percent.
Prosecutors believed this was a request for payment and that Bustillo was requesting half of what was owed to him. Executive Number three responded with a time six pm. He followed that with another message, Let's meet in thirty at Chili's in Los Proceres Mall. Bustillo seemed confused about exactly when they should meet six fifteen or in thirty minutes. These were two different times when he expressed confusion. The executive row back, Bustilla, get it together. This isn't a party.
Have everything prepared because it could happen at any time in the course of the day. Roxanna's team believed that this time period November was when the murder for Higher scheme was first plauded. This is based on messages and phone calls exchanged between Bustillo the Dessay executives. The accused gunman and Mariano Diaz. Diaz is the military guy whose phone was tapped as part of another investigation into a drug and kidnapping ring. One of the people Diaz had
been in regular contact with was Henry Hernandez. He was one of the accused hitmen. Their direct messages to each other seemed to reference the exchange of a gun and payments and additional men who could be hired to carry out quote a job from the guy pay Investigators reading of the messages, it seemed that this job they were talking about was supposed to happen in February, about one month before Berta was actually murdered. So what we think happened in early February was there is an effort to
kill that down, a failed effort. The plan, she says, was for Henry Hernandez to travel to La Esperanza. There, Mariano Diaz was supposed to meet him and give him a gun. The Guide A members believed the killing was planned for February five, but Berta's daughters were at the house. Henry makes it to Leesperanza. He sees that bert isn't ever loom and he says, I can't do this. That next morning, on February six, Douglas Bustillo send a message
to Executive Number three. He wrote, mission aborted. Yesterday it wasn't possible. I will wait for your response. I no longer have the logistics in place. I am at zero. Yeah, he says mission mission aborted for lack of resources. Executive Number three responded to Boustillo with this remember the scene um and then says I think he says something like receivers or like I got the message. What does it
remember the scene? It's open for interpretation. I think if you look at that text in the context of the plan and means clean up after yourself, at least that's the way I would interpret it. After Bustillo was arrested, investigators found photos of Berta's house in his phone and the day before the actual murder. The chats suggest he planned to meet with Executive Number three hours before the murder.
The phones that investigators believe were used by the accused gunmen show them traveling to Laesperanza around the same time Douglas Bustillo was searching for pictures of Berta on his phone, and about an hour before Berta Cassarus was killed Bustillo was in contact with the accused gunmen. These phone records and What'sapp messages later would be used against those who had been arrested up to this point, Sergio Rodriguez, Douglas Bustillo,
Mariano Diaz, and the accused gunman. In June, judge ordered that those suspects would go to trial. A few months later, GUP published its report, revealing many of these phone intercepts for the first time, But the report did not publicly reveal one piece of information that would soon become critically important. Who was Executive number three? Way back in when violence was first breaking out in Rio Blanco. Phone records suggests that Executive Number three was hard at work behind the scenes.
Remember what happened In July A soldier working for Dessa's security team shot and killed a coping protester. Then the same day, young Christian Madrid, whose family supported the dam was shot and killed in the family cow pasture. Violence like that was a potential public relations disaster for Dessa. That same day, the executive sent What's App text message to his colleagues. It said, pay the reporter from h H H H is the name of the top cable
news channel and Honduras. He suggested a payment of two thousand olympidas or about eighty dollars. The Guide Bay investigators knew the identity of Executive Number three, but they didn't reveal his name and their report. They knew that before he joined Dessa, he'd been a high level military intelligence officer, and through the phone records they could see that he took an interest in Berta. Sometimes he reached out to her personally, so he's using her as a human source
of intelligence. So he's taking the information she was revealing about her movements directly or and directly about her movements, her concerns, and he was feeding that information back to his company, and then they were acting on that information. I mean, that's a classic intelligence cycle. Barrett's family also knew exactly who Executive number three was. They've been hearing his name from Bear to herself for years, and within a few months all of Honduras would know his name.
It's March two, the two year anniversary of Bart's killing. A white Toyota pickup truck pulls up in front of a federal building in the city of San Pedro de su La. Federal agents in black face masks opened the back door of the truck. They lead a man in handcuffs past the cameras and microphones of reporters. Police in Honduras have arrested David kept Dios. He is an executive of DASA. Casto is being accused of being the mastermind
behind the assassination of environmental activists but Cassera. Most of the news reports include very few details about David Castillo's life, but they hint an interesting past. He grew up in Honduras, but was educated in the United States at the Military
Academy at West Point. He'd lived in the Washington, d c. Area for a couple of years before returning to work for the Honduran Armed Forces in intelligence and counter intelligence, and in before he turned thirty years old, Castillo was named executive president of Dessa, where he was in charge of developing the Agua Zarca Dam. On the day of his arrest, Berta's daughter, Bertita Isabelle, tells CNN that the family is relieved than an accused intellectual author behind her
mother's murder has finally been identified and arrested. Today we can begin to believe that we're starting to break the bonds of impunity that we're behind the murder of my mother Berta cases. David Castillo is a person that Copin and the family members have denounced from the beginning. Dessa issued a statement again denying involvement in Berta's murder and defending Castillo's innocence, but Castillo himself has never told his full story publicly. He spent the last two years in
prison awaiting trial. During that time, he's remained something of a mystery, the accused mastermind of a brazen murder, waiting to make his case. I did not order this, I did not participate it in the murder of Bertas there is no evidence whatsoever that could link me to killing Alberta. On the next episode of Blood River, we may be accused mastermind. Blood River is written and reported by me Monte reel sofra Forehas is our senior producer. My Aquava
is our associate producer. Our theme was composed and performed by Senior Rubinos Special thanks to Carlos Rodriguez. Francesco Levi is the head of the Berg Podcasts. Be sure to subscribe if you haven't already, and if you like our show, please leave us a review. Thanks for listening,