Part 8: The Trial

recall that David is the CEO of Dessa. Dessa is the hydro electric company that was planning to build a damn in western Honduras, but then it ran into protests from environmental activist Berta Cassarras. At the time of this call between David and Jacobo, it has been two months since Berta was assassinated in her home Acum On this morning, David tells Jacobo he has Unamala Noticia, some bad news.

Police have raided the offices of Dessa, and that can only mean one thing that investigators suspect Dessa had something to do with Berta's murder. The police also have arrested one of the company's employees, a manager who had worked on the Damn project. The two men seemed stunned and it can't be, Jacobo SAIDs impossible. This call marks the moment when David Castillo's life changes dramatically, when he and his colleagues realize that their company is at the center

of the murder investigation. It marks the start of a journey that ends with David in a courtroom facing charges that he planned Berta's murder non nos m h. In the five plus years since Berta's death, lots of people in Honduras and around the world have urged the country to bring her killers to justice. Seven people have already been sentenced for their roles in the killing. These included the hitman who pulled the trigger to Kilberta, as well

as a few middlemen who helped plan the logistics. But to the Cassar's family and their supporters, that wasn't enough. Punishing low level triggerment is one thing. Going after the powerful accused of paying them to kill is another, and that kind of accountability is extremely rare in Honduras. This trial, in the eyes of many in the international human rights community, is a test of the country itself. When you last heard from us, David was preparing for his day in court.

Now that moment has come, David says he's innocent, that he and Berta were friends. The prosecution says they'll prove he was a manipulative killer. Over the next two episodes, we'll walk you through key moments in the trial of David Castillo, from the opening statements all the way to the final verdict. I'm monte Reel and this is blood River. It has taken a long time for David's case to make it to court. Exactly two years after Barton's murder

in David was detained as a suspect. He was kept in a prison to await trial, but then the case got stuck. Nothing happened, and under Honduran law, if a suspect is held for two and a half years with no trial, the suspect goes free. In August of the Honduran courts ruled that David would at last face his accusers. Arts eighty eight year old mother broke down in tears at the news as he that would change. Consumedly, she said it was a tireless fight against the most powerful

economic forces in Honduras. To her, it felt like the last five years, all the demonstrations and the protests demanding justice for her daughter, we're paying off. At that time, the trial seemed imminent. The prosecutors believed it would be scheduled in a few weeks. That's where our previous episode left off. But right after that, David's defense team begins filing numerous appeals. Each one gets kicked to a higher court to be resolved. That takes months. Summer turns to fault.

At the same time, the pandemic is wreaking havoc in Honduras. Judges and other court officials are getting sick. The court system is jammed with cases. Fault turns to winter. In January of this year, a long deferred evidence hearing is called to order. The hearing commences, David's lawyers register a new appeal. The appeal has to go to a higher court, and the higher court shoots it down. This happens week

after week. The hearing is called to order and then suspended no fewer than eleven times in the first months of David's lawyers say this is just due diligence. They say the appeals are against a legal system that's stacked against him. The trial has been assigned to the same branch of the federal courts that already had convicted one of David's employees for his role in the murder. The defense believes the case should be moved to another branch.

Their appeals are dismissed one after another. David himself has always insisted he wants this case to go to trial. He says he had nothing to do with this murder, and he wants to clear his name and regain control of his life. This has been terrible, horrible if I've lost everything, everything. Nine months after it was decided David's case would be tried, the judges scheduled the actual date.

They reserve a courtroom for April six. That's the sound of a microphone test inside a federal courtroom in Tegucigalpa, the capital of Honduras. Three judges take their places at the bat h They look out upon a small room. Teams of prosecutors lying one side of the chamber. The defense attorneys face them from the opposite side. In the middle of the floor. Between them is the wood paneled

witness box. A rotating cast will take turns inside that box they'll include police investigators, colleagues of Berta and colleagues of David. Technical analysts will summarize tens of thousands of pages of telephone records for the judges. The courtroom has been reserved for three weeks, enough time the judges think to work through all the evidence and hear all the arguments. But just like everything else in this case, the trial does not finish on schedule. It doesn't end in late

April or May or June. That's because there's a lot of new evidence. Well here secretly recorded phone calls and read previously unreleased text messages. We'll have a clearer view than we've ever had of the events that led up to the murder. It'll all be laid out before the judges, and after five years, a case that has been watched and argued about all over the world will finally be closed. Before we sort out that evidence, I need to explain

how a trial like this works in Honduras. It's a little different than the kind you might be familiar with. First of all, it's not a jury trial. The three judge panel, here's the evidence, and they're the ones to decide if David is guilty or not. David is represented by his defense attorneys and the case against him is argued by prosecutors. But there are multiple teams of prosecutors.

First you have the state. These are the federal prosecutors from the Honduran Public Ministry, roughly equivalent to the Justice Department in the United States. But next to them, at separate tables set the private prosecutors. These attorneys represent not the state but the surviving victims of the crime, Berta's family members. In other words, they'll argue their own cases independent of the federal prosecutors. They'll call their own witnesses

to the stand and present their own evidence. They'll take part in questioning and cross examination of all the witnesses, separate from the public prosecutors. At first blush, this might sound a little like the system in the United States, where the state directs a criminal trial and the families of victims can bring separate civil suits to court. But that's not what this is. The judges in this case won't issue two verdicts, one for the public prosecutors and

another for the private team. They'll only be one verdict. It's just that the state and the private prosecutors will have a voice in the courtroom. Joseph Barra is a law professor at u c l A, specializing in human rights law. He's part of an international observer mission monitoring the trial. He says that the private prosecutors might be thought of as a sort of legal insurance policy against corruption. Imagine a case where a public prosecutor might be paid

off or influenced by a wealthy, well connected defendant. A team of private prosecutors might help counter the possibility of a fixed trial. Ideally, their interests should in some ways merge with the public interests in getting to the root of the crime, finding the truth, and achieving justice. And they have a specific kind of moral high ground in wanting to achieve that justice because they are the ones

who have been victimized by the crime. Trials like this are required to be open to the public according to Honduran law, but the law didn't foresee the outbreak of a global pandemic. The judges ruled that only the separate teams of attorneys, as well as one member from Barton's family and one from David's could watch from inside the courtroom to satisfy the requirement that the trial be public. The judges made it available via live stream. The audio

isn't the best quality. At times it sounds completely distorted. The camera doesn't show the judges. More often than not it's pointed at the backs of the public prosecutors, so it's not that great at capturing whatever visual drama might unfold. But when you call up the video, there's a column where observers can type in comments in real time, and instantly David's family members and sympathizers start to get into

sparring matches with Barreta's side. As the trial gets underway, someone using an account linked to Copeene Bart's organization types of comment, may justice be done and may David pay for his crime. The name of David's mother, do Norah appears on screen. You might remember her from previous episodes. She's always been her son's most unwavering defender. Everything will come out, Everything will come out some day. I am

more than true. My faith is like an breakable and I know that somehow, somewhere someone will be able two to tell the truth about all this and how everything has been manipulated. Donorra types her response in the margin. She says, God will never allow David to be punished for this crime because he's innocent. Someone snaps back and tells her to leave God out of it. That triggers backlash from other backers of David. One says Berta was a fraud, someone who stoked conflict for personal gain. The

running commentary never stops. It appears as a constant scroll, unrolling throughout the trial, and it will only get nastier. It's apri two days after the trial was supposed to have ended, but new appeals and complaints by the defense have had to be sorted out and dismissed in turn. Finally, it's time for the opening statements. The public prosecutors go first, and I'm not just woman. They explain that they're going to present hard evidence that will leave no doubt of

David's involvement in this killing. He was in communication with some of the people who have already been convicted for taking part in the murder. Their most important witnesses will be the government telephonic investigators who extracted those communications and who have mapped out the connections that they say put David at the center of the crime. Next, the private attorneys representing Berta's family have a turn. They'll argue that

David's company, DESA was essentially a criminal organization. They say it used political and economic connections to harass and terrorize Berta. Finally, it's the defenses turn. They reject everything the prosecutors have implied in their statements. They argue that the Honduran investigators, the same ones that the prosecutors consider their star witnesses, are the ones who need to be brought to justice.

The defense says these investigators felt pressure from the victims family and from the international community to appear as if they were solving this crime. Serious irregularities. David's attorneys say the state's telephone experts manipulated the evidence to implicate David, and in doing so, the investigators ignored other clues, clues that might have led them to the real murderers. The defense strategy is clear from day one. David, they argue,

is the victim of a state sponsored conspiracy. The next day, the first witnesses for the prosecution are called. A police investigator places his right hand on the Honduran constitution and swears to tell the truth, only the truth. After him comes a medical examiner and a ballistics expert. Together they established the facts of the case that aren't in dispute. On March two, three men broken too Berta's house at

about even pm. They shot her dead, and they also shot Gustavo Castro, a Mexican environmentalist who was staying with Berta in a guest bedroom. He survived. In the weeks following the murder, investigators examined data from nearby cell phone towers. They identified a few cell phones that didn't belong to local residents, but we're active in Bartas Subdivision near the

time of the murder. Those suspicious phones had been in contact with individuals connected directly or indirectly to David's company Dessa. Two months after the murder, police arrested the alleged hitmen. That was the same day they also arrested to DESSA employees with connections to David. The same day that hecobo Atala called David with the news. One of the men arrested that day was the former head of security for the Damn Project that bear to opposed. He was an

ex military officer named Douglas Bustillo. You'll hear Bustillo's name again. That's because the text messages and call logs that were extracted from his cell phone are vital keys to the prosecution's case against David. There are thousands of pages of these communications. During the trial, experts spend days on the stand reading aloud individual messages. He has the name of Plan Decontinencia Passiva. That message, for example, is from a

WhatsApp chat group that included David. A Death employee at the time, says he has been in contact with people he refers to as quote informants. The state prosecutors explained Thedessa for three years had cultivated paid informants to monitor bar To his movements. This included some people who claimed to be part of Bart's organization. In one message, sent less than a month before the murder, Adessa manager writes to David and the others saying, quote, she said again

that some of their people tell us everything. But she didn't refer to any particular person. She said, David Castillo knows everything when she goes there. The prosecutors want to underscore this idea. David Castillo knows everything. Remember his background. He's a graduate of West Point who returned to Honduras to serve as a military intelligence officer. Bar to his

friends and family believe that history is deeply significant. They say he's the kind of person you can never take at face value, a spy, someone who tries to get close to people only to get information that he can use to his advantage. And they say he leveraged his military and political contacts against Berta. The prosecutors sift through some of the text messages to illustrate this. They point

to one exchange between David and Danielle Atala. Danielle is the CFO of Deessa and he's also a member of the Tala Zabla family, the company's principal investors. David writes, Danny, I need the cash for the afternoon meetings. Witnesses for the prosecution suggests those meetings may have involved politicians. At the time, the president of Honduras was named Pepe Lobo. David writes, the air just as Peppe to resolve death's problem caused by Copeene. They just saw him in the

Council of Ministers. We have a mayor, daniel Atala responds, the one from Intibuka went yes. David writes, The prosecutors have no proof that any payments were actually made, no bank statements or canceled checks or corroborating testimony, and they present no evidence that those politicians actually did them many favors. About ten days after that exchange, David sends a message asking for cash to take to Antibuka in court. The expert reads Daniel's response. Remember he says there's only sixty

because the rest is for the minister. Prosecutors also offer other messages that they say suggests Deessa was paying off lawyers and witnesses to protect itself from legal troubles. In one exchange between David and the other officials, they discuss an incident that threatened to land someone connected to the company in hot water. One of them rights, the woman making the accusation and the supposed witnesses are from via da Anhelis and we need to work them in a

subtle way. This has to be done through third parties to avoid them saying that there's coercion, threats, extortion, bribes invalidating the witnesses or the evidence. The message continues, and take care of the bosses, take care of ourselves and of course protect our company. David has maintained that Deessa sometimes appealed to police and other officials for help, and that they had every right to do so because Barton and Copeine were waging a violent and completely illegal campaign

against it. Last year, from his jail cell, David told me that of course he contacted the police and other officials asking for their support. People from Bart's organization had vandalized his work site, he said, destroying equipment and setting buildings on fire. They had to be stopped. That's what we think is normal. But we are criticized saying that

we manipulated or that we uh influenced the police. You see one people going into your site or to your house, aren't with much chittis and with um molotop bombs, with fire and gasoline, and you get scared. And what you do is you call the police and you let them know these people are invading my property. Please come here, do something, get them out. But these messages being read in court now we're new and some reference that vandalism

against deaths a by members of Copeine. They don't reflect even a hint of the same serious concerns that David expressed to me after the fact. Less than two weeks before the murder, David and other DESSA officials were Corresponding via group chat, one employee mentioned that the protesters aligned with Berta damage some Dessa property near the damn site. He suggested that the company highlight the damage and publicize pictures of it. David writes to the group, we have

to take advantage of the evidence. Someone else chimes in. The damages are insignificant, but the information that we possess is convincing in order to crush them. A few minutes later, David writes, with a lot of strategy, this information has to explode. I spoke with David numerous times over the course of several months. The very first time I met him in January, he was in a prison cell outside of to Gooseagalpa. That day he was ready for my visit.

He pulled out a notebook he'd written in very small and neat handwriting, a detailed outline with bullet pointed subheadings. These were notes of all the ideas he wanted to make sure to get across. For the first hour and a half or so, I'd ask a question and he'd respond at length, consulting the outline and making his way through his notes. One of the headings in that outline concerned his relationship with Berta. He wanted to emphasize that

he and Berta had genuine affection for each other. The public might assume an executive trying to build a dam and an environmentalist fighting against it wouldn't get along. There seems a perfectly natural antagonism there. But right from the start he wanted to chip away at that assumption. You have to separate the idea that David Castillo as a person is design the project and that Berta Casares is coping.

David and Verta were really good friends, but the state tries to undermine this notion of friendship before the defense even gets a chance to make it. The state calls a woman named Roussalina Dominguez to the stand. She lives near the damn site by the Guacake River. Russellina was one of Berta's most loyal allies in that community. Yeah okay.

Russellina explains that Berta told her about threat she'd been receiving in the months before her murder, text messages that she believed were related to her opposition to the damn being. Rosalina is quoting Bertech in a conversation she'd had with her shortly before her death quote, if something happens to me along the way Berta had told her, it's David Castillo's fault. David's direct correspondence with Berta did seem friendly. He tells her in messages that he values her friendship

and her responses are often equally polite. But the prosecution reads other messages, but David privately exchanged among colleagues in a group chat, these strike a different tone. In one written less than two weeks before her murder, David writes, it's an opportune moment to expose Berta and Copeine. She's said that our communication activities are the biggest cause of headaches for them. Someone responds, it's so great, We're a

pain in the butt of that woman. Paha. Someone else adds, in my opinion, we should publish photos of the car that she drives around in, photos of her house, and details about all sorts of luxuries she has, including that she has kids who are studying in Argentina. In summary, that she's getting rich at the cost of others. Some of the message strings that the experts read in court textas exchange directly between David and Berta don't seem that

note were the at first. One is an exchange between the two of them where they're making arrangements to meet. Berta is visiting to Gooseagalpa, where David lives. That's a state expert witness reading messages between Berta and David. The expert is taking care to match each message to the exact geographic location of their telephones. She's establishing exactly where David and bart were at the time of the exchanges.

The expert, an electronic forensics analyst named Brenda Barjona, makes an interesting observation observation when David Castillo wanted information about protest activities and Beta cass his movements, he treated her cordially and referred to her as my esteemed he would also show interest and available to meet with her. Barjona

reads some more exchanges to the court. In these, David tells Aberta that he won't be able to meet her because he's traveling, but Barjona explains to the judges that cell phone tower data indicates that he wasn't telling her the truth. He was in fact in town. This leads the expert to offer some new insights observations. When Berta is proposed meeting with David Castillo, and the meetings were not planned by him or were not in his interest.

It is observed that David was unable to take part in such meetings, claiming to be outside of the Galpa and in other occasions. Ill Barjona says these messages cast the friendship between David and Berta in a different light. It could be concluded that his friendship with her is not sincere and that he simply uses it as a means to monitor and in a way to control Brenda. Barjona spends several days in the witness box. She walks the judges through a four hundred page analysis of the

telephone records. She says it exposes a plot to kill Barton. We've already discussed some of her findings in previous episodes, but during the trial she reveals new details. Hello, that's a phone call between a man named Mariano Diaz and another named Henry Hernandez. Both of them are now in prison. Diaz was convicted for acting as a middleman between DESSA employees and the hitman hired to carry out the murder. Henry Hernandez was convicted for being the ringleader of the

team of hitman. Investigators had access to this conversation, which took place before Barton's murder, because diass phone was being tapped as part of another unrelated investigation, so they were able to go back and listen to Henry tell Diaz tango el gataero, I have the hitman. Prosecutors say that while Diaz is coordinating the hiring of the gunman with Henry, phone record show, he's also in regular contact with Douglas Bustillo, his former head of security at the Damn site. Hey

hand you. This conversation takes place in January, about seven weeks before the murder. Diaz is informing Boustillo that he spoke with Henry in court. Barajona concludes that the three men are deep into the planning of Berte's assassination at this point. A text exchange between Boustillo and Diaz a week later in mid January offers more detail. Bustillo, with a security rites to Diaz, the middleman, I need the chie.

Sparrow In Spanish, sparrow is a word that usually refers to a small incendiary device, like a lighter or a sparkler. Prosecutors believe that in this case, Bustillo was talking about a gun, so Barajna says, the men are planning a murder that will occur in early February. Bustillo meets with Henry Hernandez. Barajona discovered that during this encounter, Boustillo calls up several photos of Bear to store it on his phone, and it's during this meeting she says that Bustillo gives

Henry a gun. According to records from cell phone towers, Henry then travels to La Speranza, where Bear to live. At the same time, Douglas Bustillo is in contact with David, a man he refers to in some messages simply as a leader. This is the connection Barrajona wants to highlight. She suggests David is using Bustillo to pull the strings of Berta's murder. The prosecutors explained that on the day of the planned murder, when Henry is in La Speranza,

David writes a message to Boustillo. David tells him to quote remember the accidents and the scene. Barajona says, Henry Hernandez is monitoring Berta at this time, and he discovers that Berta isn't alone at her house. Henry writes to Daz informing him that there is quote bastante traffico dente

too many people around. Barjonas says that's when this first attempt to assassinate Berta is abandoned, and the following morning, Henry Hernandez and Douglas Bustillo exchange seven telephone calls between them. Shortly after the last of those phone calls, Bustillo messages David, mission aborted today. It wasn't possible today. I'll await for what you say because I don't have the logistics. I'm at zero. David responds, copy that mission aborted. A couple

of weeks later, Douglas Bustillo travels to La Speranza. He's days there for three days. Barajna suggests that during this time he secretly follows Berta using his phone. He takes photos of Berta walking on the street. For example, he goes to her subdivision, the place where she'd be killed, about a week later and takes pictures of the entrance. And then on February, three days before the murder, Bustillo again messages David. Barajna says they discussed payment and set

up a meeting. The prosecutors say this is when David provided the funds to carry out the killing Douglas. Bustillo himself takes the stand and swears to tell nothing but the truth, but as prosecutors start to ask him questions, he doesn't tell them much at all. Prosecutors asked Boustillo to describe his relationship with David normal, he says, how about Berta. He never had any interactions with her, he says.

The prosecutors asked him to explain those messages he sent to David before bar To his murder, The mission aborted messages. Boustillo doesn't seem to remember them. The only messages he recalls from that time, he says, had nothing to do with a murder. They were about a security job that David had asked him to do in a different part

of Honduras. Bustio doesn't give an inch. He leaves the stand and is driven back to prison, where he's already serving a thirty year sentence for his role in Barton killing. None of the others who have already been imprisoned for bear To His murder are called to testify, but a state from Mariano Diaz, the convicted middleman, is read out

loud to the court. A special agent testifies that he took this statement from Diaz on the day of his arrest back in In this statement, Diaz is proclaiming his innocence, but he says Douglas Bustillo had proposed to him the idea of killing Barton. Diaz says Bustillo offered him about twenty dollars to help coordinate the assassination plan. Diaz states to the police that Boustillo told him the money for the murder would come from Dess's DIRECTORSA Joven, a young person.

That young person, according to prosecutors, David Castillo, who became the CEO of Deessa when he was still in his twenties. Brenda Barajona, the state's telephone expert, weaves all of this evidence together on the stand, and it's her testimony upon which the state's case rests. She's the one who made those observations about David and Berta's relationship earlier. She's the foundation of the case. As it happens, I've been hearing

Barrojona's name for more than a year. David and his lawyers would bring it up in interviews with me and also with the local Honduran media on shows like Lion Travista, but in the Barona to them, the name was a slur. They publicly complained that Barrijona was biased against David. They accused her of twisting evidence, of taking messages out of context and purposefully manipulating them to implicate David. As the trial progresses, it's clear that the defense wants to put

Brenda Barahona on trial. David's lawyers hired their own telephone experts from Mexico and the United States. Those experts, they say, used advanced technologies to extract messages that Brenda Barrigona had somehow overlooked or suppressed. David had told me that this evidence, which would be revealed in detail in court, would destroy

Barjona's credibility. When we saw her report, we noticed inconsistencies that we knew they were not true, and you will be surprised that we have found out more evidence that she has manipulated, more our phone calls and more phone data. As the trial concludes, David's team will launch an all out assault on the case that the prosecutors have assembled. We'll hear David's tearful plea to the judges, and we'll

hear the verdict that's next time on Blood River. Blood River is reported and written by me monte Reel Gopher Foreheads is our senior producer. Our theme was composed and performed by Senia Rubinos. Special thanks to Carlos Rodriguez. Francesca Levi is the head of Bloomberg Podcasts. Be sure to subscribe if you haven't already, and if you like what you hear, please leave us a review. It helps others find out about the show. Thanks for listening.