FORGOTTEN - EP 1: A Cross-Border Killer?

would it be. He told me that right across the border from where we stood, there were young women who 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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

Sisque la Felicia. I've always been fascinated by borders, and 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,

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, 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 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,

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 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 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, 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, 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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

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 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. 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. 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.

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, 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. 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 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

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, 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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. 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 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 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. 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 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.

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. 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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,

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 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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, 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 to Juarez to meet so Garrio's mother, Paula at her home to learn more about her search for answers. Driving 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 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,

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 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 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.

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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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.

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 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, 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 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 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 La Felicia Forgotten. The Women of Juarez is co hosted

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 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 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.

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 you me