FORGOTTEN - EP 4: The Cotton Field

The authorities have the responsibility for solving these crimes. They have not done this, and perhaps never intended to do it. I pick it up, and then all of a sudden, there's this electric saw sound chaminion. They took my phone to try and see they could trace it call, and they traced it back to Mexican military intelligence. Diana was disconcerted by that threatening cool, but it wasn't immediately clear just how frightening it really was. How long after you

received that call? Did your source trace it back within a month. At first, I wasn't sure what to do that phone call, and I casually mentioned to this officer, and he said, you know what, can we have your telephone to check it out? Lecture tracing that cool back helped Diana understand that the threats against her were not idle, and then she got a visit. A friendly source came over one time till pass on. We met for coffee

and the source was told to convey to me. After this source met with three police officers in Huadis municipal, state and federal and the message to me was not to bother to come to Huadas all right. So I think that was a very good indicator that I needed to start backing way. Yeah. Din attracts the escalation of the threats to starting to publish articles about the connection

between the victims and the Echo computer schools. The computer schools suggested that some kind of network was involved in these crimes, and the threats suggested that the authorities might be protecting the network. But all of this time, the Egyptian chemist Abdel Latif Sheriff Sharif had been languishing in jail, accused of being the serial killer and continuing to mastermind murders from jail. As far as the authorities and even some of the local press were concerned, the case was closed.

Then in two thousand and one, something happened that made it clear the crimes were not just ongoing but escalating. The Mexican press had decided that the big nightmare of the femicides had ended. And I remember and one of the reporters in Huadis who had covered the murders from the very beginning at turning to me at a press conference saying, to me, your problem, Diana, is that you do not believe that the Egyptian Shadif Shahdif killed all

those women. And it's over. It's ended, all right. I just looked at him, you know, and I started to think, well, perhaps he's right, maybe it's over. And then a month later, eight bodies are discovered, and everybody like, oh my god, this is like starting over again. For the first time in five years, a mass grave of women had been discovered in Juarez, and even Diana was shocked. I remember it was in our past with the time there was a report about bodies had been discovered. Women's bodies had

been discovered. This is horrible. Not only is it just one more murder, it's eight bodies planted in one place. What is happening to our young ladies. The horrific discovery at the cotton Field came at a time when Diana still believed it was safe for her to travel to Juarez, so as soon as she heard about it, she jumped in her car and headed for the border. First of all, I had to figure out where this place was. I

imagine something on the edge of the city. And so when I got directions and I saw where this graveyard was located as it, I can't believe it. It's in the middle of the city and across the street is the Association of Makilolaus, the organization that represents all the assembly plans in SuDS. It's in the middle of a very active commercial zone next to housing development. I just

couldn't believe it. Somebody has to have seen something. Why choose this site to dump, literally dump eight bodies of women. This was November two thousand and one. Just nine months earlier, in February, Lili Alejandra had been abducted and murdered, and because of the witnesses and the physical evidence from the autopsy, Diana believed there were enough leads to finally solve the murders. That didn't happen. But now there were eight bodies in a well trafficed part of town known locally as the

cotton Field. Just two miles from where Lili Alejandra's body had been found. The cotton Field discovery ignited a global interest in solving the murders. ABC News at a special edition of twenty twenty, and the eyes of the world were on Juarez. The cotton Field murders presented an opportunity for the authorities to conduct a good and thorough investigation that leads to the killers, a sol these cases maybe

prevent more. I'm Azveloshim and I'm Monica, or this is forgotten the women of Baramo La No no masque hala Feliciva. With the cotton Fields discovery, Diana felt like the murders might finally be solved. The pressure was building, The Mother's protest movement had the urgency, the international press was demanding answers, and her trusted source, Oscar Manees, was once again overseeing the crime scene. I mean, if you have a bodies in an area, you can add denize seriality in these murders.

Isn't that a chance that they appear anybody next to each others? You know, had you ever seen anything like that when you stepped out onto this cotton field and saw the bodies, Well, I seen many bodies not in the same area. For me, it was a highly organized crime. You can see it. And when you're talking about organization, took it a group. If you have a group, you have a leader, You have a leader, you have a hierarchy, you have resources. So this is not like a lon

wall for a couple of kids. When Oscar first began overseeing the autopsies of young women in Huarez, he believed that a serial killer in the vein of a Ted Bundy was responsible, but after Lee Alexander's autopsy, he began to suspect something more organized, perhaps even a group. We drove out to the cotton Field with Oscar to learn more about a crime scene that seemed to confirm his theory.

We surrounded by hotels, businesses. He supposed to the New America councilor he has some commercial businesses next to it. Were you very shocked when you when you heard what these bodies were? Yes, because I was expected to find the bodies. On the Oscar of the city that there was a dry dish and there were three bodies position in line, and then we started just looking around and then we started lifting rocks and then we found five more bodies those were buried, they were not out on

the open. Oscar had been sounding the alarm, and now multiple bodies have been discovered in a single location. He was determined to make sure the forensic work was unimpeachable, to demonstrate once and for all how all these crimes

were connected. It was like archaeologist, not with that, but I just slowly clear and the dirt in order to preserve the skeletons, because when you have a yeah, the skeletons to war, which you need to look at every aspect, every legion of the vie to try to determine the because of death. So and then how long did that process take? Like an hour? No? No, they take a couple of this night, and they how did this discovery compare to say, the discovery of the body of Lilia Lehundra, well,

the case of Leandra, it was the same part. I believe that those cases were related, same people killed. This was a bombshell to me, Monica. I mean, Lili Alejandra's autopsy had suggested all these leads that weren't properly followed up on, and here you have this crime scene that suggests Oscar and Diana were absolutely right to insist on the importance abilitious case. How did the crime scene first emerge.

It was a Tuesday morning, November sixth, two thousand and one, and there was a man who worked as a bricklayer. He was taking a short cut across a vacant lot not far from a main intersection in a commercial area of Wadis and he told the local newspaper that he smelled something funny and went in for a closer look, and that's when he saw the body of a woman. And so he goes and he alerts the police, who

show up and find two more bodies. By the time the forensic team is on the scene, there's a total of eight bodies. They show various stages of decomposition. Some look like they've been dead for perhaps a couple of weeks and others for as much as a few months. And one of the bodies is nay kid except for a pair of torn white socks, and just like the other cases before, her hands are tied behind her back with shoelaces. It appeared that this body had been kept

in cold storage. The fact that it's a place which people passed through often, and then all of a sudden disguise finds the body. It feels like they probably weren't there all along, right, someone would have noticed them. The fact that they show up all at once, you know, kind of points to the strong possibility that they were placed there at the same time. And what do we know about who these eight victims were? Yeah, So the first body that the bricklayer discovered was identified as fifteen

year old Esmeralda Erra Montreal. Esmeralda's family came from the state of Sacatecas. Her mom worked at a Phillips factory in Wadis and as Medala. At the time, she was saving up money for her kin Senera, to save up money for this party. As Meralla starts working as a housekeeper, and like so many others, she goes to work one

day and is never seen again. Diana interviews as Miralda's mother, Irma at some point, and one of the eerie details that surfaces from that interview is that an Echo recruiter had stopped by their neighborhood and left them a brochure at their house. Some of the connections between these women are chilling uncanny. Even another woman who's identified from the cotton field is a twenty year old woman named Claudia Yvette Gonzales. And Claudia worked at a maquila owned by

Lear Corporation. So the day Claudia went missing, she showed up to work a few minutes late and the factory turned her away. After that, she was never seen again. You have all these details that point to a connection, that point to an organized network behind these killings. We'd

heard about the shoelaces from Lily Alejander's autopsy. We'd heard about the connection to the Echo computer schools, and we'd heard about victims being snatched at moments of maximum vulnerability, just like Cloudier Yvette, who was turned away from the makil for being late and then found herself alone on the streets of Juarez. The crime scene seemed to confirm so much of the evidence that had already piled up about how these crimes were connected. Then something truly extraordinary happened.

Just days after the bodies were sound, two suspects confessed to all eight murders at the cotton fields. About every month, we would snatch them a total of all, take them by force, rape them and later strangle them. That is a translation of a video made by the Horres police in which two men confess to the murders of those eight women. It appears to be a decisive break in the case. When we come back, we find out who they are. After the cotton Fields mass grave was discovered,

two men confessed to the murders. They were bus drivers, Gustavo Siles Mezza, known as La Foca or the Seal, and Javier Garcia Uribe, known as Elio the Match. Their job was to drive the young women who worked in factories to and from work. Bus drivers had access and opportunity to identify when a young woman like Sagari Gonzalez started to commute alone. So the suspects seemed plausible, but

were they actually responsible. Well, when the mass grave was discovered and the suspects confessed, Fredrick Crawford was the FBI Special Agent in charge of El Paso. His office was just a few miles away from the site of the mass grave, and he'd taken a special interest in the murders of women in Juarez and was following this case closely as a potential breakthrough. You could sense that the

pressure was mounting. Political pressure, public pressure, international pressure. The families and relatives and friends of the disappeared women were allowed. Those women would hold the marches, mourning the deaths and drawing attention to that. That was huge. There was a crescendo, it was building. The international community was fully aware. So the pressure must have been enormous on the other side

of the border. Politically. It was in this context that the Office of the Attorney General, known as the PGR, produced two suspects. I remember the PGR announced they had made a rest the bus drivers, the bus drivers atisode. That's them, the bus drivers, and he was showed the bus drivers. They had him in custody. So I have my agents come in, all right, give me the real story and we see what's on there. Immediately, yes, I

wasn't sure. I was thinking seventy thirty it's BS in favor of the BS, and so I wanted the agents tell me what's going on. They said, hey, Boss, I just says they confessed. They said, Boss, don't ask us where we got this, but these are photos of their torsos. And I said, well, what are those what are those round circle marks burn marks? They said, that's cattle Pride's Boss. So forget those confessions. I said, oh my god. Okay, so they're under pressure to solve the crime, and so

they tortured the confessions. I say, well, I'm not one to laugh because many African American was tortured in the Deep South to confess the crimes that he didn't do. Because of that, I know full well it's not reliable

when you tort you somebody. In the very moment that it seemed most likely that the crimes could finally be sold, two innocent men have been co esced into taking the full In the video produced in house by the Wires Police Department, the bus drivers appeared dazed, and later they managed to get in front of the media themselves and show the world what had happened to them. One had a knee swollen to several times its normal size. There were those burn marks that Hardrick described, and there were

also allegations of suffocation and waterboarding. So a few years before Monica Sharif had been pinned with these crimes, why did the authorities go to such lengths with the bus drivers? Every time a mass graves turned up in Wattis of women's bodies. It's been a turning point for the city and it's been a moment when suddenly people paid attention and there was great fear. The police can sort of sweep these individual murders under the rug up until the

point where these mass graves are discovered. So they had to do something to show they were taking these crime seriously, because rightly so, the community was terrified. The first discovery of a mass grave happened in late summer of nineteen ninety five. There were nine bodies found in a deserted terrain in the southern outskirts of Wadez, not far from the airport, in a plot of land called Lotte Bravo, and bravo in Spanish means wild or untamed. Two months later,

Shadif is arrested. He was declared as a primary suspect in the women's murders, and when he was questioned about this, he was stunned. He told the Washington Post. I've hung around with a lot of prostitutes and drunks and topless dancers. I'm not proud of it. I'll admit to my sins, but I never killed anybody. Sharif is the perfect scapegoa,

given his outsider's status and his violent criminal history. The police kept building up cases against him that were subsequently thrown out in court until he died in jail in two thousand and six. In nineteen ninety five, the first mass grave of women in Juarez was discovered, and shortly afterwards Sharif was jailed. In nineteen ninety six, another mass grave of women was discovered, and the authorities claimed Shariff was orchestrating the murders from prison to prove his innocence,

using a gang called the Rebeldez. Now it was two thousand and one and another mass grave had been discovered, and even before seeing the images of torture, Dinah believes that the process of scapegoating that usually followed such discovery was happening all over again. They were obviously given the script. They seemed frightened. To me, you know, to just nonchalantly admit to eight murders is quite a feat. And that again spoke to the idea that here we go again scapegoats.

All right, they have the boilerplate language. Somebody is in charge of right now, the the novella of how this is going to play out. You know, someone in law enforcement, and here's what you're going to say. In period, it was just a matter of like two days after the human remains were gathered and taken to the morgue, and already they had two men that the authorities that were responsible to bus drivers, and we saw that as very suspicious.

I mean, how can you have suspects already five days after the bodies had been discovered at the cotton Field, Diana attended a press conference where she got a sickening sense that history was repeating itself. One of the reporters from white As asked the state attorney general, Jesus he is it possible that Shadif is involved in these murders too? And he turned to the rest of the reporters. This state attorney general is said, you know, we're looking into that.

Here we go again. But they have the perfect scapegoat. He's been in jail this whole time, and they may try to find a way to link him to these bus drivers, and then the bus drivers, of course to the eight murders of these young women. One of the things you can't fail to notice in Juarez is buses, often repurposed American school buses which are everywhere and which I used to transport maquila workers to and from their jobs.

When you and I went to downtown Juarez. We went to Mina Street, which is where many of the young women were last seen alive, but also the central bus exchange in Juarez. So it's easy to see how bus drivers might have the access or the opportunity to kidnap, abduct, and kill women. How much of that drove the authority's

decision to focus on these two men. There is evidence to support the notion that the victims were scouted and selected in the same way it appears the scapegoats were also scouted and selected because they themselves had vulnerabilities that

made them less able to defend themselves. And why bus drivers, Well, it so happened that before the cotton Fields, a woman had survived an attack by a bus driver on her way home from work, and so bus drivers were already seen as an enemy in the public's eye, and so police just kind of picked up on that threat and arrested two more bus drivers, saying these guys are responsible for the deaths of those women found dumped in the

cotton field. You could say they were easy targets, just like Sharif we don't hear as much about the individuals who are falsely accused of committing the crimes, and one of those who was accused was the bus driver named Javier Garcia Uribe no relation to me. I went digging through news archives around the time they were arrested, and I came across this article written by a reporter named Minervacanto, and she traveled to Hawadis and spent several days with

the bus driver's wife. Her name is Miriam Garcia. The couple they have two children, and so one night in two thousand and one, all of a sudden, they are surrounded by armed men whose faces are covered with Halloween masks, and they threaten Javier, Miriam and their two kids and eventually take Kavier, stuff him in a car and take him away while Miriam protests, but she's really helpless to

do anything these men are armed. She spends the next three days desperately searching for her husband, just like the mothers are searching for the daughters. The next time that Miriam sees her husband is on television confessing to the murder of these eight women who were found in the cotton field. Miriam, just like Baola, She's desperate to come to the rescue of her husband, who she firmly believes

is being scapegoated. On one of the Governor's visits to Wattis, she manages to push her way to the front of the crowd and denounces her husband's arrest and please with the governor, show me one shread of evidence, one shread of evidence to prove my husband's guilt. And she surrounded and moved away from the governor. Just the brazenness by which this is all playing out that inspires this passion, in these rage and these loved ones that are like, how dare you? How dare you? And they call him

out in these very passionate public ways. All of this scapegoating raises a very serious question. Why would the authorities do it? Well, they're trying to protect the real killers all along, and if so, how could the killers have

so much power over the authorities. When we come back, we hear from Oscar Mines about some strange details of the cotton Field crime scene that revealed the extent of what the killers might be capable of, and Heredrik Crawford takes the case to the very top of the FBI in whirez the women's murders and scapegoating seemed to be two sides of the same coin, but not every official was content to let the true killers go free, and before the bus drivers confessed, Oscar Minez was generating some

telling leads at the crime scene about a sinister network responsible for the murder. We started working on now Thursday. By Sunday, the attorney of the state gave up press interviews, saying that he had apprehended the murders and that the whole day victims have been identified. What I mean, we're just in the process of I mean, those are not the guys. This is not their profile I'm looking for.

It was clear from Dinah's reporting that at least one of the ways the victims were selected using Echo computer schools was highly methodical, and Oscar saw clear signs that the way the women in the cotton field had been killed and dumped was also organized. Who could be capable of these kinds of crimes and why would they leave bodies in such a brazen spot. Those were the questions on Oscar's mind as he worked the crime scene. Then all of a sudden he became aware of something suspicious

and disconcerting. I noticed that there were these men with nice cars, clean and shape, and everything in Bermudas and they were very happy. I mean they seem suspicious. I mean,

these people were too quickly to arrive there. And if you had to guess who they were, these people they don't have like a ninety five yeard in that you know, and like so I don't know, the fact that these sharply dressed men could turn up to the crime scene suggested they didn't have an office job or a factory job, and also wanted to learn more about who they might be. I took picture with the telescopic lens, and I took

the photographs of the license plates. Like I said, their leads that you follow for reasons that will become clear. Oscar wasn't able to follow up on that lead, But the men weren't the only unexplained presence at the crime scene. There were a lot of areas of research in this case that could have led to something relevant. Bosom was promising.

I believe there was connection with some construction companies because the second globle of bodies, the ones who were buried, they were buried under rubble, and it was enough material to cover the bodies. You need like a dump truck to do that. The people who do this have access to equipment for a constructure company, you can identify that

where their rubble came from. The cotton field had so many promising leads, the connection between the victims, the license plates of the men who turned up at the crime scene, and then there's this rubble from a construction site. But the authorities never pursued those lines of investigation because the bus drivers had already confessed. Then the crime scene gets even weirder. The families, in their demand for justice and Monica are one of the key engines that keeps pressure

up on the authorities in Huarez. What do the families do about this crime scene? Three months after the cotton field discovery, a group of a volunteers and international reporters went back to the scene of the crime to do a sweep at the request of the families. One of those volunteers was an American professor who describes how they lined up and combed the lot in one long, single row.

They carried sticks with pointed ends and were instructed to put anything they found in a plastic bag, And it turns out they found quite a lot women's underwear, book bags, purses, a high heeled shoe, clumps of hair, But the most significant thing they found that day was a pair of overalls. A teenage boy found them in a plastic bag, and one of the mothers saw them, and she ran over there and took those overalls in her arms. It turns out they belonged to her daughter, Claudia, who was turned

away from the makila for being late. One of the students captured that moment in a photograph. It shows this mother sobbing, clutching the overalls, embracing them as if they were her daughter. What's odd about this sweep is that it happens three months after the bodies were discovered, and nobody has been able to explain how those items got there, especially the overalls, and how they could have been there

this whole time without anybody discovering them sooner. This wasn't the first time evidence had turned up in suspicious circumstances. In the days after the cotton Field discovery, Oskaminez received a rice visit agent comes to my office and I need you to put this in the evidence of the case. And I said, no, dissent order by the Attorney General. I was saying, no, if he wants to do it. I skim to send bread in order. Oscar was being asked to plant evidence by a state official, and he

was pushing back. What evidence was he asking you to plan? Apparently there were drugs and Braley hairs. I didn't even open the back because when the Attorney General gave the press conference, he said that this buzz driv drug addicts and they have found evidence in their van that the girls have been abducted there with the band. I believe it was drugs, and then some kind of evidence connecting

the disease to the vehicle. Whoever it is, who doesn't want the truth of these murders to come to night. I want to stop at death threats or even torture. They also seem to have some sort of swam over the police and the Attorney General's office, and Oscar's resistance wasn't going unnoticed. I mean I received treads. I was careful. I didn't went to at night during that time. I'm yes, you know, but I didn't study or prepared to plant evidence.

You know what I mean. It's like, but ask you the way you tell this to us, you say it come okay, very nonchalantly. Well, at that time I was very angry. I don't tend to get scared, geted to get angry. So I was very angry. And when you're angry, you don't stop to think clear of the consequences. What was it important to you to put your job at the least and at the most your safety on the line in this particular case, I mean, just because my jab is to get to the truth of the case.

And also if we're talking about a serial killer or killers, or a group acting in this way, if you close a case with a scapegoat, this is not the end of it, and he's going to continue and continue and continue. But the order was coming from a powerful place, and when you don't obey those who are politically powerful, you tend to suffer the consequence I had to I quit.

I tried to protect the file when the file went to the Josh is more difficult to manipulate that when I decided to present my resignation later, But like I said, I was out anyways. It was a matter of men as probably Oscar Health Firm, not just because of principle, but for very practical purposes. He knew the bus drivers would have to be tried, and he wanted to make it as hard as possible to secure a conviction, hoping that that would force the authorities to lead a real

search for the guilty parties. If you see the file, the original file, there is not a single evidence that connects the bus drivers to the crime. There is no evidence that the victims that the state says belong to. There's no proof of that. And the only proof you find is that this guys were torture. That was a fact, even though it was clearly a case that was manipulated

about the state. Even though Oscar was essentially forced to resign within days of the discovery of a crime scene that he felt could finally have exposed who was killing the woman in Huarez, his protection of the bus driver's file, his refusal to plant evidence, was consequential. It made the state's case much harder to prove, especially when a prominent father and son team of lawyers, Mario Escobedo Senior and Junior,

took them honest clients his dinner again. They were probably the first lawyers to be so open about what they understood about the femicides in Huais, and they started to mention that there were people getting away with murder, but this resistance to the official narrative bring heat Mightio became aware that he was being followed. He called his father

in the cell phone and said to help me, help me. Meanwhile, across the border in El Paso, Modred Crawford couldn't believe what he was seeing, and he was more determined than ever to do something about the crimes. I'm stunned and amazed at the response of our colleagues in Mexico to

an enormous crime on my numbing cry. Andrew couldn't intervene directly in the affairs of another sovereign nation, but in two thousand and two he visited the jay At Cahoover Building in Washington, DC because he wants to get approval to keep digging from his boss, Robert Mueller. Oh, yes, director Robert Muller. And I was in the director's office

on the seventh floor. We call it Mahogany Row, all the mahogany tables, and I expressed concern that my outspoken activities interaction with my colleagues on the other side of the border. I was concerned that I was doing something that they did not find to be in the best entrance of the FBI and Deputy Director Bruce Gappard said just keep doing what you're doing, and the director just

nodded affirmatively. It wasn't long before Hendrik Crawford clearly understood that something even darker was happening in Juarez than his initial hypothesis about a cross borders serial killer. And although the bus drivers were in jail, the true killers remained free. So as the investigations continued on both sides of the border, so did the killings of women in Huirez. In our next episode, death threats against investigators graduate into outright murder.

Imoz Veloschen and see you next time, que Halla Felicia Forgotten. The Women of Juarez is co hosted by Me Monica and me oswald Oshan Forgotten is executive produced by Me and Mangesh Hatigia. Our producers are Julian Weller and Katrina Norvelle. 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 Hablom and Hakkabo Libermann. Additional music by Aaron Kaufman. Special thanks to Cecilia Vai and Minerva Canto, whose research and reporting contributed to this episode.