Zeffi Trevino was a normal teenage girl growing up outside of Dallas, Texas, with a life that revolved around family, church, and softball. When Zeffie got to high school, though, a boyfriend introduced her to drugs and then broke her heart. Then nineteen year old Philip Baldo Negro swooped in through social media to pray on this vulnerable high school sophomore.
Bald Negro introduced himself to Zeffie's parents as a friend of Zeffie's from school, and soon used psychological manipulation, violence, and intimidation to drag Zeffi into the dark underworld of sex trafficking. Alarming changes in Zeffi's behavior prompted Henry and Crystal Trevino to install a tracking app on their daughter's phone, but this didn't stop bald Negro from using Zeffie's body and her misery for his profit. Then, on August two men were lured to an apartment with the promise of
sex with Zeffi. The men were robbed instead by Balda Negro and an accomplice, and a fight broke out, resulting in Balda Negro shooting and killing one of the would be child rapists. This is going to be a first for this podcast, an interview that takes place before trial, before a grave mistake is made, where I speak with
Zeppi's lawyer, Justin Moore and her mother, Crystal Travino. Zeffi is currently out of Juvie awaiting trial while the Dallas County District Attorney tries to charge her for her sex traffickers crime, compounding what has already been an unbelievably tragic experience by potentially sending Zeffy to spend the rest of her life in prison. This is Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom. Welcome back to Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flam. That's me.
I'm your host, of course, and today we are going telling a story that is happening in real time and beyond that. It's a story that is so disturbing. You know, I think that anyone who's a parent while then may be hard to hear. It's something that you need to hear. They're gonna be action steps at the end of it, and there are things we can do to make a difference.
We're gonna be telling the story today of a young teenage girl named Zeffie Trevino, who was sex trafficked then re victimized by the authorities at a time when they should have and I believe did no better. First, I want to introduce to you and emerging giant in the defense community. Justin Moore, who is Zeffie's lawyer, is here, suggin. Welcome to Ronthal Conviction. Thank you, Jason, And today with us is one of the most courageous and strong women
I've ever had the privilege to know. Zeffie's mom, Crystal Trevino is here. So Crystal, thank you for being here with us today. Thank you so much, Jason. So, this is a story of a young girl from I'm gonna is call it a normal family. What whatever normal is. This is a nuclear family in a town in Texas outside of Dallas. This took place in Grand Prairie, Texas, which is between Dallas and Fort Worth, just a suburb city. Tell us about Zeffie growing up and about the family
situation prior to this disastrous chain of events. Like you said, we're a normal family. She was into sports, softball, specifically volleyball. She loves music, she loves to sing. She was just kind of one of those kids that people were drawn to, very charismatic, laughing, having fun, and really supported by her siblings. You know, she has three older siblings, two sisters and a brother, her church family and the community, my husband and myself softball coaches, so just what I would consider
everybody's normal family. And as she entered into high school a young may and her freshman year introduced her to drugs and the toxic relationship, and so Zeffie struggled with that her freshman year. Going into her sophomore year, which was her sixteenth birthday year, we saw so many changes, not just physically, mentally starting to have a lot of anxiety and withdraw from her family, and to see her sleep a lot, and see herly's weight and just what
I would consider vulnerable. You know, she was trying to overcome all these things that had happened from the previous boyfriend. And we didn't realize, but she meets Philip through social media. Um May of twenty nineteen, we met Philip in our home. When we met him, he just did not seem the type of person that Zeph and I would normally be associated with. Very quiet, very strange. She didn't introduce him as her boyfriend just as a friend, and asked how
they knew each other. He said through cool and also said that he was seventeen at the time. My daughter was sixteen. So and of course we're talking about nineteen year old Philip bald Negro who had already I guess, identified her as a potential target and was already sort of using the various mind games and other coercive tactics
to sort of draw her into his web. You know, the way this thing unraveled, it reminds me as much as anything of the movie Cape Fear with Robert de Niro, because this Bald the Negro character, you know, began keeping Zeffie out all hours of the night. The Trevinos, to their credit, Henry and Crystal, it's all the tracking gapp on her phone, because they obviously knew that things were not right with this new person in her life. Little could they have known just how bad it was. But
then one night she didn't come home at all. The tracking app was deleted and her phone had been turned off. You know, we had the Life three six app for kids on there that turns off social media tracks. But when it's deleted, you know, your hands are tied. They communicated through text and I always thought that it was my daughter texting. I can't even say that for sure now that it wasn't Helm texting saying that the movie was over and that they would be home after eating
a small bite, and and then she's gone. It was investigated as a missing person's case. She came home two days later, hadn't eaten anything, and was she was wearing clothes that had not been provided to her by the family. So all the alarm bells are going off. You know, my gut wish she was on drugs and and to see your child declined the way that she did, it was very hard to understand what was going on because it was happening so fast. What did you do at
that point? And what could you advise other parents to do in that situation? You know you're trusting and and and I'll say this, Jason, that you know I've worked in a school district, so I always saw kids differently, I guess in my eyes. So I never wanted to just point blank be like this kid is no good. Um. But I look back on it now and I think I felt it. I knew it, And so as a parent, if your gut is telling you this is not a good thing. This is not a good idea. They shouldn't
have gone out to the movies. Go with your gut feeling. I'm not sure what could have been done other than you know, for parents, I would suggest be on that social media on their phones. Do whatever you can. And I hate to say this, but they don't have privacy. Do whatever you have to do to protect your kid. The predator that entered my daughter's life looked like the normal teenage person and was able to manipulate, threaten, change her, change everything that was happening in our life and in
her life. At the time. What I understood sex trafficking to be looked totally different than what has happened in our family. I always pictured the movie Taken, where your kid is kidnapped and taken across you know, countries, and it's happening right here, right here in America, right here in Texas, and it can happen to any young girl that's vulnerable or is trusting a young boy. And we
know now that this was a very violent guy. And this is I think a tactic that is not uncommon, which is that the trafficker will once they identify and they coerce their victim into this web, they will then use threats of violence or actual violence against them, but also against their family. So they put the child in an impossible situation where they're saying, look, if you try to run away or you try to tell the authorities about us or whatever, we're gonna harm your family. We
might kill your family. And when you're sitting there in that situation and you recognize that this is a person who is capable of extreme violence, in fact you're on the receiving end of it, there's every reason that you should take those threats seriously. And that's exactly what Zeffie
was experiencing. And then things got really insane. On August three, two thousand nineteen, and around four thirty pm, twenty four year old Carlos Matrio and another man went to an apartment on the three block of Northeast fifth Street in Grand Prairie, Texas. They were lured there by the promise of sex with Zeffie. Bald the Negro and an accomplice, Jesse Martinez, surprised and robbed the men. A fight broke out,
resulting in Bald the Negro shooting and killing Mario. And I do want to turn to you, Justin's if you can explain how this turned into it turned into with Zeffie being charged with capital murder for a shooting that no one claims that she committed. No one. When the Trevinos reached out to me and they explained the details of this case, it was something that really grabbed me immediately. And I can't speak to specifics because I'm bound to
confidentiality laws regarding miners. But what I can talk about are the facts that are incontrovertible at the moment. What we do know is that Balda Negro has admitted to being the shooter. And we do know that the two men that one of which was murdered, but the other one that was assaulted by Balda Negro and his accomplice, they were there to purchase sex from a minor child. You know, these facts are incontrovertible. Everybody knows that these
are the facts. There's not one person on any side of this that claims that she shot a gun held a gun. I mean, here's a young girl in a place that she's not in of her own free will, and then a dispute breaks out in the middle of a robbery that results in a murder. So what was she supposed to put on some sort of superhero cape and try to stop them. I mean, she was there because she was in the process of being kidnapped, and she was being held there so that somebody could make
money by selling her body. And I hate saying it, I hate hearing myself say it, but that's what it was. So then this murder takes place and Zeppy, a victim, a child sex trafficking victim, is now being charged as a perpetrator. What has been widely reported was that Zeffy was in pre trial custody in the Dallas County Juvenile Facility for a year awaiting trial, and obviously that's spilled into the COVID nineteen pandemic. I definitely want to commend you, Jason.
A lot of the attention that you brought this case allowed for Zeffy to be released pre trial, along with the legal work too. But I actually got worried about this from Crystal and Henry, Zeffie's parents. The Dallas District Attorney's office is actually trying to certify her as an adult, so if she gets certified as an adult. She's going to be facing life in prison. And if she takes this to trial, and god forbid, loses at trial, she's
facing conviction as an adult for being a victim. It's a failed social policy in which we allow a young child who has been victimized severely to be placed in this position, to be doubly victimized by the criminal justice system. She was sixteen, she was a child. There were four grown men in that place. She was the only one that was a child. She is a victim. She was being sex traffic. She did not pull the trigger, she
did not beat them, she did not steal anything. I really have a hard time understanding why my daughter is in this situation. Any time I read about a state trying to decide whether to try a child as an adult. Who gets to decide whether a child is an adult? Is that like deciding whether up is down? A child is a child. When you're sixteen, you don't know shit
about anything. The world is still a mystery. So how do the state of Texas get to even say, on a broad legal principle, justin that that this child is an adult. We've decided that she's an adult as a
general principle. As a broad legal principle, states, especially the state of Texas, I can try a child as an adult when it comes to the severity of the crime or if the child, through a diagnostic exam, has shown themselves to a mental type of nature that implies some level of criminality that goes up and beyond what a child should exhibit. I mean, I think it's very abstract stuff. At the end of the day, children or children, if you're under the age of eighteen, you can't contract to
do anything with your life. You need a parent's consent. But yet when it comes to the criminal justice system, they completely ignore this element when it comes to the mental state or the men's raya of a of a young child. So as a broad principle, I mean, it's well settled that, you know, children can be tried as adults in certain context, but practically speaking, I think this policy should be eradicated from society. I mean, you know, also you have to look at the legacy of racism
when it comes to trying children as adults. I mean it comes from this notion of typically back in Jim Crow era, in which the criminal justice system endeavored to try young black men as adults to answer for crimes in a very serious way that provided retribution or some type of blood lust. One of the cases that haunts me is the case of George Stinny Jr. Right, George Stinney Jr. Of course, he was found innocent years and
years later. In nineteen forty four, was a fourteen year old boy who was charged with murdering two little white girls. His trial took two hours, the jury deliberated for ten minutes. That he was executed. He had to sit on a fucking telephone book because he was so small in order for them to even electrocute him. And of course he has been exonerated. But a lot of good that does. So that goes right back to your point. That's the that's the grotesque history of treating children like adults in
our criminal legal system. There's no other place in society where a sixteen year old is considered an adult. The fact that we have a young child who was a victim of sex trafficking now possibly being exposed to life in prison. I just don't understand why that's the policy here. I don't understand why Dallas County is pursuing this. You know, We had public defenders at the very beginning of this case and they told us she's not being certified as an adult. She is certified as a juvenile. So fast
forward a year. How do you determine someone was a child then and an adult then? And no one has been able to answer that for me. If you're sixteen, you're sixteen, you're a child. How do you say she's an adult. I don't understand that you want to certify a child sex trafficking victim as an adult. It's almost perverted in a way. It's almost you're saying that, no, she was actually voluntarily selling herself for sex. And we know as children you came and enter a contract for
anything at a at that age. So I don't want to sound like a broken record, but no child can enter into a contract, especially a sex contract, But certifying them as an adult kind of counteracts that well settled legal principle. Where are we now and what can people do about it? I think people can join in the
advocacy that you have been doing. An other folks, other thought leaders in the space, have been joining in on getting the word out and lifting our voices and showing the powers that be here in Dallas County that this isn't right is going to be a very important element of assisting Zeffie in overcoming these charges. To donate to the legal defense, go to directly to dot org. There's also a petition that you can sign on change dot org. And there's a form letter to the d A that
you can sign on Action network dot org. And of course follow the hashtag free is that on Instagram you can also get updates from me at It's Jason Flam. That's my Instagram at It's Jason Flam. Will have all of these action steps linked in the bio pressure breaks pipes and Jason, thank you for everything that you've done.
We really really appreciate this interview. We appreciate the support, you know, Selena Gomez, Kim Kardashian, Cintoyo Brown, who herself has gone through a tremendous story of her own, everyone that has supported Zeffie um since they've heard this story. There are many other victims that are out there. They
need a voice, they need help. Every voice, every post, Instagram, letter, written, phone call, all of those things help not only Zephania but the legal system kind of take a closer look at what's happening, especially here in Texas, and to help the d A recognize the truth of this case. It's almost like we're so ashamed as a country that this actually goes on that we don't even talk about it.
And I'm glad you mentioned Cintoya Lisa Montgomery. Of course, there's a wonderful story the flip side of a woman named Tara Simmons, a dear friend of mine who was sex trafficked as a young teenage girl, was in prison and now has ended up graduating at the top of a class from the University of Washington law School and is now an elected representative in the state of Washington. And I'm so freaking proud of her, and I hope that the future is gonna look, you know, as bright
for Zeffie, and that she's gonna get through this. Hopefully the attorney will drop the charges and basically acknowledged that this was a mistake. So now we turned to the closing of our show, which is I think the best part every week. It's my favorite part. It's a part we call closing arguments. First of all, I thank each of you. Justin Moore, Defense Attorney and Social Justice advocate,
thank you for being here. And Crystal Trevino, thank you for you know, showing us all what courage looks like. And and now I get to turn my microphone off and we my headphones on and just listen as each of you can share your thoughts on anything you want to share your thoughts on, and Justin let's have you go first, if that's okay, and save Crystal for a last thank you Jackson. I mean, in conclusion, I think
this case is the canary in the cave. Sex trafficking is pervasive throughout our society, and sex trafficking including miners is equally pervasive. If you want to put it into this, we have to start with the criminal justice system and how it treats victims that are placed in these precarious positions. The criminal justice system endeavors not to acknowledge that victimhood.
We're going to further stigmatize these folks who are involved and ensnared in these trauma bonds with these traffickers, and we're not going to empower them to step up and speak out about the abuse that they are a part of. So we need people to advocate for a criminal justice system that has compassion but also nuanced when it looks at sex trafficking victims. Until we have that, this is going to continue to be an issue and we need
to start protecting folks who can't protect themselves. Crystal, Well, again, thank you for giving us this opportunity to speak. Dallas County. The legal system in general has not even acknowledged that my child was a victim, and she continues to be victimized. Sex trafficking doesn't look like what we all have in our head or what we've been told or what's been
on the news. Yes, those are very real situations, but sex trafficking can be the young adult next door, most victims in any situation of abuse, or people that you know and people that you have come to trust. I ask that there be some resources for parents when this is all that and done to help recognize signs, because it is heartbreaking and it is every much a part of our life from here on out. I've said this before that this is the battle before us right now
to get her free. But we will continue to battle and will continue to heal from every aspect of this, from the law, from her being in juvenile, from her being victimized, for her being sex trafficked and sexually abused. Thank you for saying we're courageous, but I'll be honest, it is truly by our faith and God that has held us and has kept us. My prayer would be that the legal system recognized my daughter as a sex traffic victim and they change the law because she's not
the only one I know that. I know there are other young women and probably men that have gone through this. And when a sex traffic victim or victim in general speaks out and you do nothing, you're literally saying they don't matter. Everyone, please keep us in prayer, Um, pray for the d A to open his eyes and recognize and do something about it and dropped this case. Don't forget to give us a fantastic review wherever you get
your podcasts. It really helps. And I'm a proud donor to the Innocence Project and I really hope you'll join me in supporting this very important cause and helping to prevent future wrongful convictions. Go to Innocence Project dot org to learn how to donate and get involved. I'd like to thank our production team, Connor Hall and Kevin wardis the music on the show. Is by three time OSCAR
nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction and on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction podcast. Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flam is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts and association with Signal Company Number one