Caught in the Web: The Murders Behind Zona Divas (2024) s01e02 Episode Script

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ZONA DIVAS
ZONA DIVAS CONDEMNS HUMAN TRAFFICKING
HERE ARE MY RATINGS:
BODY: 5 IT'S VERY DIFFERENT FROM THE PICS.
FACE: 7 NOT BAD,
BUT ISN'T AS BEAUTIFUL AS YOU SAID.
He said, "Fine. I don't care."
"In the remaining 15 minutes,
I'm going to give you a very bad review."
Okay, well, I'll upload the review.
You should've told me.
So then, I'll upload it tonight
or tomorrow afternoon. Okay?
There were some pages
where there were reviews of the girls.
There were a lot.
Many men that uploaded reviews
of this or that girl.
These reviews are made by horny men,
who like sex,
and sought out sex, and all that.
But I was more interested
in something else.
I was more interested in knowing
that the girl was real.
Those forum posters,
who were the real stars,
were the ones who'd say
if you looked like your photos,
if it was worth the cost.
Or they'd be the ones to bury you
in the fifth layer of hell.
The ones who called themselves
the "sacred cows" said,
"If you don't sleep with me,
you're no one. You're nothing."
"So, no one will hire you."
"But if I leave you a review,
you'll be okay."
People who had the economic capacity
to see several women.
Basically, they became a user,
began to leave reviews,
those reviews began to be verified.
They'd sit behind a computer
to share this dream that they'd lived in
for an hour or so,
and that caused them to interact
and eventually have annual meetings.
In their small fantasy world
of alter egos,
they believed they were in control.
That was already
a whole other level of violence.
They had certain patterns
to give this reliability
to their commentary
and build up their image.
REAL AND OBJECTIVE REVIEWS.
JANUARY 12, IVANNA
WILD ORAL!
It's horrible right now.
They've posted atrocious things about me.
Sometimes they make things up.
There was a moderator
who was, supposedly, impartial
but he knew everything
and was in everything.
I think he was the webmaster.
In other words, the owner of Zona Divas.
WERE, AND CONTINUE TO BE,
DETAINED BY IMMIGRATION.
Okay, love.
I'll check on Zona Divas right now
to see your photos.
I love your age, 19 years old.
I've been looking
for a young woman like you.
Aside from the ticket and the photos,
it's an additional $750
because that's what
they charge me at immigration.
Basically, the $500
that you're going to get,
or that I could send you
to give at immigration,
but without the risk
of them sending you back,
because things are really tough right now.
Like I told her, I promise
You'll get in a lot of debt,
but I promise that I'll get you work.
THE PORTAL
MEXICO CITY
In 2001, divas.com was born,
where the sexual services
of many women are advertised,
mainly from South American countries.
And this website, divas.com,
operated as a sex trafficking agency,
according to investigations
by the authorities themselves.
In 2007, more or less,
they were able to make the first arrests
of the founders of divas.com,
Ignacio Antonio Santoyo Cervantes,
or Soni,
and Antonio Villeda Martínez, or Toni.
These arrests take place,
but they are eventually released.
They decide to change
their modus operandi.
So, they change to zonadivas.com,
and, theoretically,
they stick with just the website.
The first thing they do is make
an announcement on zonadivas.com,
an advertisement in which they say
that it is not a sex trafficking website.
The girls just advertise on those portals,
and they're only charged
for the advertising service.
That's why I'm telling you. "I'll give
you the contact so you can talk to Soni."
I'll explain it to him.
Let's see how he can help you.
No way. She can publish
on the basic pages and that's it, dude.
Because I reserve the gold pages
for the agencies that I know.
But for some nobody
just because she acts cute? No.
Basically, the growth of Zona Divas
that occurred from 2010 to 2017,
more or less,
began the wave of femicides
of the girls who advertised
on the Zona Divas portal.
CARACAS, VENEZUELA
My name is Luna.
In 2017, I went to Mexico.
I was advertised on the Zona Divas page.
At that time, I was 19 years old.
I got pregnant at 16 years old.
I have a daughter.
That's when my whole life
started to change.
My mom had a girlfriend
and she put up a post in a story
that was looking for girls
to work outside the country.
Mom wrote her,
gave her all the information,
and told her about me.
"You're going to Mexico,
you'll be in a house with a family."
"To clean houses, take care of kids."
"However, she will
contribute to the ticket."
Obviously, because
we didn't have the resources.
"Little by little, working with her,
you'll pay off the debt."
When I arrived in Mexico,
there was a lot of hustling.
My mom told me
that I'd need to talk to a guy.
He said, "Second one,"
something like that.
Baggage from Flight 723, go to Zone 3.
Come forward, please.
What's the purpose
of your visit to Mexico City?
I'm going to buy materials
for Santería in Tepito.
That's all I said,
he stamped my papers and everything,
and I entered Mexico.
I spoke with the girl
that was supposed to meet me,
I told her, "I'm here."
She said,
"Girl, I can't come get you now."
"Buy a bus ticket to go to Puebla."
She picked me up in a car,
told me to give her my passport,
and that's where it all began.
That's where she told me
that I'd be working with her as an escort.
I said, "I'm not here to do that."
"I came here for something else,
that's what my mom told me."
She said, "No. You came to do this."
"We know about your family,
about your daughter."
She took out a notebook,
and started telling me,
"You're in debt to me."
"Apart from the journey,
you owe me for what we buy at the mall."
"The lingerie, the clothes,
the wig,
plus the photo shoots that we need to do
to upload to the Zona Divas site."
I was called Lucy Teen
on the Zona Divas site.
When we leave the mall,
I'm taken to a house.
And there were two girls.
One was called Dani Elvis,
she was the sister of the boss lady
that brought me and all that.
She was there of her own free will.
There was a man in a car.
He never left.
The boss lady said to me,
"You've got your first service."
"The client wants you to dress like this."
When I get to the motel,
the client meets me.
I didn't want to do anything at all.
The client didn't hit me.
He didn't do anything to me then,
but he was furious since
I didn't want to do what he said to do.
I tried to tell him everything
that had happened to me.
He was very respectful,
but he didn't help me. Not at all.
However, he left the money.
When I got to the house,
the boss lady started to get aggressive,
"Why didn't you do the service?
You have to do just as the client says."
Because, she says,
"That guy's from the agency,
he's testing you
to see if you'll do your job well."
It's very obvious
that it's against their will.
With hidden cameras.
They're constantly looking
at their phones, reporting in.
I'd ask them,
"You don't look very comfortable,
is there a problem?"
"No. It's just that I can't tell you,
because there are dangerous people."
"Best to just leave it,
that we don't talk."
"Don't send me back, they'll hit me."
OFFICE OF THE ATTORNEY GENERAL
MEXICO CITY
Today, that's what
sex trafficking translates to,
modern-day slavery.
The vulnerability,
firstly, is because she's female,
because she's displaced from
her place of origin, if she's foreign.
All these conditions make
a victim of sex trafficking vulnerable,
susceptible to exploitation.
Mexico is a destination, passage,
and generator of trafficking victims.
Many of the people displayed
on the Zona Divas page
recount having first been contacted
by some companion,
personal assistant, or escort agency.
The companion agencies
call themselves "agencies,"
like modeling agencies,
but in reality it's a euphemism,
since they're trafficking agencies
with the purpose of sexual exploitation.
If we see the agencies like a pyramid,
at the top would be the agency owners,
they're the ones
who benefit most economically
from the exploitation of the women.
They have a series of contacts
with immigration
and other types of authority to bribe
in order to allow
the trafficking to go through.
The middlemen are
the ones who find the girls
that live in very vulnerable contexts.
There are girls that know
that they'll be doing sex work,
but on other occasions,
they're deceived and told
they'll be doing another type of work.
Subsequently, the girls
are taken to apartments
where they live in overcrowded conditions
with low health standards.
The receptionists have the physical phones
and they make the appointments.
They have contact
with the hotels they're sent to,
and with the drivers.
The agencies control all their activities
and are watching them.
And many times,
they have these completely exhausting days
in which they have to do
up to ten services a day.
Some agencies are worse than others.
What I did to escape was
to work on my own secretly.
I could save money. I said to the manager,
"If I have the money now,
will you return my things?"
He said, "Yes," and I produced the money.
I paid the debt,
he reluctantly gave me back my things,
and then told me to leave.
And the girls I was living with,
when they saw this,
said, "I also will pay my debt and go."
And the revolution began.
My friend,
the girl I shared the room with,
went and paid her debt.
I was packing my things,
and she came
and started packing her things.
I said to her, "Where are you going?"
She said, "Wherever you're going."
They kept my phone line.
How was I going to work?
So, I went to the phone company,
flirted with the guy there,
and asked him
to help me recover my phone line.
Only then could I keep getting calls
from my profile on the Zona Divas page.
Without my line,
I wouldn't have been able to advertise.
At that moment, I became a freelancer.
As a freelancer,
you have control of everything,
what you earn and what you spend.
I wrote everything down to be organized,
but also for safety.
I wrote, "This guy's crazy,"
"Guy who talks weird,"
"It's crooked," "It's big,"
"I had a great time," or "Never again."
On the days I didn't write anything,
I didn't want to work.
At the agency, there are many situations
in which sex work is forced.
Not everyone realizes it
or sees it as trafficking.
I felt terrible
about everything that was happening.
Sometimes, I didn't even want to remember.
The boss lady, who was always there,
said I'd get used to it,
that I was very young
and they'd always ask a lot of me.
I started to see why people use drugs.
Every time I'd do a service, I'd use.
My back was against the wall,
because I didn't know
what would happen to me if I left,
I didn't have my documents, or money.
Everything was like that. Ugly.
Dani Elvis is the boss lady's sister.
She liked me.
I fell in love with her. We were a couple.
And I could lift the key off of her.
Early one morning, I got up
and saw that the driver wasn't there
and I left the house.
Obviously,
I was really scared, but I said,
"Put this fear aside,
this is your moment."
"Don't think about it."
"If you don't go now,
you won't be able to."
I left the house and I walked.
A taxi came by.
I got in and asked him
to take me to the Venezuelan embassy.
Once we got to Mexico City, he said to me,
"Since today is a holiday,
the Venezuelan embassy is closed."
I said to him,
"No. Take me to the Guadalupe church."
We give thanks,
and also ask that you bless
When I got there, I said,
"I'll request help from the priest."
The priest had me do confession.
I confessed.
I asked him if he could house me,
if I could stay there a night.
And I never saw him again.
I sat there, and never saw him again.
That's when I remembered
that I have a cousin that lives in the US.
I told him what was happening.
He decided to help me.
He said, "Do you have any way
to get a taxi and go to this hotel?"
And I told him, "Yes. I can manage that."
That's where I stayed,
and during the night
There's a phone at the hotel.
I told my cousin, "The phone is ringing."
I was afraid.
Was it them trying to contact me?
And he said to me,
"No, answer. It's a lawyer calling."
She took me
to the attorney general's office.
I went with the police to the house.
When we got to the house,
the boss lady showed messages with my mom
saying that my responsibilities there
were at my mom's request.
"Your mom knows
everything that's happening."
"She agreed. If not, why are you here?"
They told me they could send Interpol
to pick up my mom,
and I explained my situation,
that she has my daughter,
so they'd understand me.
I couldn't let them pick up my mom.
When I got back to Venezuela,
my mom was shocked.
"What's she doing here?"
What I said to her was,
"I'm leaving, with my daughter."
I didn't hear from her again.
Nothing.
There are girls who manage
to leave this first trafficking circle.
There are then two paths they can take.
One, they become freelancers.
And the other,
they start their own agencies,
being much kinder
than the traffickers who brought them.
But in the majority of cases,
even when they start their own agencies,
the girls are unable to leave sex work.
This is my last year whoring, my friend.
I need to save money
because I don't want to do this.
I'm saving because
I want to buy a house, a car.
Let's show the house Kenni bought for mom.
She gifted it to her on Mother's Day.
She didn't want to work anymore.
She started to sell merchandise.
Purses, shoes. Stuff like that.
Then she started selling food.
She tried.
I remember when my older sister texted me
and said, "I have news for you."
"Tell me."
"You're gonna be an aunt again."
And I say, "No, you're crazy!
How can you be pregnant again?"
She says to me, "Not me."
"It's Kenni, my love."
She calls me saying, "Guess what?"
I say, "What?"
She said, "I'm five months pregnant."
"The godparents will be Massiel,
and, obviously, you, Machi,
because you're my favorite. Both of you."
She was so happy.
So happy.
And my mom called me crying.
She told me Kenni wasn't doing well.
I approach the hospital entrance.
The nurse says,
"We saved the baby, but he's very sick."
"He needs intensive care,
artificial respiration,
but we don't have capacity."
"You should look for a private site,
or another public center
that can take the baby."
At the clinic we found,
the daily cost
to care for the baby was $1000.
So, obviously,
it was completely out of our hands.
The doctor said,
"Every hour that passes is crucial."
"This child is already finding it
very difficult to breathe."
The sun came up, we hadn't slept.
We'd been looking
for somewhere to take the baby.
And they told me, "The baby died."
He couldn't hold on any longer.
He lasted hours.
She felt guilty.
She cried and said to me,
"It's my fault he died."
"Because I didn't have the money
to pay for the baby's care,
because the doctor kept saying
the baby could be saved."
She named the baby Mauricio.
So heavy.
Venezuela is hard.
I told her I didn't want
her to go to Mexico,
that Mexico had become very violent
and there'd been many femicides,
and that there they were, as we say here,
they were butchers.
Not to go.
She said she was going,
she could take care of herself.
She's like that.
And with a recent cesarean section,
she got up again
to work.
What can I say? I couldn't even hold him
because he was in the incubator.
I never held him in my arms.
I couldn't even afford to eat.
On the 24th, I had sex because
I couldn't even buy a ham sandwich.
Horrible.
That's why I'm here.
Thank God I'm back in Mexico.
Coming here is fantastic.
Beauty, I'd love to go to Mexico.
Couldn't you contact me there?
I want to go to Mexico.
Just for like, three or four months.
I mean, get me a flight,
Kenni, to get to where you are.
Kenni, I want to go to Mexico, girlfriend.
I swear.
I'll give you the pass to stay six months.
I'll also tell you where to rent
without papers. I'll tell you everything.
You know I'm not bad,
everyone can do what they want
and everyone has the right to rise up,
if you get my meaning.
Explain it all to me
and let me find some girlfriends
to rise up with.
The journey costs $1000.
You have to pay the fee
to go directly through immigration,
which is 800.
Plus the photos, which are like 300.
The debt comes to around 2000.
But you're not doing that, girlfriend.
In just six days,
I only have $500 to pay back.
Take a picture wearing the clothes
you'll be traveling in and send it to me
because I'll need to send it
to the guy that will let you into Mexico.
Going through immigration is a sham,
like a movie.
Really, you're going to be relaxed,
they'll make a sign for you, girlfriend.
I'll give you the contact info
for the owner of the page,
the ice cream father.
You meet with him, and, you know.
You upload the image yourself.
Everyone knows the situation in Venezuela,
that we lack more every day here.
Everything is very difficult.
This propels many youths to go through
whatever journey outside the country
to support our families here.
That's why they work doing
whatever they need to.
Whatever earns them the most.
No one did it to feed their ego
or live a luxurious life.
It was always the same pattern.
The situation in the country isn't good,
and if none of us goes
and stands up for them, no one will.
They were very popular.
Their popularity was incredible.
They were at the very top
of the "top ranking."
From this group,
I have a video that shows Kenni Finol,
the Argentine girl, I don't remember
her name, Andreína, and Génesis.
Three dead girls and me.
To me, Génesis was more than a cousin.
I'd always say to her, "You're my mother,
my sister, my daughter."
She was my best friend. My confidant.
She said Mexico was her home.
She felt even more at home
in Mexico than Venezuela.
HEIGHT: 5' 3"
WEIGHT: 114 LBS.
MEASUREMENTS: 35-24-37
EYES: BROWN
LA GUAIRA, VENEZUELA
How beautiful is this paradise!
A little video so you see it's not staged.
Génesis was born here
in La Guaira, in Macuto.
She was so lovely.
Well, she is my daughter.
Very humanitarian.
If you needed something, she'd be there.
Even if it left her with nothing,
she'd give it.
She always wanted to be famous,
since she was little.
She lived in heels.
She'd put on my heels and do her makeup.
She wanted to do pageants, like me.
She reigned here in La Guaira.
It was very hard for me
to accept her lifestyle.
As a mother, I had to either
accept it or lose my daughter.
I chose to accept her.
As a family, we had the duty
and obligation of supporting her.
It was never a secret,
not for me or my family.
so itty bitty.
Momma's beautiful little princess
and me.
Génesis would always say
she didn't want to die
and leave her daughter without a home.
She worked, she saved, she fought.
We were diligent, we looked,
we saw an infinite number of houses,
and she found what she found.
Her words after signing were,
"I can die in peace."
"I can die in peace since
my daughter won't be on the streets."
"My daughter will
have something of her own."
"I fought for something.
I did something. I left her something."
She had completely left that work.
For three months beforehand,
she didn't work.
I went to one of those Santería rituals,
so to speak.
I remember her guardian angel Oshun
getting in my face and saying,
"I don't want my daughter
doing that work any longer."
"The day she does it,
I won't allow her to suffer
on this Earth any longer. I'll take her."
And that day
happened.
I go to Mexico, to Querétaro,
and I stay at her house with the girl.
the mommies, Grandma.
Now we'll have a great fall
On November 15th,
I went to see her,
and instead of going to Querétaro,
I went to Acapulco.
And she said, "We can't see you yet,
I have to go work."
NOVEMBER 17TH, 2017
I said to her,
"Remember what Oshun told me."
She said, "I'm not doing anything wrong,
I won't hurt anyone."
I texted her at like 12, 12:30.
I was free and I texted her.
Génesis never got the messages.
And she doesn't show up.
She didn't show up.
And it was very strange.
MEXICO CITY
The next day,
she doesn't respond,
but I had her location.
I traveled like four hours to Puebla
and arrived at the exact hotel.
PUNTA PALMAS
I got to the room,
I collected her bag, all her things.
She didn't have her jacket.
The jacket I knew she'd packed
was in there.
Behind a vase was her personal phone.
I said, "It's her phone."
I asked the girl at the motel.
She said, "I know nothing."
"Aren't there cameras?"
"No. We don't even have their names."
I never thought it had been a client.
In my mind, it was,
"They drugged her, hit her,
but she'll show up beaten."
"She doesn't know where she is."
A very good friend of mine said,
"Honey, why don't you check the morgues?"
For me, that was
On November 17th, 2017,
at 12:50 p.m.,
I told one of the maids
that the people in room 107
weren't answering the phone
and their time was up.
I showed them the registry.
At 10:30 p.m., a couple had checked in
under the name Oscar Torres.
Here in Mexico City,
the body of Génesis Gibson was found.
The young Venezuelan disappeared
in Puebla on November 17th.
The attorney general reports
that she died by strangulation
and that she had
puncture wounds in her abdomen.
When we were in Mexico City,
after three days, I think,
we went to look at the hospitals,
at the morgue.
I think she was
at the first morgue we went to.
They showed me the photos,
I saw the tattoo.
"It's my daughter."
SHE GOES ON A DATE IN PUEBLA
AND WINDS UP DEAD IN CDMX
THE TRAGEDY OF GÉNESIS
I said, "How is it possible
for her to be dead in Mexico City
when she disappeared from Puebla?"
"They're different areas."
"Different, but the same country."
The worst moment was when they said,
"Someone has to identify her."
I was with my aunt, and I went
I said, "Let me do it."
There was the body
in a gray, dark blue sheet.
And when they uncovered her,
I saw her.
I said, "It is and isn't her."
"It's her body, but that's not my cousin."
We put ourselves in their shoes.
I mean, the funerary costs are high.
She's a foreigner.
Her mom was here.
This family was in a horrible situation.
I remember arriving to the funeral home,
seeing Génesis's coffin
and her mom sitting there alone. Alone.
I approached her.
I greeted her, introduced myself.
I told her how sorry I was,
that Génesis was one of us,
that I was sorry about the situation,
and hoped the economic support
I could provide
would help her in some way.
I said goodbye and left.
But it was a very difficult moment.
It was very sad to have gone
to accompany that girl one last time.
I think the most heartbreaking part
of everything was her mom.
The girls crying.
The scent of wilted flowers.
The first newspaper photos.
I remember they showed
parts of her body tied up.
I mean
And what they'd written
about what had happened to her.
I even decided
to cover her for the wake.
They'd cut off her hair,
and written some words on her body.
They gave her
an intense beating.
She was unrecognizable,
gray from so many days in a cooler.
Because of how she was murdered,
the wake was closed.
As private as possible. Due to fear.
We also had a scare at the wake,
someone showed up at night.
They had a gun or something outside.
I don't know if it was someone
on the street there,
or if they wanted to finish us,
I don't know.
I was sleeping.
They hit the glass, we saw the gun.
They were going to kill us.
"This is it for us."
Why? What did she do
to be murdered? Why her?
So, a sort of discarding
was happening every week, right?
I mean, who would be next?
Another woman was murdered
at a hotel in Mexico City.
She's been identified as Karen,
23 years old,
of Argentine nationality.
The body had a bullet wound
and various cuts.
Karen's case is at least
the third murder of an escort
in Mexico City in the last eight months.
She advertised as an escort
on the zonadivas.com portal.
She met Génesis Uliannys Gibson there.
The two lived together for a time.
After the crime with the Venezuelan,
Karen revealed to friends
that she was afraid.
It has not been ruled out
if the murderer
of Venezuelan model Génesis
could be the person
who committed the crime against Karen.
Hotel security cameras captured
the man that may have killed her.
He came out wearing a motorcyclist helmet.
"You're Axel Arenas, no?"
"Yes." "The actor?" "Yes."
"Well, you're under arrest."
ZONA DIVAS IMAGES HAVE BEEN MODIFIED
TO PROTECT IDENTITIES.
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