Caught in the Web: The Murders Behind Zona Divas (2024) s01e04 Episode Script

1
ECATEPEC, STATE OF MEXICO
The body of a murdered woman
has still not been identified
in Ecatepec, in the State of Mexico.
Several media outlets have claimed
she is Kenni,
a Venezuelan escort
who advertised on zonadivas.com.
I had a bad feeling.
She told me,
"They're inviting me for a party."
I was insistent that she didn't go.
"No. I'm going. I'm not going by myself."
"God bless you," I texted.
She texted, "Amen," and put a heart emoji.
That was the last thing.
I noticed she wasn't texting me back.
"Kenni, Mom isn't doing well."
"She's worried sick. Text her. Call her."
"Reply to me."
The texts were marked, "seen."
From then on, it was like a horror movie.
My phone rang around 2:00 a.m.
My husband was the one who got up,
saw the incoming call, and said,
"You're getting a call from Mexico."
When he said Mexico, I imagined the worst.
They said they were calling on behalf
of Kenni's friend, but didn't say a name.
Apparently, they'd seen in an article
that my sister had been murdered.
She was taken at 6:00 a.m. Sunday morning,
and found on Monday morning.
They took her early Sunday morning
and kept her alive that whole day.
She was tortured and everything.
From there, it was like,
"How do we tell Mom?"
"How do we tell Mom?"
We knew this would kill her.
She grabbed me, saying,
"What happened to Kenni?"
I wanted to tell her,
but the words wouldn't come out.
It was like
there was a stone in my throat.
She called out for her, wailing.
Blessed are you among women,
and blessed
is the child you will bear, Jesus.
We buried her on March 30th.
We saw a car pull up,
and a girl got out and told us
she was with Kenni at the club
when Kenni was taken.
I'd never seen her before.
She said she didn't know anything,
she didn't know who took her.
They had locked her in the bathroom,
and she heard Kenni telling them
not to hurt her.
We noticed she was wearing
some of Kenni's things, like her shoes.
I recognized they were Kenni's.
We tried asking her questions,
but she was evasive.
What she did do was cry,
she said Kenni was a good person.
She was drunk and didn't look well.
A non-believer
It made us sort of afraid.
I told you!
THE PORTAL
MEXICO CITY
I'm an investigative reporter,
I cover gender and safety issues.
I'm hiding my identity
because we live in a country
where journalists disappear
and are murdered.
The authorities are clearly in collusion
with organized crime.
When Kenni was murdered,
none of her friends went
to identify the body.
Kenni suffered such a level of violence,
that none of her friends wanted
to take any risks.
I dug deeper into the case
by contacting those closest to Kenni.
Her work friends, childhood friends.
I spoke with a lot of sex workers,
from those in Tlalpan
to those advertising on the portals,
searching for testimonies
about the violence these women experience.
Throughout this process of talking
to Kenni's friends and other witnesses,
I found a video
of Kenni documenting her injuries,
saying that her ex-boyfriend
assaulted and tortured her.
I was kind of reluctant
to publish that material,
because she was
in such a vulnerable state.
It was highly sensitive material,
and I wasn't sure it was a good idea
to make it public.
But I decided it was important to show
what they'd done to her.
She had been threatened
and tortured for months,
and she revealed
the full name of her aggressor,
Brayan Mauricio Miranda, or Pozoles.
You want to wipe the smile
off so many people's face
just because you feel like killing us.
We haven't hurt you.
We didn't cause you issues
with the government.
We haven't done
anything wrong to you, Brayan.
More like I fell in love with you
too quickly and gave you everything,
and you crushed me
as you damn well pleased.
Kenni's case caught my attention
because of the level of violence
and because of society's indifference.
It was assumed a client killed her
and the investigation stopped.
For any other person,
just another girl had died,
but for us, she was a mother,
a friend of our friends.
She was a minority, so nobody cared.
It was just like, "Another girl died,"
"But she was an escort, she sold her body.
She had it coming, she deserved it."
Both the authorities and society
tend to criminalize victims.
YOUR DEATH WAS VIOLEN
BECAUSE YOU MESSED WITH NARCOS
In Kenni's case,
she was blamed for her own death.
People were pretty much saying
she deserved it
because of the type of people
she was involved with.
NO ONE WILL REMEMBER YOU, WHORE
Some comments were aimed at Mom.
I didn't like that at all.
That yeah, she was suffering now,
but she was fine
with what her daughter was doing
as long as she was sending her money.
Nobody really knew
the details of the case,
or what she was really like,
or anything like that.
Once the Zona Divas website found out
about her femicide,
they published a statement
that reads as follows,
"Kenni was the model
featured on our logo."
"This model was paid
for the use of her image."
"She also advertised with us,
and paid us to do so."
"This was in her own interest,
and we hope
she benefitted from it greatly."
In Mexico City,
the Office of the Mexican Attorney General
has confirmed an arrest
for alleged human trafficking.
The attorney general's office
has arrested Guillermo Hans N., or Memo,
founder and partner
of the Zona Divas website.
According to authorities,
Memo is a relative
of Ignacio Antonio N., Soni.
A house in Mexico City's historic center
was used as
a clandestine photography studio
by the sex service website, Zona Divas.
This is where photographer Armando N.
took pictures of the women
who offered sexual services
on the website.
Eighteen women, including ten Venezuelans,
seven Colombians, and one Paraguayan,
have been rescued in an operation
by the attorney general and federal agents
at seven apartments in Ciudad Deportiva.
In April 2018,
is when they, voluntarily,
decided to post a statement
on their website, zonadivas.com,
announcing they were ceasing activities.
In April 2019,
Ignacio Antonio Santoyo Cervantes,
Soni, is arrested in Quintana Roo.
An arraignment judge has indicted
Ignacio Santoyo, also known as Soni,
for the crime of human trafficking
for sexual exploitation purposes
against a victim who advertised
sexual services on the Zona Divas website,
which he owns.
Investigators found
international wire transfers,
with outward financial flows
to several countries.
Attorney General Ernestina Godoy
stated that Soni was sent
to Reclusorio Oriente,
where today's preliminary hearing
will determine whether he is indicted.
We need time, we need forensics,
we need to do an investigation.
No, organized crime
isn't winning this battle.
We've been reporting for weeks
on the murders of escorts
that have taken place
in Mexico City and the State of Mexico.
A man was arrested today
for his possible involvement
in the murder
of at least one of these young women.
Footage from the hotel's security cameras
shows Génesis arriving
with the 22-year-old male
some time after midnight on November 17th.
I met Daniel Uribe at a social gathering.
He hired me to drive him to collect money
from women at different hotels.
They owed his boss money.
They hadn't paid the fees
to be on an escort website.
I think it was called Divas.
The last time he called me,
it was to take him to Puebla.
I asked him if this was related
to collecting money from those girls.
He said no.
That he had to pick up a foreign friend.
We drove up to Puebla on November 16th.
We went to the Punta Palmas Motel.
Daniel asked his friend
to go back to Mexico City with him.
I didn't hear much of their conversation
because they spoke in low voices.
Daniel's demeanor towards Génesis
was the same the whole way.
There was no intimidation.
She seemed comfortable with him,
and he looked normal.
We got to Mexico City before midnight.
Daniel asked me to take him
to Hotel Platino.
He told me to wait outside
while he asked for a room.
He then signaled for me to leave,
and so I left.
After that day, I never saw Daniel again.
I later heard on the radio
what happened at Hotel Platino.
I didn't know if it was Daniel
who took Génesis's life.
But I know it was her
that I left with him
in the early morning of November 17th.
They discovered who it was,
the time, and the car through toll tickets
found in her purse.
I heard through a statement that
the young man took them from the driver
and put them in her purse
to take out later,
but he forgot and left them in her purse.
At that moment, I could only imagine,
according to the file we had,
everything she went through, how she died.
So I looked him in the face and asked,
"You did all this. Why?"
A hitman.
He never said why he killed her.
As far as I know, he never said why.
Behind a hitman,
there's always someone else.
That's why they're hired.
The alleged killer of escort
Génesis Gibson has been captured.
Daniel allegedly murdered Génesis
inside the Hotel Platino
in the Venustiano Carranza borough.
This isn't the only murder
he's being charged with.
Today, Mexico City's
Office of the Attorney General
confirmed there is proof
of his involvement
in the murder of another Venezuelan,
Wendy Vaneska.
Aside from DNA analysis,
Daniel is linked to the murder through
security footage and his own handwriting,
which matches the registry
from Hotel Príncipe.
No one ever contacted me.
No one asked me for a statement.
This is the first time I'm speaking about
what happened to Wendy, or about Daniel.
Daniel showed up
back when we were being threatened.
He knew people at all the hotels we used.
Even back then,
we had misgivings about him.
Someone so young,
who knew everyone at the hotels,
who had so much money,
and always knew every move we made.
If we went out somewhere,
did anything, he always knew about it.
We didn't know how,
but he always knew what we were up to.
We didn't know
if he worked for the agency.
We didn't know if he hurt Wendy
on orders from them,
or because she wanted
to go back to Venezuela. We didn't know.
But he was the last person
to see her alive.
He hired her as a client
and when she got to the hotel,
it was him. And she didn't know.
Today, more than a year after his arrest,
Daniel Uribe Reyes has been sentenced.
Daniel will serve 80 years in prison
for the murders
of Wendy Vaneska and Génesis Gibson.
Daniel is believed to be
an alleged member of Unión Tepito.
ESCORT MURDERER CONVICTED
MEXICO CITY
My name is Antonio Nieto.
I'm an investigative journalist,
and I specialize in homicide
and organized crime issues.
Unión Tepito is a cartel
founded 100% in Mexico City.
They have ties
to other significant cartels.
Over time, they have become
the biggest drug distributors
in Tepito, Mexico City,
and municipalities in the State of Mexico.
The connection between Unión Tepito
and the Zona Divas page
was detected around 2015, when "El Jamón,"
one of the cartel kingpins
who is already in prison,
requested a monthly fee of 100,000 pesos
from Zona Divas management
to operate in Mexico City.
Pozoles evidently knew
about this arrangement,
and he also knew
how to get to these girls,
typically at electronic music parties.
And this is how
he was able to approach Kenni Finol,
who was one of the girls
who advertised on this page.
Brayan, how am I supposed to give you
27,000 pesos?
You're so evil.
A guy just told me you want 27,000.
You never gave me anything
and now I have to pay you
to leave me alone?
My dad, my mom, and my relatives
were afraid for me when I went to Mexico.
My dad said to me,
"Karina, don't get involved."
"Don't talk to anyone."
"I don't want what happened to Karen
to happen to you."
I think it was someone
who wanted her out of the way.
She always stood out.
Maybe she knew something about someone,
about a mobster or something.
Or maybe she argued with someone
and they killed her to teach her a lesson.
Because what happened to her
wasn't the same as the other girls,
who were burned or dowsed with acid.
She had a quick death.
There were two gunshots,
including a fatal one to the head.
During my research into Kenni's case,
there was a key moment.
Some audio messages
came into my possession,
in which Kenni mentions
Karen is being extorted.
She called to warn her
because they wanted to kill her.
I called Karen and told her
"I usually don't get involved, dude."
"And I can't speak clearly
or I'll get in trouble,
but you can't trust anyone, girl.
Believe me."
One of her closest friends
actually told me
that Karen apparently knew her murderer.
She said, "When we're working,
we never dress how Karen was dressed."
"We never see clients like that
who we don't know."
So Karen must have known
the person who killed her.
KENNYFINOL90
TB
Karen was saving up to start a business.
All that changed overnight.
In her last WhatsApp text to me,
she said she was distraught.
Someone was extorting her.
Karen was very scared
of this person from Tepito.
This was 15 days before she was killed.
The threats went on for 15 days
before I found out what happened to her.
I had a million questions
but no one would answer them.
Like a cover-up.
Still, Karen Ailén was murdered
at the Hotel Pasadena on December 27th.
The man who murdered her
later called Kenni
to confess what he'd done,
and to tell her she was next.
It wasn't a client or anything.
He killed her at the Pasadena,
he shot her dead.
He called me afterwards,
before anyone knew about it.
"See that, you bitch?"
"I'm gonna kill you by the 31st.
I'll get to you somehow."
"You're going to think everything's quiet,
but I'm coming for you
when you least expect it."
In November 2019, authorities from
the State of Mexico arrested Pozoles.
Not for Kenni's murder,
but for drug trafficking.
In November 2022, he was released.
Sadly, the case against Pozoles
was never strong
due to State of Mexico prosecutors.
They could never prove
he was responsible for this crime,
even though he was brought in
for drug trafficking,
and they had plenty of time to tie him
to both investigations.
Unfortunately, in the end,
Pozoles avoided those charges.
According to investigators
who have followed his case,
he continued to operate
in more or less the same way
as before he was arrested
for drug trafficking.
Even though authorities had him
in custody and could've interrogated him
or collected new evidence,
they haven't been able to do it yet.
Not because they're protecting him,
but due to incompetence.
NO ONE IS SURPRISED POZOLES IS FREE
UNIÓN TEPITO IS PARTNERED
WITH THE JALISCO CARTEL
We never tried to get in touch
with prosecutors, or anything like that
-Complete distrust. We trusted no one.
-Yes.
We never asked for updates. We knew
it could be dangerous for our family.
We never considered taking revenge, never.
All I want is justice.
She shouldn't have died like that.
I just want justice,
this can't go unpunished.
For her soul's sake and mine,
please help me.
The murderer has to pay for what he did.
She didn't deserve to die like that.
There's this prayer she liked me to recite
because she didn't know it by heart.
In the name of the Father,
the Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen.
Blessed be your purity,
may it be blessed for ever,
for no less than God takes delight,
in such exalted beauty.
To you, heavenly princess,
Holy Virgin Mary,
I offer on this day
my whole heart, life, and soul.
Look upon us with compassion,
do not leave us, my mother.
And give us your blessing,
which we receive,
in the name of the Father,
the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Amen.
I will always be grateful to Génesis
because I grew up so much with her.
She taught me many life lessons.
Things I could've learned by myself,
but I was a step ahead thanks to her.
"If you don't work, you don't eat,"
coming from your parents
is not the same as from
someone fighting in the trenches with you.
I have to see my daughter buried here.
I want to take her back to Venezuela
so I don't have to come to Mexico anymore.
At least he's in prison.
It doesn't fully comfort me,
because it was my daughter that he took,
a human being.
No one has the right
to take another person's life.
But at least he's in prison.
I hope he stays there.
Sometimes I think that
I'd like to travel to Mexico
and look him in the eye.
To confront the man
who killed my daughter and ask him,
"What did my daughter do to you
to justify you taking her life?"
"What was happening in your head
that you could take a human being's life?"
"What did my daughter do to you?"
"Do you know how much pain
you've caused me?"
"Do you know how much pain
you've caused my family?"
WENDY VANESKA DE LIMA CORTÉS
6/13/1990 - 2/3/2017
I want my daughter to be remembered
just as she always was. Smiling, happy
charitable.
She was impulsive and argumentative,
but she was always smiling.
She was happy with what she did,
and she was brave considering
everything she went through.
I'm grateful to my daughter because
she showed me
that life is meant to be lived.
And
what happened to her was awful, obviously.
For me,
there is a before her death and an after.
I'll often have these questions pop up
that no one can answer.
And that will never end.
But, at the same time, life goes on.
Imagen noticias spoke with Karen's mom,
Karina Lescano,
who demanded that Mexico City's
Office of the Attorney General
give her an explanation
about the investigation.
She wants to know
what happened to the evidence
that was in the case file she was shown.
Karen's mom condemns the prosecutors
for not communicating directly with her,
and accuses them of delaying information
to the Argentinian embassy in Mexico.
I started getting calls
from her "friends."
"Yeah, I was Kenni's friend."
They started having conversations with me.
I could immediately tell
something wasn't right.
They'd be like,
"Question. Who has Kenni's phones?"
"Who collected her things? Who has them?"
I think she left some evidence behind.
She left proof
that would expose him.
She knew this was coming,
that he would end her life,
so she left behind evidence to expose him.
Escorts have two phones,
one for personal use,
and another for work.
Kenni's personal phone,
which was the source of the audios
and videos published in 2018,
somehow survived, but we don't know how.
We don't know who,
but someone retrieved the information.
Honey, happy birthday, I love you.
Well, I don't know how much it's worth it,
it's the first thing they ask me.
Machi, I still need to dry my hair
because I washed it yesterday.
-Awful things.
-I'm the one in the photos, okay?
How can I go back to Venezuela
with nothing to show for it?
One week,
because they're going to kill me.
MEXICO CITY, OCTOBER 2023
We have breaking news.
We are getting reports
that Mexico City police
have arrested the man on the screen.
Remember who he is?
This is Brayan Mauricio,
also called Pozoles.
He was in an SUV with his girlfriend,
who was also arrested.
They were found in possession
of 271 drug doses,
a handgun, and cash.
We must say, Pozoles
is not only identified as a drug dealer,
but also a source of violence
in different parts of Mexico City.
This is how Pozoles, at 31 years old,
presented himself on Instagram.
Watch him drive a RZR car
along the Acapulco coast
with his current girlfriend,
a Venezuelan woman
who lived in San Pedro de los Pinos.
Monday, Thursday,
and Friday hearings were held
in which attorneys for Pozoles
tried to get their client released.
However, their efforts were unsuccessful,
and the judge handed down an indictment
on drug charges.
Pozoles's latest arrest
was again for drug trafficking.
They added the disappearance later.
He still hasn't been sentenced.
Within the account
that Kenni left on her phone,
are the pieces of her own murder.
And in that phone, is an in-depth analysis
of a human trafficking network, as well.
Zona Divas brought
hundreds of women to Mexico.
They were brought into a context
of extreme violence against women,
as well as extreme violence
due to organized crime.
There's one person
that hasn't been tied to the femicides,
but who's involved in this story
from beginning to end.
That man is
Ignacio Antonio Santoyo Cervantes,
or Soni.
KENNY
FEBRUARY 25TH, 2018
What we can say for certain is that
Andreína, Karen, Kenni,
and Génesis were all friends,
they were roommates and were linked.
If we add Wendy to this list,
we can say that all five of them
had personal ties with Soni.
As far as justice goes,
all we know for certain
is that Soni is still free today.
We're a company
that doesn't violate the law.
We simply advertise escort services,
which, in the eyes of many,
is morally reproachable.
But, in the legal framework of Mexico,
we're not committing any crime.
The charges brought against
Ignacio Antonio Santoyo Cervantes, Soni,
are for human trafficking
for sexual exploitation,
and illicit advertising
to facilitate sexual exploitation.
In Soni's case,
he was released when the court of appeals
pardoned his sentence.
It's very difficult to break news
like that to the victims,
to tell them we won't be getting
the results we had expected.
It's very frustrating,
but, at the same time,
we turn that frustration into resilience,
continuing with next case, and the next,
learning from our mistakes.
To highlight some of the police absurdity,
as I call it,
when they raided the apartment
at Illinois 76,
all of us working in that field knew
there were no escort agencies there.
That was where independent girls lived
after quitting those agencies.
The authorities said,
"We'll have results."
"We'll make people believe
we're doing our job."
So they chose the first building
where they knew there would be girls,
they went and busted in,
and then they deported them.
It was an injustice.
No real traffickers were ever arrested.
Why are there so few arrests
in the Zona Divas case?
Throughout this process,
authorities never connected
the femicide investigations
with the human trafficking.
The only people who are still in prison
are women who were never high up
in the trafficking network.
Though Zona Divas no longer exists,
we now have other websites
that operate in the same way.
Various social media users
are reporting a new website
that emulates or copies Zona Divas,
but under a different name.
It's called La Boutique VIP.
Whether Soni is the actual owner
of La Boutique VIP or not,
don't you think he's out there
watching all the pretty jewels coming in?
ABOUT SONI
Some things aren't easy to talk about,
this kind of work affects you emotionally.
It eats you up inside.
You no longer trust men,
you don't trust those around you anymore.
You end up completely broken.
I came to Mexico as a trafficking victim,
and later I became a sex worker.
My goal is to stop working
in such a tough industry.
I just want to close the chapter
on Candice Miller.
What have I learned from Brenda?
I learned how to adapt.
It's all about resilience.
That's what I think matters.
Being able to accept who you are,
knowing who you are at all times,
and enjoying the duality of the alter ego.
I am very satisfied with my past.
I believe that
if I hadn't gone through all that,
I wouldn't be where I am today.
I can't be ashamed of Brenda,
or pretend she doesn't exist.
I could delete everything related
to my online presence tomorrow,
but the truth is,
I would continue to exist.
Since she was a sex worker,
some people believe she was heartless,
or that her family was broken,
but that's not true.
Sex workers are regular people.
They're not monsters.
It's not that they decide
to be sex workers,
but rather, they come up
with a temporary solution
because if they don't, they'll die.
But she was always so full of joy.
Full of joy and beautiful.
She had it all.
Most beautiful of all, she was humble.
She was charismatic.
Everyone fell in love with her,
men, women, cross-dressers.
She always said, "Everyone wants me."
I didn't know about this photo
of just us two.
She was fooling around, look at her pose.
She was different.
Even as a kid.
Because she was mischievous.
She had a short life, but she lived it
to the fullest, like she wanted.
Anything she wanted to do, she did.
-In her own way.
-In her own way.
Check out this electronica.
Venezuela's Pilón, but electronic.
Can you imagine how wild we get
when they play it at the club?
Check out this beat, you'll see.
Look! Gucci!
LUCIANA QUINTERO
MEXICO CITY
THE PORTAL
ZONA DIVAS IMAGES HAVE BEEN MODIFIED
TO PROTECT IDENTITIES.