Hello, podcast listeners, my name is Lydia Cacho, host of The Red Note, a new podcast about the story of the femicide along the border in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. Subscribe to the red note right now on Appled podcasts or get the Spanish language version as Leinert Aroha wherever you get your podcasts. And stay tuned to the end of this episode for a special preview of the trailer.

This podcast is intended for mature audiences. Listener discretion is advised.

Oh, dear, oh, dear.

Won't you spare me over to another year, Billy Sunday paper was now locked away in Marion Federal Penitentiary in Marion, Illinois, which was at the time the most secure prison in the country when Alcatraz closed in the late 60s. The inmates housed there were moved to Marion.

The prison contained the country's most dangerous criminals and murderers.

The children prayed. The preacher preached. Time and mercy is out of your reach.

That's what my life really changed. That's for us, I think, looking back on it, that I had to become a bird because it was just too awful for the bird to go away. He was such a great man in my mind. I had to I had this romantic. View of it all as the Burt family tried to adjust to the fact that their patriarch would spend his remaining days on death row waiting out his eventual death by electric chair.

The reality slowly began to set in with Stoney.

His father, his friend, his hero, was gone. From Imperative Entertainment, this is in the red clay. It soon became clear that Billy Burt would never return home again. The family would visit Birte when they could in prison, and I asked Sony to tell me about the first time he ever went to visit his father on death row.

No, forget it. How do I know how to reveal to the state? Is there with this federal prison the whole new ballgame? Everything was so high tech, they were not only two doors go through, they were Sixtus to go through Yuzo Trap. If you get in there and trap some shit.

And for the first time I had ever seen, there was a glass that thick and the telephone did go phone the phone.

It was integrated through the system. You know, you'll be recorded. And when you talk this kind of setting, like Edison's first phonograph, you know, that that that tweaky, it was just so impersonal. But yet it was so bittersweet to have their freedom and talking.

So it was just a whole new ballgame.

But we just I knew in my mind that I would very seldom be able to see him. Stoney would hear from his father first hand what life was like in a maximum security federal prison, and as you can imagine, it isn't a life meant for the faint of heart.

I never had to sit on a oh oh a commode.

That line not too long that far apart.

And use the restroom, we're not, you know, the people I never considered having to be in a shower the size of one of these beds and have 20 nozzles on it and everybody in there bunched up together, at least half the damn picture of the football players against the wall of water.

Jack, in they're down to that.

It's not being plunged into market or something. And that's prison last.

Despite seeing what life in prison would be like, Stoney was still hell bent on taking the place of his father and continuing on the legacy he had created with the Dixie Mafia the first time I was doing, but feels it was a common thing.

I didn't go to Mexico to get them, but this time you give. It was the same thing I had got.

The whole operation of that were called bio amphetamine at the drugstore. So here I am, 14 years old, visiting through glass and I we're such good friends that look, he did look here and I showed him the prescription.

My face turned of what I see, sickness in it, no sun, no, not down yet, the white métier. But I thought he was going say, go, you know, give him. Thought we'd to a party. He didn't do it in a way that made me feel bad, he just done the way that I can see looking back on it, it made me just sick to the heart of the soul that he led to some things that were.

That is when I realized he was gone. That's when I saw him for the first time ever in his eyes, the regret and the influence he left on. Billy's reaction to seeing that his beloved son, the one who idolized him, had begun to follow in his footsteps and started taking the black pills, both infuriated and saddened him.

Since his incarceration for the first time in nearly a decade, Billy was not on pills and had a clear head, he could now plainly see how his actions had spawned a desire for his young son to follow in his footsteps. And it broke his heart.

How could he have gotten so mixed up in his own life that he hadn't seen the sooner, how could he have been so blind? We can only imagine the thoughts that must have plagued Billy, knowing that he could do no more than sit back and watch his son, his pride and joy make the same mistakes he had.

And maybe this was part of Billy's punishment. And so this became their life, I write them every day, I will tell them what was going on, sending letters to each other, driving hundreds of miles from Georgia to Illinois for a series of short supervised visits through two inches of bulletproof glass with every word they said being monitored and recorded.

But Billy's reputation, even in the toughest prison in America, was something even the prison warden couldn't deal with within just a few years of being in Marion. Billy killed two men in the prison shower stall for trying to extort a friend of his who was up for parole.

The warden knew the only way to deal with Burt was to commute the sentence to a Georgia state prison where Byrd's execution would be carried out much sooner. But they said shit with this, they turned in the state of Georgia, not for any other reason than they could go, hey, get him executed because they had this system. So after only three years, they can give him to Georgia.

Best thing I've ever done as far as our relationship, because then with your Irisa, we can take in food. We sit there, hug and kiss and, you know, have camaraderie.

But those three years he was there was the most hit home that I would never have him in free while he was in my area. And when you get to Reedsville, even though it's much better, I never had a hope.

A heavily on street I knew. And Billy's reputation in the Georgia prison system was basically be his friend or stay the hell away from him. And certainly never cross him. He was the most dangerous man on death row, the inmates and the guards knew all too well who he was and what he was capable of. And he would continue to prove that, like when he intervened as two inmates, the Isaac brothers attempted to kill a man Billy had befriended in prison.

They were going to kill the man simply because of the color of his skin and Bert wasn't having it. He's a black guy.

He's going to kill him just because he's black. Well, my father put a stop to it. You don't know they were all scared to death, my father, everybody on death row, because, let's face it, Bill Burton issued blanks.

He just didn't kill one person while he was on dope. This man was the last man, you know. So when he told all they will now kill that their than his cousin.

But in a story, Billy's jailhouse friend was released 10 years later, having been found to not be guilty of the crime he was accused of that landed him on death row. He later publicly thanked Burt in a newspaper article. He said, he did save my life from the older boys who will kill me just for the color of my skin. And I'll always be grateful to him for that.

And when Stoney told me this story, I guess it touched a nerve in both of us. I'll confess that when I first met Stony and heard pieces of his father's story and of the Dixie Mafia, I wondered if this was something I wanted to be a part of. I questioned where this story would go and if it would be something that I was comfortable telling. After all, the word Dixie itself just resonates with thoughts of the old South and anyone living in the 21st century can't hear Old South without racial prejudices and injustices coming to mind because it's reality.

But the more I learned about Billy Burke and his life, the way he was raised and the way he carried himself as a man and a father, my concerns faded. Stoney and I talked candidly about this. But it was a crisis, he called black people just as much he what he looked down on no man.

And then Stoney shares with me a touching story that I think shows, for what it's worth, the very sincere and compassionate side of his father. Aside, Estonia's mentioned time and time again, but that we've seen very little of it in a letter to Stony, Billy tells the story of a young mentally handicapped inmate named Jerome Bowdon, whose cell was next to his. After hearing it, my perception of Billy Burke may have changed just a bit. Jerome Bauder was a black guy who had the mentality of me when I was 11, now that it was a good storyteller and he recognized this kid was mentally retarded and he took it with him because he just he was just a fun loving little kid that my daddy would tell stories to some of these kids like him.

Churning better, kept coming close to the death penalty, and that is retarded and then had done fell in love with the boy he'd done, he'd done fell in love with this kid, his heart, his compassion. He knows that God did not burst this kid with the full.

And but they were 10 stories he used to help me get the on there so well, he made a story about a guy named John Époque and John Topos was a hero who he's a black guy who led a revolt against something other than his town.

And I was a wonderful mother.

It was a wonderful bullshit. And he gave it.

So Regina, you know, that was him drawing her. And John Lippert would ask him not to read this story to you because he was John Ipoh. We had an affection for twenty four year old Jerome Bowdon, who Stoney refers to as Bauder. The story of Johnny Polk that Billy made up was to put the young man's mind at ease as he waited for his inevitable electrocution. Jerome was the hero of the story and asked Billy to tell it to him every day, vestment have this kid and they so wish.

And that wrote it down somewhere because I had to read it to him every fucking. Not for he went to the chair, Jerome said, But you believe in the Bible. He said, I started telling his hell no. So I'm going to go but have a heart to them. Kids don't. The next morning, a Jerome, I believe he said, you believe in my B.S., he said, is Drolma. He barely got a Bible. His knowledge.

Oh my God. The Bible. I believe I get one when he got one from this guy. Now he the worst mistake I ever made. He put them down more than ten minute bill. If it were me, that were me, he said, but you know your that next day at Galper.

And he said, well, he got quiet for about two hours now and he caught with the bars. His real solemn said, Billy, not read this Bible best I can at Billy. They don't take breakfast in the heaven. All go to him is jus.

And there is a drone I don't know much about the Bible, but don't say that. Give me back, I find your place. He said, I got lucky with my boss, take me on. He's the first down passenger turn to their will, John three 16 and I call. I said, look at that drone. They say, whoever believe it, don't say black. White, don't say who ever believed drone. He said most satisfied him, calls them kid that moment.

No more than that.

But I wish he were here to blow me right now. When they come got drawn and when they need a hand at the Bible, they smile real big. And he said, Burt, I read out of New Testament last night, they said, well, let's do the Geronimus review. He said it looks like he was just happy to see me and that kid washed them away. They said they'd rather been him. It just it was just so wrong.

The guard comes by about two hours late and told Jerome had to stay.

And then he says in the letter, he says if he makes it to Maguires, he'll get it made because the death won't run out. They have to go through this shit again. Maybe the kid has found some look. Next thing you never see, this old man about 30 minutes ago, flukey headed your way. His name is Jerome Butler, but he liked to be called Johnny Pope. The old man. Give him a break. Reggie down.

But last night he was on this earth any day of shooting and get a break. Was here that don't make a liar out of before.

I told him if he read your book is changed from being, say, Stoney's shared with me another letter that his father had written just before Jerome's execution.

Midnight seven 17, 1986. I'm sitting here in the fucked up little cell, can't go to sleep. The warden just set a date for a kid here on death row one week from now. What bothered me, the kid don't have sense enough to understand what is about to happen to him. But they agree more over that young boy. The anybody on death row he ever had to walk down there and he made a show and I'll never tell I'd done it, but he had a way of helping walk then and let him be a man.

And I helped him do it.

I wasn't sure what Stoney meant and saying his father helped people walk down the aisle on death row. It reminded me of movies like The Green Mile or Dead Man Walking when a man has to walk from his cell to lecture.

Either crumbles or was like a man. But they had a way of helping them walk like a man and he me to help him do that, that's all I'll tell you. I can only guess this has something to do with black pills, but maybe some things are better left unsaid. Stoney shared with me the actual letter his father wrote to young Johnny Polk. Here's a short passage from that letter never shared before now.

Jerome, you remind me of a black kid I knew in my hometown back in 1951. His name was Johnny Polk. I'll be damned if you don't look just like Johnny, you could pass for his twin. And if I didn't know better when I first saw you, I would have bet my last dollar that you were Johnny Polk yourself.

In the case of Jerome Bowdon, people protested the execution of a mentally handicapped young man.

In fact, most people believe he never committed the murder he was accused of and he signed a confession without knowing what it really meant. The case even drew protest from music icons like Sting and U2. And to this day, the state of Georgia will not release the results of Borden's mental exam, though it's believed his IQ was just 59. Since 1993, thousands of women have been murdered or disappeared along the border in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico.

My name is Lydia Cacho and I am here to tell you the true story of the femicide. Sing Juarez, listen and subscribe to the red note right now on Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts, you can also listen in Spanish. Just search for Lanata Aroha in the same podcast app you are listening in now. True features the often weird but always true stories of strange events and unforgettable moments.

Each episode explores unusual, obscure, sometimes funny, sometimes creepy stories, stories that are so bizarre that you won't believe that the real. But they are because, yeah, they're true.

Listen and subscribe to True right now on Apple podcast or wherever you get your favorite shows. Billy, over the years, adjusted to life on death row, the best he could. Between family visits, they occupied his time reading writing letters to Stoney, he even learned to crochet would send those small odd stuffed animals and picture frames to the family at home. Anything to pass the time, because at the end of the day, when the prison lights go out, you're left with nothing.

But your thoughts in a man's thoughts and memories can drive him mad. Billy began to reflect deeply on his life and the mistakes he made. Stoney shares a story his father told while in prison about a dream he had shortly after he killed for the first time protecting a woman from being raped. He says, strange things happen to me. I'm laying in there in the bed and I wouldn't dreaming and this thing come to the door, he said.

It was just a beautiful. He said it was Jesus Christ. It was I knew it.

He said I was laying here like this and he come up open and it was he here, his hand and me. And I got it in my mind. I believe it was after he killed him to me, cause God knows his.

He didn't come out of malice. He killed them because they were raped at home in front of him, he said.

And all I had to do was take your hand, but then do it. He's wait, mum woke up, told her and she went, what did you do?

And he said, I don't know, he said, but that's sort of fun. I've always wondered.

But he said the next night and I believe if I took him, I wouldn't have had this dream it again, dream son.

It was real. He said a form come to the door in the bedroom.

It was not Jesus Jesus. Which is a beautiful thing. You just know that this was the devil. He had no face. But the feeling of dread that come over you, the way you felt, you know it was a devil and it was just awful thing.

He had to be the devil because it just so awful in the feeling come over you just so awful. It just had to be the devil. He said this thing come in here and grab Stoney and between me and his mother and took off out the door, he said, jump the butt naked and run him out the door, down the hall and out into the driveway and into the road.

You're raising hell. And he was gone was Tony. Mama, run out the door. Honey, honey, what's wrong with you? He said the damn devils got Stoney.

She said, Honey, you have to be dreaming stories in the bed. She got me calmed down. What? McCain and I will start laying in bed. But now that has stuck with me and I don't know why, and I believe that if I took that hand.

The not before when we handed them to me. I never had that dream. Another funny thing about this is before this happened. I can be right on that road and I can see a bad car wreck and some people kill, or I could be in church or Granya Rampone, their preacher, be preaching a good sermon. I get cold chills if I see somebody in the car. I get cold yield. But after I refused to take that hand, I never got no more.

I felt nothing. And I don't know what it means. Don't know how to explain it.

Maybe this was a message sent to a young Billy Burt from God, giving him a chance to see what was to come if he didn't take his hand. It seems that the message Billy received was that not only might the devil take his soul, but the soul of Stoney to. And it seemed that warning might be coming to fruition. I mean, to pick the ball up, McCain, him, I was rubbing everything that was run by Robert Evaristo, a hero who armed robberies.

I've done everything but home invasion or murder never hurt nobody. My fathers, no one goes to of them. And what I do not want to go was being here and take care of his family. And I did. And I live large and money. And I ended the age 17 1/2 with 27 fucking years for. And I don't feel good because it's understandable. Forgive me if I had my time over again knowing what I know now and change, but not knowing what to know, I do the same damn thing because Bill Burt was someone you could tell he would he would take care of his family and people.

And I won't be that guy so bad. I want to be with him so bad because it's almost like me and it was a son. You won't be able to see him live just like he does. I still do. Well, people know. Look down on that, think I'm proud of the things you've done, they find what they want. I'm at the age where don't you have a good thing? I know my heart. I don't I'm not proud of the people he killed without a damn good reason, the people he killed because it's wrong place, wrong time.

But I'll tell you the truth, I don't hold it against him for killing snitches who won't play the game.

They weren't in it any more.

Not doing them, man. Going to war with the terrorists chickenshit runs in order to shoot you in the back. And I look at the same thing.

At age 17, Stoney, too, went to prison. His desire to be his father had now become the one thing that would truly keep them apart and things would get worse for Billy in prison as well.

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Dotcom s.L ehi to make sure they know in our show Sentier Berried Cash d.E.A Mold's Skydiving Planes, a group of college friends took advantage of Colorado's marijuana laws to traffic thousands of pounds of pot out of state for sale on the black market, one of the longest, most lucrative smuggling runs in U.S. history.

Listen and subscribe to the syndicate right now on Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. He's about six foot tall, šemeta weighed 70 pounds slim, but that is really good to him because he was killed by a mass crane and stuff like the board that had no money.

And one day on the third floor that he's in transition. And for one year, he said now while he was in transition between Merian and read the. Because out there was a security prison, he's on the third tier floor, which meant they got them a little hall, about four foot wide between the seven rail. If you ask to go over that rail, you fall three stories right now. So, you know, it's not for the faint of heart.

They let two out of time so they can run up and down that one out on that floor for exercise.

Well, all the time he was sitting there, it was late. He's playing poker with a buddy next door.

And this guy, Sam Haley, 18, 19 year old, was jogging before handing out certain on one of the he just come out saying, I want to stabbing my father in the back with the second stab paralyzed by the head of one arm. And what that guy was continuing to stab at him. He was pulling himself to his cell to get his mom to get his shit. All companies have changed a little bit about how different it might be.

A toothbrush. It might be their milk crate torn apart. Last pick, all hell shakes as I lay my hand on that damn shame. His last one.

And it took my eyeball with Iran guards. Got to think I was going to make the damn kid just want to be you know, I shot Jesse James. I killed belabour.

He just admitted more to it that he lost his eye in the attack and nearly died.

He was in a coma for two weeks and several times was temporarily clinically dead. But while in this comatose state, he had another much darker vision. He tells the story, as he often does through the eyes of his father.

It was so bad that your mother sat beside me because I didn't think I was going to make it while I was out. All the people that I had ever killed before, not at all. I hear a few people, he said they were to maybe maybe two or three and they'd be laughing at me. Ha ha ha.

Their hands were waving. Come on down the hand. This way. Come on. Ha ha ha. I can be say he said them three or four. Go away you come. Five, six more. Weyburn Come on, come on, let's move. He said that one on one. No, he said, but they were worn out of all these people. They wouldn't lie. He had his hands saying, go back, you don't want to, he said.

And I stayed out for two weeks. During that time he woke up and told Mama to pour water on his feet that she see them blue things. They Bluefin's come off its feet and she pour water and she wouldn't help it.

He said, Son, try to remember every woman that you kissed. I made love to bash you. May, he said, can't do it. You go only now and in six months you'll still be a member. And one or two more. Yes, and away when you kill so many people, especially when you do it for a job. Before I was stabbed up and died, I couldn't tell you five of the people I markelle my love face of this since that time right now.

He said if if the three people were here in that little square at the door, I could recognize all three of you who are killed and why, he said. And it's been that way ever since. And I don't know what it mean. They thought this minute.

And it makes me wonder, are the people there waiting on me or if they are coming down, big trouble, because no one will say to. I truly don't know what to make of that vision of Berts, was it some sort of near-death experience that opened up this long lost part of his memory? Was he being spoken to again from some higher power? And if so, what was it trying to tell him? Either way, the experience seemed to have shaken up.

He began to read the Bible and over time truly come to realize the error of his ways and regret the choices he had made in life. It was far too late of realization to save his life, but maybe there was still hope for his soul and that hope would come from the most unlikely of places.

Sheriff Hurley and Billy had formed a bond through their mutual desire to put Billy Wayne Davis away, that bond eventually turned to friendship.

Sheriff Lee come into my life really the day. But then it was a sudden death. Sheriff Lee, it was a real old man.

He never breached that. Not to my knowledge, nor to my dad's. And if you're a real old man and you're a real gangster, you respect each other almost as much as you do the other gangster with that code, because those kind of lawmen are few and far between.

They had a mutual respect for each other is who they were. Whatever that. Yes, I don't know. Till the day he died. My dad respected Sheriff Lee more than any man here. I remember when he did that and that in 98. This time I say my father was talking there and he just looked out for whiskey and he said, you know, I think a love best friend ever had.

The friendship between a cold blooded killer and the man who helped put him in prison is odd, to say the least, but it was sincere.

The two men genuinely cared for one another till the day Sheriff Lee died.

And for the next 20 years, he never missed a Christmas break. My mother, at least twice, he took it from his own deputies collections for the children. He was our Santa Claus. He's one that looked at us from afar, even me, when I went out to try to be my daddy, let me spend a couple of years, but he had his own. And when he got the parole board and said, look, this kid, I mean, he just dumb.

You let him out. I believe he'll be back in trouble if he does. You got him for 20 years.

That was kind of many words in my entire life. I've never made a man is good. Sheriff Lee. I believe that all my heart and my daddy thought that to I guess it was the angel Gabriel who he was kind of like Gabriel Myers. It was an honor to know him, even though Billy Byrd had changed his outlook on life and come to truly regret the crimes and murders he had committed, he still had to pay the price. He was, after all, on death row.

He had lost a string of appeals, trials to have the death sentence overturned. And while young Stoney was still in prison. Billy Sunday, Burt was set to be executed in the electric chair. I was an alto, and this time I was in my job was in the bakery, but the house had been there long enough that night. When I come in from the bakery I seen on TV, first thing I seen. This must been a net loss of last appeal.

He is scheduled to be executed in seven o'clock Friday morning that same week.

They took me out, I went ballistic, I tried my best to maintain some kind of rational, mature.

You know, statute, but if follow procedure to the lieutenant, he said the prison policy don't cover nothing like that, I immediately went to the assistant warden. Prison policy didn't cover anything like that. I was getting more and more as I get more and more psychotic. I was getting more and more threatening.

I was telling them I can't take it if I don't see my father before his death. I'm not going to be able to handle it. Finally made it to the warden. He didn't give me time of day U.S. policy. And what I did when I went out, I told him, I said, you, Lieutenant, sends you down the system.

If my father dies before I see you, it might be 10 years and it might be the next. And I'll kill one of you. Son of a bitch is what? Ballistic hell. I just had turned 18.

They took me straight into the hole full guard their. And they put me in a cell, the chaplain of the prisons, a few cells down talking to the inmate, I didn't know you there. He heard me ranting and raving. He heard the coldest of the guards. I meant what I was saying in my mind.

They were some their asses that I believe they probably to be in the in my mind, they would be. And that's how bad I was hurt that this had to be at God. That preacher left there. I didn't know this letter. He was the warden. He said I just heard something. They had moved me. Warden, he said, and you're wrong about prison policy.

Prison policy has no policy concerning this. This is the first there's no precedent for this. I want you to have the passion. So let the child see his father.

He taught the warden into it. I didn't know it. I stay psychotic on that. Next morning was a Wednesday, 4:00 to come get me, I thought this transfer might kill the warden, but he had to go or take me in a paddy wagon. The four hour trip resembled Georgia. We got there eight o'clock. I remember that was the most deadly time. And our two and Reedsville, they were to die every week.

And when they woke me in there, I walked. Then that whole hit it. Whatever cell I was taking, I could feel the friction in the air. It was just hell on earth. You feel it. It even then, I didn't know I was going to visit my father.

I thought they might transfer. They took me to a cell about 15 minutes later and brought my daddy and uncourteous. You see, Bert, you got eight hours for them. Eight hours. We we talked about all the good times.

We had all the things I knew he didn't need, all the things that he has seen me do that I never realized what made him so much of me.

It was just the most fantastic thing.

About one o'clock they brought us two big old chunks of ham that little heard of prison and two little bread and two cartons of milk.

And I believe that my best meal we ever had together.

Now, when they come to give me the tape, Alto and my mind, I knew he was going to be let's hear it one more day of the words. I'll get back to where he is in that. I know that you know a lot. But now in the next morning, on Friday morning, he's been rescued at seven o'clock and he knew in his mind I had twenty seven years.

So the warden told me five minutes. We sort of lost all that bubbly joy of being together in a.

Yet real, so when they open the doors, Mr Howard, I don't know, but we hugged and always kissed them on Joe and they always kiss me or hear me.

And told each other, bear a walk out of there without crying. They took me the polar bear, so. All right, but I have something to say, McRay, I don't know where I found the strength. I don't know whether it was adolescent stupidity or restraint. But in my mind, I was of I was freaking out. But I keep a straight face and I spent more time talking about what he was dating. Because I can see the pity in his eyes.

Is the way. The pain that Stoney feels as he relives this memory. Is very real. It takes a few large swings of whiskey to cope. They put me in the whole. You know, it was 10 o'clock Friday morning before.

It was son of a bitch that had these. To come tell me that he had a stay of execution. And I hate had so much to the day I left. It was me. In the red clay is a production of imperative entertainment. It was created, written and reported by me, Sean Kay and I wrote and created the original music score. Executive producers are Jason Hoak and Jeno. Falsetto story editor is Jason Hoak, produced and engineered by Shane Freeman, Jason Hoak and myself, cover art and design by Gina Sullivan.

Voice Sessions recorded at three Sound Studios in Atlanta, Georgia. Archival footage licensed courtesy of Brown Media Archives, University of Georgia and WSB TV in Atlanta, Georgia. In the Red Clay is a 12 episode series with new episodes available every Tuesday. Follow us on Instagram in the Red Clay podcast. Have questions, email us at podcasts and Imperative Entertainment Dotcom. If you like the show, tell your friends and leave us a review. Thanks for listening. As promised, here's a special preview of the new podcast, The Red Note, but don't forget, you can listen to episodes right now by subscribing on Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

Here's the trailer we found, Ali, on February 21st, less than 24 hours after she was killed. She was held in captivity for six days. But what really happened, we don't know. My name is Lydia Cacho, I am a Mexican investigative reporter and activist. Over the last 25 years, hundreds of women and young girls have been murdered along the border in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico.

Their bodies have demonstrated a savage brutality the way in which they were murdered. Thousands more were disappeared in broad daylight and sold into sexual slavery by the country's organized crime groups. We received a call that my daughter was being sold and prostituted at a place on Juarez Avenue when they raided the place. Unfortunately, my girl wasn't there. Earlier this year, we sent to Mexico based production team to the streets of Juarez to talk to the investigators who hope to catch the perpetrators of these crimes.

This is not some crazy guy who's kidnapping and murdering women.

This is something more organized experts who studied the causes of the serial murders and we're talking about over 20 years now, and it's kind of the same girls keep disappearing and the victims families whose lives were reshaped by tragedy.

When it gets dark and I go to bed and I tell God, send me my daughter in a dream, I want her to tell me what happened. Along the way, our team faced many dangers. What was called the most dangerous city in the world to capture the true story behind a femicide in Juarez, because the perpetrator is the corporations, the perpetrator is the government, the perpetrator is machismo, the perpetrator is poverty. The perpetrator is maquiladoras because of the threats and attempts against my life due to my reporting.

I have been on the run for the past year. But I know this story must be told because the systematic killing of women and girls will never end until we know why it happened and who is responsible. There's a mom who says she wants to burn everything down. Well, I told her I understand because they don't do anything to arrest our daughter's attackers and the real criminals walking the streets as if nothing had happened.

This is the red note. Listen or subscribe on Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. The Red Note is available as its own Spanish language podcast to a Senator Roger.