I Will Be Murdered Storyville


I Will Be Murdered

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This programme contains some strong language, and scenes which some viewers may find upsetting.

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TRANSLATION:

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SPEECH OVER POLICE RADIO

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I think that my father was somebody who was willing to go

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an extra mile for anybody who was in need.

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I think my father turned impossible situations into possible situations

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for many people who came looking for his aid.

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And something like the video, for me,

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is something that would go completely in character with him.

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And the fact that he would put his life on the line

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for a truth to be known for somebody that he cared deeply about

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is something that I would definitely consider part of my father's character.

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I didn't know about the video.

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But I did know he was conducting an investigation

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which, at the end of the day, involved certain parts of the government

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or people who worked in government.

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So that was as far as I knew.

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The funeral was horrible.

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It was horrible - it was horrible, horrible. I mean...

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Er, I think it was something that nobody expected

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and since nobody expected it, it made such a profound effect, as well. I mean, there was also...

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There's the murmur and, "What had happened," and, "Why was my father killed?"

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NOBODY expected this to happen.

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I got up, I spoke. I thanked everybody who was there

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and who had helped us in accompanying us in our grieving process.

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And that's when Luis Mendizabal, a very good friend of my father,

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he asked me for permission - if he could say something.

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He said, "All of us who are here loved Rodrigo very, very much.

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"If you want to know the truth about what happened to Rodrigo,

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"then here is his testimony."

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The news spread very quickly about it.

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Before I knew it, my phone was ringing off the hook. "Listen, I just saw the video."

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And they were just speechless. That was all they managed to say - "I saw the video."

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The radio station was playing it already

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when I was on my way to the newsroom.

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The video was all over.

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Everybody was listening through their headphones.

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I won't ever forget the first lines.

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I mean, I think nobody can forget the first lines of that video.

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"If you're watching this video, it's because the President killed me."

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The reaction was, "What's going on? What happened?"

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And I remember someone said, like,

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"If he is dead, I mean, this is the truth."

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Then El Periodico had the video uploaded immediately

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and the site crashed.

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THEY CHANT:

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The result of that video - all the demonstrations -

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was really shocking.

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Demonstrations are not spontaneous any more.

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It's not common to see the youth

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involved in claims of justice.

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That's another casualty of war.

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We lost the value for life.

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But that day, even a 15-year-old kid is talking about justice.

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I thought, "Something is going to happen."

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That video showed my father in...

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one of his best moments.

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The ideas that were conveyed in his message were so powerful.

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The way that he was able to transmit

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that we are living... a hypocritical lie.

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We cannot go about saying that everything is OK when it is not OK.

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There is no excuse, there is no justification why you are to behave

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in a way that is not consistent with your utmost ideals.

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And I think it spoke to the very heart of the person that he was.

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As I was stirring up my father's office,

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where you would expect to find the most important things, the most confidential things ever...

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I found a file for each of his kids,

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where he had pictures from when we were young,

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report cards from his children.

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All the things that he...

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I think that he felt most precious.

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He actually had love letters from my great-grandfather

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to my great-grandmother.

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He told me that, for him, true love actually did exist

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and that it was part of any person's goal to find it and to fight for it,

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and to be happy and to be content when you find love.

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My father was a lawyer and I was born in England,

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where my father was getting his master's degree in law, in Cambridge.

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Then after that, we went to Boston and we came back here to Guatemala -

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that's where my father lived ever since.

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We shared the same office space.

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When we worked together, we were just next door to each other,

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so I had the chance to spend time with him so much -

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probably more than almost anybody else.

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He wanted to have a role as a lawyer as he can...

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He was able to make a contribution to something good -

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that's why he always stayed away from courts and political intervention

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and intervention with governments and dealings with governments,

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because it's frequently very corrupt.

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My father prided himself on being a person who was never corrupt,

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who was incorruptible.

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I think the fact of him living through the war

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made him be aware about how polarised our society really is.

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Because after 36 years of internal conflict,

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it's not just the time - it's a complete mindset.

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Entire generations were born with a culture of conflict.

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I believe that my father did feel the need to promote a change in that sense.

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THEY SING

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ON RADIO:

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To be honest, I didn't really know who Carlos Castresana was.

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On Tuesday I just walked into the office

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and my father's partner told me, "Listen, CICIG wants to talk to you."

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We went over to CICIG headquarters on Tuesday,

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and we started saying everything we knew...

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"Listen, my father was doing this, he was investigating that."

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He needed to check my father's files and my father's personal archives

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and he said he needed access to his personal folders and computers.

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After a while, Carlos Castresana said,

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"You can rest assured that if we need to impeach the President, we will impeach him.

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"And we will prosecute him if he is, indeed, responsible for what has happened."

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Immediately after we had this meeting,

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we went over to my father's office and we delivered his two personal laptops -

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his office computer and his laptop.

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CICIG got full access.

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My father was very respected for being a very impeccable businessman.

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And my sister - she dedicated herself to work and her daughters.

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Very sociable, you know? She was like an angel wherever she was.

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They left around 15 to one.

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I left two minutes later.

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Like, three blocks from here,

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I saw my sister's car crashed in a post

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but I thought, "It cannot be my sister."

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And I parked and I called her.

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When the phone rang and rang and nobody answered, then I knew.

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My father was attacked from the right side

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and one of the bullets shot my sister.

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They both died immediately.

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At first glance and when it first happened,

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nobody really understood what was going on.

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And when I heard about the story

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and I read about the story in the paper

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and you see it was something like 15 shots

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were fired into Khalil Musa's body...

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And she was just, apparently, collateral damage to the incident.

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Rodrigo was very shocked with the killings of my father and my sister.

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So the day that my sister was buried, he called me that afternoon

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and he said, "I need to talk to you," and I went to his apartment.

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And he said, "I want you to know that I will be doing the investigation."

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I was afraid that something would happen to him so I said,

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"Please, Rodrigo, don't go ahead with this because we suffered enough."

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But he said, "No, I will go on."

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Ever since Khalil and Marjorie Musa's death, he started on a path

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where he was decided - he was not going to simply accept

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what we are used to accepting in our society, when something terrible happens.

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And he was determined to take this to the last consequences.

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He went to Luis Mendizabal.

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I recall my father speaking of Luis Mendizabal as this person

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who had a lot of information about what was going on in Guatemala, in government.

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Somebody my dad trusted implicitly.

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This used to be my father's apartment.

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About a year later, after he died, I moved in.

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For me, the presence of my dad was the fact that he always came back

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from work at lunchtime, to have lunch with his family.

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When he was a dad is when I feel that he was at his happiest,

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where he was most fulfilled.

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One of the first presents I had from my father was a Walkman,

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a really, really small Walkman, even before I could walk.

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LITTLE BOY SOBS

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I was ten when my parents got divorced.

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We were coming back from this country club

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and my father told me, "Listen, I have something to tell you,"

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and he told me, "Your mother and I are getting divorced."

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That was actually the first time I ever saw my father cry.

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I think my father felt that his father's shortcomings were

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something that he was never willing to accept for himself.

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And he told me that afterwards, that he actually never ever even

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considered the possibility of him getting a divorce.

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He always wanted to be a role model,

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somebody who is always there for his children.

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He had a responsibility to form a family and a home together

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and he couldn't do it.

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TELEPHONE CONVERSATION:

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TELEPHONE CONVERSATION:

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My father was surrounded by situations in his life where

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he found the law to be helpless in his aid.

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He lived in a place where you were used to people disappearing,

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you were used to people getting killed.

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When he was very young, when he was about 18 years old

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or 20 years old, his brother was killed, he was murdered.

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My father had these horrible situations where

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he really was helpless to do anything about them.

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My uncle as well, he disappeared and then showed up a couple of days

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later, dead. His nephews, actually two of his nephews were killed

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also in horrible circumstances. They showed up a couple of days later.

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They were never really people with ties to government or with ties to

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political involvement, or something of the sort, it was just violence.

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It was huge news, breaking news.

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It was a big success.

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You don't get crimes solved like that here.

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It was less than four months

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and you had someone accused of pulling the trigger.

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We didn't have information about how the investigation was going on.

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The newsroom got this anonymous envelope with text messages,

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love text messages from Rosenberg.

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You know, I thought, "How marvellous."

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But then I began reading them.

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There is a certain point when you realise that there was a very

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strong relationship.

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We never published a story on them.

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I found my father at home, crying.

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He was obviously going through one of the worst moments of his life.

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When I got close up, I asked him what had happened, he just said,

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"They killed her, they killed her!"

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And I was like, "They killed who?"

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And he said, "They killed Marjorie."

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It was at that exact moment that I realised who my father was

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having a relationship with after so much time.

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I had seen, obviously, the signs and the indications that he was

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with somebody and I was aware that he was having a relationship with

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somebody, but I really never knew until that moment

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in time that the person he had the relationship with was Marjorie.

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What CICIG told me is, "We traced back this phone number

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"and we linked it to the place of purchase and we were able to

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"find some cameras in the store where it was purchased.

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"Even though the payphone was paid in cash, there's a clear video

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"depicting Luis Lopez as the person who was buying this cell phone."

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I remember that the first thought that went through my mind was,

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"I don't know how or why, but I know he is not guilty of being

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"part of a conspiracy against my father."

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More than his worker, he was his friend.

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My father confided in Luis some things

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he wouldn't even confide in us.

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I told him, I said, "Listen, Luis,

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"I know that my father has trusted you with

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"an amazing amount of information and you were a very close friend

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"of my father's, and I will make sure with every force that I have

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"and anything in my power, that you will not get in trouble with this.

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"But if you ever made any promise to my father that you cannot

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"tell anybody about this, you need to tell me about it now

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"and you need to tell CICIG about it."

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It wasn't until the day before my father died

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that I perceived my father was in danger, immediate danger.

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I got a call from my father very early.

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He called me over and offered me to go to Antigua.

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From the moment I told my father I was going with him,

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he hesitated in terms of which car we should take,

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where we should meet.

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We started going out of his house and he was looking

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over his shoulder and making sure there was nobody there.

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And he said that

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he just simply felt there was something that he had to do,

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because he could not be at peace -

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simply accepting the fact that two people he cared very much about

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were murdered and nobody was going to do anything about it.

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And he said,

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"Even if that means that I'm willing to risk my life to do it."

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When I heard that, I was obviously concerned

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and I turned to my father and said, "Listen, this is not something

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"that you have to do. This is something where you can protect yourself."

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He told me he had an offer from a person to leave Guatemala

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and go to, I think it was Washington,

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and to present a claim before some international court.

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He told me, "Listen, if something were to eventually happen

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"in terms of what's going on, you have to understand that this

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"is not your fight.

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"This is my battle, not yours."

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I was infuriated at first.

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I was appalled.

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First thing that went through my mind is, "Of course, why not?"

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I mean, that's the easiest way to go.

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Because at the same time, there was somebody to blame

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but there was nobody to blame.

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I told him,

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"We will have our own private opinion about it from here on in.

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"I do want to ask you one thing," and I asked a favour of him, and I told him,

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"If tomorrow in your press conference you feel that my father

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"was an honourable man,

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"then I ask you to please say it during your press conference."

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The newsroom, we were all paying attention to that press conference,

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and I remember very well that it was like shock after shock,

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and the reporters were, "Oh! Dios mio!"

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And then we all kept quiet hearing the rest of the story.

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You can never fully accept or you can never comprehend that...

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..how something so intricate would have been possible.

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You don't come to terms with something as difficult as that.

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The sudden death of Marjorie Musa,

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was something that I think affected him greatly.

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The worst part for him in all of this, was that he found himself

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completely impotent to do something to make it right.

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I think that dismantled him.

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My father was an amazing person, regardless of the way

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that his life came to an end.

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The way he lived was, for us, the most important thing.

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