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The Black Widow of Lomita - Conspiracy to Kill · Murder Files Unsealed

0:00
Speaker 1: Imagine a sixty year old grandmother. She's dressed in her pajamas,
0:05
in a bathrobe, and she's lying dead in the entry
0:08
way of her very quiet, suburban California home. Right there's
0:12
a single gunshot wound to the back of her head.
0:15
But you know, just a few feet away from her
0:17
sits her purse. It's completely untouched.
0:19
Speaker 2: Which is strange right off the bat exactly.
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Speaker 1: I mean, there's seventeen hundred dollars in cash plainly visible
0:25
inside this purse. There are no broken windows, The heavy
0:29
steel security gate at the front door is well, it's
0:32
perfectly intact.
0:33
Speaker 2: Yeah, so it definitely doesn't look like a break in.
0:35
Speaker 1: No, not at all. It looks less like a burglary
0:37
and way more like a highly coordinated assassination by someone
0:41
she you know, willingly invited inside. But if you want
0:44
to understand who pulled that trigger and why, you really
0:47
can't just look at that crime scene in Lomita, California.
0:50
Speaker 2: You really can't.
0:51
Speaker 1: No, you have to rewind twenty years, you have to
0:53
cross the Pacific Ocean, and you have to look at
0:56
the string of dead husbands that she left in her wake.
0:59
And I know, you know, if you're listening to this
1:01
you love to unpack complex, multi layered stories, and this
1:05
one is a masterclass in the destructive power of greed.
1:09
Speaker 2: It really is the ultimate subversion of like the true
1:12
crime tropes we are so used to seeing, because we're
1:15
pulling our facts today from a massive, comprehensive report. It's
1:19
titled the Lamita Black Widow, Greed, Betrayal and Retribution. Yeah,
1:24
and it documents a case so sprawling it required investigations
1:28
by Dateline NBC forty eight Hours Mystery, the FBI, and
1:32
private investigator.
1:33
Speaker 1: Right, multiple agencies exactly.
1:35
Speaker 2: And what makes this case so uniquely terrifying isn't just
1:38
the body count? Mean, it's the architecture of the crimes.
1:40
Speaker 1: Yeah, the architecture. Because if you look at the surface
1:42
of this two thousand and six case, which you know
1:44
we are going to get to, you're probably asking yourself
1:47
the same thing the FBI was.
1:48
Speaker 2: Right, like, how does this happen?
1:49
Speaker 1: Yeah? How does a local, hardworking hairdresser driving a corvette
1:56
in the suburbs operate like some kind of international crime boss.
2:00
I mean it feels like a Hollywood war film. It
2:03
feels too scripted to be real.
2:04
Speaker 2: It does. It sounds like fiction, but it's not so.
2:07
Speaker 1: Today. For this deep dive, we are taking you deep
2:10
into the gears of this saga. We aren't just looking
2:12
at the timeline. We really want to understand the mechanisms,
2:16
like how do international borders actually act as legal loopholes
2:20
for murder, which is a huge part of this it is,
2:23
And how does someone bypass fraud detection on a million
2:26
dollar life insurance policy? And ultimately we're going to look
2:29
at how an architect of violence gets destroyed by the
2:32
very culture of greed she cultivated in her own family.
2:35
Speaker 2: Yeah, to unpack those mechanisms, we actually have to start
2:37
by looking at how the architect herself was built. Oh
2:41
for sure, if you want to understand the Lamita Black Widow,
2:43
you really have to move our focus entirely away from California.
2:47
We need to go back to the nineteen sixties to
2:49
the Philippines.
2:49
Speaker 1: Right, because she obviously wasn't always Sonia Lio's riskt the
2:52
wealthy salon owner.
2:53
Speaker 2: No, not at all.
2:54
Speaker 1: She was born Sonya Rios on Augunt fifteenth, nineteen forty six,
2:58
to Maria Kahayon, and one took an and the context
3:02
of where she grew up is just well, it's everything here,
3:04
it really is. She was raised in profound poverty near
3:08
Sangley Point, and Sangley.
3:09
Speaker 2: Point is crucial to understand. At the time, it was
3:12
a major US naval base, Okay, and we really need
3:15
to look at what that does to a local economy
3:18
and honestly the psychology of the people living on its fringes.
3:21
Speaker 1: Right, the contrast there exactly.
3:24
Speaker 2: Yeah, when you have an area of systemic generational deprivation
3:28
sitting literally right next to a massive, well funded American
3:31
military installation, it creates this very specific economic micro climate.
3:37
Speaker 1: Wow.
3:37
Speaker 2: Yeah, the base is basically an island of immense wealth.
3:40
So for a young woman living in poverty in that era,
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American servicemen were not just you know people, well were
3:46
they They were an economic resource. They represented a literal
3:49
exit strategy.
3:50
Speaker 1: I mean, that survivalist mindset is fascinating when you think
3:53
about it. When your primary objective from day one is
3:55
just like escaping poverty at any cost, your worldview shifts entirely.
4:00
Speaker 2: Right, Relationships become purely transactional.
4:02
Speaker 1: Exactly, And she found her exit. She immigrated to the
4:06
United States in the nineteen sixties, and she eventually settles
4:10
in Lamita, and the people who knew her back then
4:12
they described her very specifically. Oh absolutely, they said she
4:16
was petite, she's flamboyant, incredibly attractive. The sources specifically note
4:21
she had lots and lots of black hair. Yeah, she
4:24
stood out, she did, and she integrated herself completely into
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the military social circles in southern California. In fact, some
4:32
people in those circles they actually referred to her as
4:34
a Navy groupie, which.
4:36
Speaker 2: You know, is a label that carries a ton of baggage.
4:38
Speaker 1: Oh, for sure.
4:39
Speaker 2: It implies someone who is purely a hanger on, like
4:42
someone trying to socially climb just by attaching themselves to
4:46
men with military salaries and pensions. It suggests this complete
4:50
reliance on others for any kind of upward mobility.
4:53
Speaker 1: Well, I actually kind of have to push back on
4:55
that Navy groupy label a bit, just based on the
4:56
source material we're looking at. Oh, how so, because it
4:59
pains her as entirely dependent, right, and that's just not
5:03
factually accurate. I mean, she didn't just ride someone's coatails
5:06
to a comfortable life and sit back, that's true. She
5:08
actually went to beauty school. She launched her own business,
5:11
Sonya's Artistic Hair Center. Right, she owned that salon outright,
5:15
She managed all the finances, she built a really loyal clientele,
5:20
and she bought herself a flashy corvette.
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Speaker 2: Yeah that's not exactly passive.
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Speaker 1: No, that requires an incredible amount of grit, drive and
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just independent ambition. So how do we reconcile that dependent
5:33
groupie label with someone who is clearly a self made entrepreneur.
5:37
Speaker 2: You're hitting on the exact dichotomy that makes her psychological
5:40
profile so dangerous, honestly, really, yeah, you're absolutely right, she
5:44
had immense cret but we shouldn't confuse entrepreneurial drive with
5:48
a healthy psychological state.
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Speaker 1: Oh okay, I see what you mean.
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Speaker 2: Right. What we see in Sonya is someone who was deeply,
5:54
deeply traumatized by that early poverty we talked about, and
5:57
that trauma manifested as this pathological need for total.
6:00
Speaker 1: Control, control over everything.
6:02
Speaker 2: Exactly. She built a successful business because she needed financial control.
6:06
But she applied that exact same ruthless, calculating logic to
6:10
her personal relationships too, So she treated people like a business. Essentially. Yes,
6:15
she could be this charming, hard working beautician to her clients,
6:19
but behind closed doors, she viewed the people in her
6:22
life as assets, assets to be managed, leveraged, and ultimately
6:27
liquidated if they threatened her security in any way.
6:30
Speaker 1: Wow, it's like looking at a corporate structure applied to
6:33
a family unit. It really is, which I guess brings
6:36
us to her first marriage, the very first time we
6:39
see this blueprint put into action. It's the mid nineteen
6:42
sixties and she marries a US marine from Davenport, Iowa,
6:46
and Earl Duke Bordeaux Duke.
6:49
Speaker 2: They met during his overseas tour in the Philippines. Okay,
6:52
and linking back to your earlier point about her ambition,
6:54
Earl was actually instrumental in that he worked two jobs
6:57
simultaneously to financially support her while she was going through
7:00
her beautician training.
7:01
Speaker 1: Wow. Two jobs, yeah.
7:04
Speaker 2: Just to help her get her business off the ground.
7:06
They settled down and around nineteen sixty three they adopted
7:10
a son from the Philippines, John Bordeaux. Right.
7:13
Speaker 1: So, on paper, it really looks like the American dream,
7:16
doesn't it, The classic immigrant success story totally. But the
7:20
sources note that almost immediately Sonya established this pattern of
7:24
intense secrecy like she would not talk about her.
7:27
Speaker 2: Past at all, which is a red flag.
7:29
Speaker 1: A huge one. She heavily guarded details about her relatives
7:33
back in the Philippines, and the marriage, which somehow lasted
7:37
twenty one years, by the way, was described as incredibly volatile.
7:40
Speaker 2: Twenty one years of that.
7:41
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean she had an explosive temper and was
7:44
reportedly cheating on Earl for years.
7:46
Speaker 2: Well, she was establishing the baseline of her control. Oh
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so think about it. By keeping her past the secret,
7:52
she controls the narrative. He only knows what she allows
7:55
him to know. And by keeping Earl off balance with
7:58
her temper, she controls the emotional climate of the house.
8:02
He's always walking on eggshells.
8:04
Speaker 1: That makes a lot of sense. But eventually, after two
8:06
decades of this, Earl just hits his limit. Understandably, right,
8:10
it's the nineteen eighties and he wants a divorce. Now,
8:13
usually a divorce is just a financial negotiation, right, Lawyers
8:17
dividing assets, that kind of thing, sure, normally, but Sonya
8:20
doesn't just hire a lawyer. She sets a highly specific,
8:24
honestly bizarre condition for the divorce.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, this is where it gets dark.
8:28
Speaker 1: She tells Earl that she will agree to it, but
8:30
only if he travels back to the Philippines completely alone
8:33
to handle the sale of a family taxi business.
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Speaker 2: We really need to dissect the mechanics of this trap,
8:40
because this right here, this is the blueprint for everything
8:43
that follows. It's the origin point exactly. Think about the
8:46
concept of geographical isolation versus social isolation. Like abusers often
8:51
isolate their victims socially, right, cutting them off from friends
8:54
and family right, Very common. But Sonya takes it a
8:57
massive step further. She leverages Earl's desperation for a divorce
9:01
to enforce geographical isolation.
9:04
Speaker 1: Wow, she is.
9:05
Speaker 2: Intentionally luring him out of his home country, far away
9:08
from the protection of the US legal system, and she's
9:11
sending him into a jurisdiction where she holds literally all.
9:15
Speaker 1: The cards because she knows the area, she.
9:17
Speaker 2: Knows the local landscape, she has her family members deeply
9:20
embedded there, and crucially, she understands the vulnerabilities of the
9:24
local law.
9:25
Speaker 1: Enforcement and Earl, who probably just wants this whole twenty
9:29
one year deal to be over with. He reluctantly agrees he.
9:31
Speaker 2: Just wants out.
9:32
Speaker 1: He does so, he flies to the Philippines, and on
9:35
August fifteenth, nineteen eighty seven, while he is sleeping on
9:39
a couch in the living room of Sonya's relatives home,
9:42
he has shot point blank in the head.
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Speaker 2: It's a sudden, catastrophic execution.
9:47
Speaker 1: It is. But let's look at the staging of it,
9:49
because this is wild. The local police they report it
9:53
as a robbery, right yet there's absolutely no sign of
9:56
forced entry into the house and nothing, literally nothing of
10:00
the value is taken from Earl or the property.
10:02
Speaker 2: Because the staging is incredibly sloppy, and honestly, that tells
10:06
us something about her confidence in the local system. You think, so, oh, definitely,
10:10
if you were actually staging a robbery, you take the wallet,
10:14
you take the watch, you mess.
10:15
Speaker 1: The place up right, you make it look real exactly.
10:18
Speaker 2: The fact that the killer didn't even bother to make
10:20
it look convincing strongly suggests they knew they wouldn't face
10:24
any rigorous scrutiny. They didn't care.
10:27
Speaker 1: That's chilling. But wait, I want to pause on the
10:29
date of the murder for a second, because this is
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the detail that just stops you in your tracks when
10:33
you read it. It really is August fifteenth, nineteen eighty seven.
10:37
That was Sonya's forty first birthday.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, it is a staggering psychological indicator, right, I.
10:43
Speaker 1: Mean, orchestrating the murder of the man who worked two
10:46
jobs to fund your career is cold enough, yeah, But
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to have it executed on your actual birthday, that doesn't
10:52
feel like a practical financial decision anymore. That feels like
10:55
a sociopathic trophy. It's almost theatrical.
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Speaker 2: It speaks to a very malign narcissism, like it's not
11:01
just about eliminating a problem for her, it's about asserting
11:05
absolute dominance. She's treating the end of a human life
11:09
as a literal personal gift to herself. Oh wow, And
11:13
if we look at the immediate aftermath, we see exactly
11:16
why she chose the Philippines for this, because initially the
11:19
local police actually did their job.
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Speaker 1: They did.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, they arrested five suspects, and two of those suspects
11:26
were Sonya's own brothers or her brother her own brothers.
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They even found blood on one of the relative's shirts,
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so they.
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Speaker 1: Had them dead to rights. I mean, that's open and shut.
11:35
Speaker 2: They really did. But then almost overnight the charges are
11:39
completely dropped. It's gone, just gone. The suspects are released,
11:43
and the source material details these persistent rumors that a
11:46
payoff was made to local authorities.
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Speaker 1: Okay, and how much are we talking?
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Speaker 2: The amount rumored? Just one thousand dollars?
11:52
Speaker 1: Wait, one thousand dollars to make a murder charge against
11:56
five people just disappear. That's insane, It's hard.
11:58
Speaker 2: To believe, but that's what the sources indicate.
12:01
Speaker 1: Well, wait, Earle was a US citizen, he was a marine. Right,
12:05
Why didn't the FBI or the US State Department just
12:07
kick the doors down and take over the investigation, because
12:10
you know, you hear about the FBI operating overseas all
12:13
the time in movies and stuff.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, that is a really common misconception about international law,
12:18
and it's actually the exact loophole Sonya was exploiting here.
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Speaker 1: Really explain that.
12:23
Speaker 2: So the concept is called jurisdictional sovereign.
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Speaker 1: Jurisdictional sovereign to you, okay.
12:27
Speaker 2: Right, the FBI has absolutely no authority to unilaterally investigate
12:32
a crime on foreign soil. They just can't do it.
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Speaker 1: Oh wow, I didn't realize it was that strict.
12:37
Speaker 2: It is. They cannot conduct interviews, they can't gather evidence
12:40
or make arrests in the Philippines without the explicit invitation
12:44
and cooperation of the Philippine government.
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Speaker 1: So if the locals say no, if the.
12:48
Speaker 2: Local Philippine police officially close the case, like say, ruling
12:52
it a random unsolved robbery, the US authorities have no
12:57
legal mechanism to override that. They are completely stonewalled.
13:01
Speaker 1: That is terrifying.
13:02
Speaker 2: It is international Borders Act as this incredible legal arbitrage
13:06
for criminals who know how to navigate that differential in accountability.
13:11
She knew the US.
13:12
Speaker 1: Couldn't touch her there, so she just weaponized the border.
13:14
And meanwhile, Earl's family back in Iowa is completely paralyzed
13:17
by this.
13:18
Speaker 2: They had no recourse none.
13:19
Speaker 1: His brother Dennis Bordeaux was quoted saying, my brother was
13:23
lying on a couch and they shot my brother on
13:25
the head. Sonya set my brother up. Evil, just evil,
13:29
But Dennis couldn't do anything about it. And Sonia she
13:33
collects the life insurance payouts tens of thousands of dollars.
13:37
Speaker 2: And we should talk about the mechanism of that insurance
13:39
payout too, because that is also highly calculated on her part.
13:42
How So think about it. In nineteen eighty seven. How
13:46
does a life insurance company verify a death overseas?
13:49
Speaker 1: I mean, they didn't have the Internet like we do now.
13:52
Speaker 2: Exactly, there is no global digitized database. Sonya would have
13:56
needed a consular mortuary certificate and local death CERTIFICU right,
14:01
And since we know she likely had influence over the
14:03
local authorities given that the charges against her brothers were dropped,
14:07
obtaining official looking stamp documents stating her husband died in
14:11
a random robbery would have been relatively easy for her.
14:14
Speaker 1: Just a little more bribe money, maybe, probably.
14:17
Speaker 2: So she submits that paperwork to the US insurers, and
14:20
because the official local stance is unsolved robbery, the insurance
14:24
company has absolutely no grounds to deny the claim.
14:27
Speaker 1: So to ensure Earle's family couldn't conduct their own autopsy
14:31
or look too closely into it, Earle is secretly buried
14:34
in the Philippines.
14:35
Speaker 2: Yeah, she doesn't even bring him back.
14:36
Speaker 1: She doesn't bring his body back. She just returns to Lamita, California,
14:40
completely alone. She goes back to cutting hair at her salon,
14:44
driving her corvette and living this completely normal suburban life,
14:48
just flush with new cash.
14:50
Speaker 2: And she got away with it. The case when entirely cold.
14:52
She maintained her facade even as you know, whispers started
14:56
circulating in her social circles.
14:58
Speaker 1: Right, people talk in the history of true crime. If
15:01
someone manages to pull off what is essentially the perfect crime,
15:05
like exploiting international legal loopholes to get away with murder
15:10
and collect a massive insurance payout, they usually stop.
15:13
Speaker 2: He usually is right.
15:14
Speaker 1: They realize how unbelievably lucky they got. They count their winnings,
15:18
and they never ever risk it again.
15:20
Speaker 2: That's the logical thing to do.
15:21
Speaker 1: But Sonya didn't, which brings us to husband number two,
15:24
and honestly, the terrifying arrogance of repetition.
15:28
Speaker 2: It really is the arrogance of a successful sociopath. In
15:31
nineteen ninety so, just three years after Earl's murder, she
15:34
marries again. Three years yep, this time to Lawn Ricker Riskins, Jr.
15:39
Speaker 1: And if you look at Larry's profile, it is just heartbreaking,
15:43
it really is. He was a rising Navy commander from
15:45
Washington State. He had listed when he was twenty just
15:48
this all American patriot, universally described as a deep, kind
15:54
good man.
15:55
Speaker 2: Yea.
15:55
Speaker 1: He meets this vivacious, wealthy salon owner, and he just
15:59
falls completely in love. They actually have three separate wedding
16:03
ceremonies three three. But here's the massive red flag. Sonia
16:07
strictly and aggressively excludes Larry's family from all three ceremonies,
16:12
all of them. All of them. She tells Larry point
16:14
blank that his family isn't welcome, which.
16:17
Speaker 2: Goes back to what we were saying earlier. We talked
16:18
about geographical isolation with Earl, but here we see the
16:22
aggressive implementation of social isolation, right from the.
16:26
Speaker 1: Very beginning, before they're even really settled in exactly.
16:29
Speaker 2: She is systematically severing his ties to his support network.
16:33
By cutting Larry off from his family, she makes herself
16:35
the sole arbiter of his reality.
16:37
Speaker 1: Oh that's a good way to put it right.
16:39
Speaker 2: If he starts questioning her behavior, he has no external
16:42
sounding board to tell him, you know, yes, this is crazy.
16:46
You aren't imagining things.
16:48
Speaker 1: And Larry really seems like a guy who just wanted
16:50
a quiet, happy life. I mean, he leaves the Navy
16:53
in nineteen ninety five and he transitions to civilian life
16:56
as a special education teacher at Londale High School.
16:59
Speaker 2: Which says a lot about his character.
17:01
Speaker 1: It does. His students love him. He's known for his
17:04
patients and his sense of humor, and he really wants
17:07
a family. So he and Sonya begin the process of
17:10
adopting two of Sonya's young relatives from the Philippines Okay,
17:14
a niece named Quinsy and a nephew named jet Mark,
17:17
and Larry's thrilled about this. He throws himself into the role.
17:21
He wants to be called Papa oh Man. But the
17:23
sources revealed that Sonya spent years intentionally sabotaging the adoption.
17:28
Speaker 2: Paperwork, which is just a brutal form of emotional extortion.
17:33
Speaker 1: Why do you think she did that, Well.
17:34
Speaker 2: She's dangling the very thing he wants most, a family,
17:36
right in front of him, but she controls the bureaucracy,
17:39
so she never lets him actually secure it.
17:41
Speaker 1: It's keeping it out of reach exactly.
17:43
Speaker 2: It keeps him desperate, compliant, and constantly trying to please
17:47
her just to move the process forward. It's all about leverage.
17:51
Speaker 1: But even a patient man has limits, right. The abuse
17:54
from Sonya escalates, Larry begins an affair with a colleague,
17:58
Eileen Stevens, and he finally asks Sonya.
18:00
Speaker 2: For a divorce just like Earl.
18:02
Speaker 1: Just like Earl and Sonya goes scorched earth. She starts
18:05
calling his school, spreading rumor is that this beloved special
18:09
education teacher is involved in drugs and domestic abuse. Wow,
18:14
she is actively trying to destroy his career and his reputation.
18:18
But then, just like with Earle, she suddenly agrees to
18:21
the divorce on one condition.
18:23
Speaker 2: I mean, guess it's the exact same condition.
18:25
Speaker 1: It's the exact same condition. A solo trip to the
18:27
Philippines nineteen years later. Nineteen years later, and she uses
18:30
the exact same script. This time, the pretext isn't a
18:34
taxi business though. She tells Larry he needs to go
18:37
to the Philippines to organize and attend Quincy's sweet sixteen
18:40
birthday party.
18:41
Speaker 2: We really have to analyze the psychology of this repetition.
18:44
We're talking about nearly two decades between the murders of
18:47
Earl and Larry, a long time, a very long time.
18:50
In the criminal world, methodologies usually evolve. People learn from
18:54
mistakes or they adapt to new technologies.
18:56
Speaker 1: Why they get smarter.
18:57
Speaker 2: But she relies on the exact same legal in geographical arbitrage.
19:02
She isolates him, She uses an international trip as bait
19:05
regarding a family member he cares deeply about, and he
19:08
sets him up in her territory.
19:10
Speaker 1: It's copy paste.
19:11
Speaker 2: It is why change the blueprint when you are absolutely
19:14
convinced the system hasn't changed. It's the psychology of total impunity.
19:19
She thinks she's untouchable.
19:20
Speaker 1: So it's April eighteenth, two thousand and six. Larry flies
19:24
to the Philippines. He organizes the Sweet sixteen party for Quinsy,
19:29
and later that evening he volunteers to take Quincy's cousin
19:32
April to a local hospital because she has an eye
19:34
infection and jet mark. The young nephew Larry so desperately
19:38
wanted to adopt, is riding in the backseat of the jeep.
19:41
Speaker 2: He's right there in the car.
19:42
Speaker 1: He's right there. Larry parks in the dark hospital parking lot,
19:45
and suddenly a man on a motorcycle pulls up next
19:48
to the vehicle. Two shots are fired in rapid succession.
19:51
Larry is hitting the head and the stomach. It's a precise,
19:55
professional execution that takes seconds, and just like with Earle,
19:59
nothing of the you was stolen.
20:01
Speaker 2: A targeted assassination, but this time there's a glaring difference
20:05
that speaks to how truly callous Sonya had become.
20:08
Speaker 1: Yes, the kids. This is what I genuinely cannot wrap
20:10
my head around when I read this. Jet Mark was
20:13
right there in the back seat, April was in the
20:14
car right Why risk involving them? Was she losing her
20:19
grip on the logistical details? Or did she just not
20:22
care about the severe collateral trauma to the children she
20:25
was supposedly raising.
20:26
Speaker 2: It is almost certainly the latter, and it really reveals
20:29
the depth of her pathology. You think she just didn't
20:31
care to Sonia, those children were not people to be protected.
20:36
They were props in her play.
20:38
Speaker 1: Wow, props.
20:39
Speaker 2: They were the bait used to lure Larry to the hospital.
20:42
When you view humans purely as tools for leverage, their
20:45
psychological trauma is completely irrelevant to your objective.
20:49
Speaker 1: That's horrifying. And we know this is true based on
20:51
her reaction. Jet Mark, who just watched the man who
20:54
wanted to be his father get executed, calls Sonya from
20:57
the scene in a complete panic, and so his response
21:00
over the phone is chilling. She doesn't scream, she doesn't
21:04
ask if Larry's alive. She says in a flat, calm voice, jet,
21:08
don't worry. Everything is under control. Nothing to worry about.
21:12
Speaker 2: Everything is under control. It's an incredible admission, really it is.
21:15
She isn't reacting to a tragedy. She is managing an operation.
21:18
Speaker 1: And immediately after that call, she picks up the phone,
21:22
calls Larry's sister, Sherry Jackson in the US, and simply says,
21:26
my husband, my husband is dead, and she hangs up.
21:30
Speaker 2: It's cold, ice cold.
21:32
Speaker 1: The contrast between Larry, this kind teacher who just wanted
21:36
a family, in Sonya's administrative handling of his murder is horrifying.
21:40
And the motive we talked about tens of thousands with
21:43
her all this time. There's over one million dollars in
21:45
life insurance at stake, with Sonya as the sole beneficiary.
21:49
Speaker 2: But here's where Sonya's arrogance really blinded her. She assumed
21:53
that two thousand and six would play out exactly like
21:55
nineteen eighty seven, right, but the world had drastically changed
21:58
and the systems of accountability he had evolved. This is
22:01
where the web finally begins to tighten around her.
22:04
Speaker 1: Right in nineteen eighty seven, Earl's family had no recourse.
22:08
They were a family in Iowa dealing with a black
22:10
box in the Philippines exactly. But in two thousand and six,
22:13
information moves instantly. The risk And family doesn't just sit
22:16
back and mourn. They immediately suspect foul play and they
22:20
take action. They hire a highly competent private investigator named
22:25
bong Oteza.
22:26
Speaker 2: And Otza's involvement is the first major mechanism of her undoing.
22:31
Speaker 1: Really tell me about that.
22:32
Speaker 2: Well, think about it. How does a private investigator prove
22:35
insurance fraud on foreign soil when the local police might
22:39
be compromised.
22:40
Speaker 1: That's a good question.
22:41
Speaker 2: He doesn't rely on the official police reports. He bypasses
22:44
the local corruption entirely by conducting his own forensic analysis
22:48
of the circumstances.
22:49
Speaker 1: He goes around them exactly.
22:50
Speaker 2: He interviews witnesses at the hospital independently. He looks at
22:53
the ballistics trajectory himself. He cuts through the noise and
22:57
quickly produces a report concluding this was not a random
23:00
street crime. It was a highly coordinated hit by a
23:04
hired assassin.
23:05
Speaker 1: And the Riskin family takes Otez's report and they use
23:08
it as a weapon. They don't just go to the police.
23:10
They go directly to the life insurance companies, which is brilliant.
23:14
It is they formally alert the insurers that the beneficiary
23:19
is the prime suspect in a murder for higher investigation.
23:22
Speaker 2: Which triggers an immediate administrative freeze on the payouts. We
23:26
have to understand how critical this is. By freezing the assets,
23:30
the risk and family successfully choked off the entire motive
23:34
of the crime. Ooh right, Sonia murdered Larry for a
23:37
million dollars. She now literally cannot touch it traps her.
23:41
Speaker 1: And it isn't just the private investigator turning up the heat.
23:44
The media gets involved, which creates this intense pressure cooker environment.
23:48
A tenacious reporter for the Daily Breeze, Larry Altman, starts
23:52
digging into the two thousand and six.
23:54
Speaker 2: Murder investigative journalism at its finest.
23:56
Speaker 1: Absolutely, and through his reporting, he connects with Dennis Bordeaux,
23:59
or ARL's brother from the nineteen eighty seven case. Altman
24:03
starts looking at the files side by side.
24:05
Speaker 2: And the similarities are just too glaring for any law
24:07
enforcement agency to ignore anymore.
24:09
Speaker 1: I mean, how could they exactly?
24:11
Speaker 2: You have two American men, both married to the exact
24:14
same woman, both shot in the head, both murdered while
24:17
in the Philippines, both alone with Sonya's family, both trips
24:21
specifically demanded by Sonya, and both involving massive insurance payouts.
24:25
Speaker 1: It's impossible to ignore, so the journalism forces the government's hand.
24:30
The FBI officially opens a conspiracy investigation, and the media
24:34
gives her the moniker that would define the rest of
24:36
her life. The Lamita Black Widow. Imagine the psychological toll
24:40
that takes on someone who has spent forty years meticulously
24:44
controlling her image. She is fifty nine years old. She
24:47
is still trying to run her artistic hair center in Lamita,
24:50
but reporters are calling. The FBI is watching.
24:53
Speaker 2: She's losing control completely.
24:55
Speaker 1: She's claiming her phones are tapped. She's telling people she's
24:57
the victim of a massive harassment campaign. The wall are
25:00
closing in rapidly.
25:01
Speaker 2: This raises a fascinating behavioral question. What happens to a
25:05
master manipulator when they completely lose control of the narrative?
25:08
In the money they packed right, Sonya was used to
25:10
pulling strings in the dark, leveraging her family in the
25:13
Philippines to do the dirty work. Now she is under
25:17
a glaring spotlight in the United States. She is cornered, and.
25:20
Speaker 1: That tension snaps. On April nineteenth, two thousand and seven,
25:23
it is almost exactly one year to the day after
25:26
Larry Riskin was murdered.
25:28
Speaker 2: Wow the timing.
25:29
Speaker 1: Yeah. Sonia is working inside her salon in Lomita. Suddenly,
25:34
a young Latino man with a military style haircut bursts
25:38
through the door. He pulls out a handgun, points it
25:41
at her, and fires a single shot.
25:43
Speaker 2: A single shot, but he misses.
25:45
Speaker 1: As he runs out the door, he shouts, I'll be.
25:47
Speaker 2: Back, a literal warning shot.
25:50
Speaker 1: It is straight out of mob movie. The assassin leaves
25:53
a calling card. But what is truly baffling is Sonia's
25:56
reaction to this. The Sheriff's deputies arrive and she completely
26:00
unplays the incident.
26:00
Speaker 2: It downplays.
26:01
Speaker 1: She claims she has absolutely no idea who the shooter
26:03
was or why they would target her. I mean, why
26:05
on earth would you downplay an attempted assassination. If you
26:08
are an innocent victim, you beg for police protection, you'd
26:11
think so. Did she genuinely not know or did she
26:14
recognize the threat and think you know I'm the boss,
26:18
I handle things privately. I don't need the cops.
26:21
Speaker 2: It's almost certainly the latter, driven by her pathological narcissism. Remember,
26:26
her entire identity from the time she left Sangley Point
26:29
was built on the belief that she could manage, manipulate,
26:33
and outsmart absolutely anyone.
26:36
Speaker 1: She thought she was untouchable.
26:37
Speaker 2: Exactly admitting to the police that she was terrified or
26:40
accepting protective custody would be a complete admission of defeat.
26:45
She likely recognized the shooter, or at least the faction
26:47
he represented, and believed she could negotiate, bribe, or manipulate
26:51
her way out of it, just as she had done
26:53
with every other crisis in her life.
26:55
Speaker 1: But that assumption of control was her fatal miscalculation, because
26:59
exactly one week later, the story flips on its head
27:02
in a way that is dripping with macab irony.
27:04
Speaker 2: The architect of the violence becomes the victim of it.
27:06
Speaker 1: April twenty sixth, two thousand and seven, Sonya Rios Riskin,
27:10
sixty years old, is found dead in the entryway of
27:13
her Lamita home. She was shot once in the back
27:16
of the head. She's found the next morning by her
27:18
adopted son John Bordeaux, and she is wearing her pajamas
27:22
and a bathrobe.
27:23
Speaker 2: Let's analyze the forensics of this crime scene because it
27:25
tells the story of profound betrayal.
27:27
Speaker 1: Okay, let's break it down.
27:29
Speaker 2: We noted earlier there's absolutely no sign of force entry.
27:33
The home was heavily secured with a steel gate and
27:35
a security camera system. Everything was intact.
27:38
Speaker 1: Meaning she had to have recognized the person at the door,
27:41
disabled the security and willingly let them inside.
27:44
Speaker 2: Precisely, and the motive clearly wasn't a standard home invasion.
27:47
Her purse containing seventeen hundred dollars in cash was sitting
27:51
right there in the open, completely untouched.
27:53
Speaker 1: Untouched.
27:54
Speaker 2: However, investigators noted that Sonya's own personal nine millimeter handgun
27:59
was missing from the red.
28:00
Speaker 1: The irony is just suffocating. The suspected black widow, a
28:05
woman who spent decades allegedly orchestrating the execution of her
28:09
husband's through staged robberies by trusted family members overseas, suffers
28:13
the exact same fate in her own hallway.
28:16
Speaker 2: It really is unbelievable.
28:18
Speaker 1: A precise execution, no theft of the obvious cash and
28:22
The lack of forced entry indicates the killer used intimacy
28:26
and trust to get close to her, the exact same
28:29
weapons she weaponized against Dupe and Larry.
28:31
Speaker 2: It's a closed loop of violence. But the immediate question
28:34
for law enforcement was, well, who closed the loop?
28:37
Speaker 1: Right? I mean, if you are reading the newspapers in
28:39
two thousand and seven, everyone must have assumed this was
28:42
a revenge killing by Larry Riskin's family.
28:44
Speaker 2: It's the first thing you'd think.
28:45
Speaker 1: You have Larry's sister Sherry and his father, Law Riskins Senior,
28:49
who have been stonewalled by the insurance companies and the
28:52
international courts. It seems like the most obvious movie plot conclusion,
28:56
the grieving family hires a hit man to take out
28:59
the black Way.
29:00
Speaker 2: It's the most intuitive theory, but we have to dispel
29:03
it immediately. The lead investigator on the homicide, Detective Mike Rodriguez,
29:09
obviously looked hard at that angle.
29:10
Speaker 1: I'm sure he did, but.
29:12
Speaker 2: Through alibis, phone records, and financial audits, he very quickly
29:16
and definitively ruled out Sherry Jackson, Law Riskin Senior, and
29:21
the entire Riskin family.
29:22
Speaker 1: They had nothing to do with it.
29:23
Speaker 2: They're entirely innocent. They had nothing to do with.
29:25
Speaker 1: Her death, which meant Detective Rodriguez had to pivot the
29:28
lens away from Sonya's victims and shine a bright light
29:32
directly into Sonya's own inner circle.
29:34
Speaker 2: And what he uncovered there was a truth much darker
29:38
and far more cynical than a simple revenge plot. Oh yeah,
29:41
this wasn't about vigilante justice for Larry Riskin. It was
29:44
about the very thing that defined Sony's entire existence.
29:47
Speaker 1: Money, pure unadulterated greed, which brings us to the digital
29:51
trail of extortion and the nephews.
29:54
Speaker 2: The suspects are identified relatively quickly. The first is Eric
29:57
Santander Delacruz. He's twenty nine years old and he is
30:01
Sonya's grand nephew. Sonya actually helped raise him. He called
30:03
her Grandma. The second suspect is his friend and shipmate,
30:07
a twenty five year old named Fernando Romero.
30:10
Speaker 1: Both of these men are active duty Navy sailors, and
30:13
they aren't just stationed at a desk somewhere. They are
30:15
assigned to the USS Ronald Reagan, a nuclear powered aircraft carrier.
30:20
Speaker 2: Which is a huge detail.
30:22
Speaker 1: It is and Romero. He perfectly matches the physical description
30:26
of the young Latino man with the military style haircut
30:29
who fired the warning shot into Sonya's salong a week prior.
30:32
Speaker 2: When you look at the motive here, it is a stark,
30:35
distorted reflection of Sonya's own crimes, but executed with absolutely
30:40
None of her patients are cunning. They were sloppy, incredibly
30:43
Delacruz didn't want to wait for Sonia to die of
30:45
natural causes. He wanted his inheritance, and he wanted it immediately.
30:49
It was an inheritance acceleration scheme.
30:51
Speaker 1: But the way he goes about trying to get money
30:53
before the murder is just staggering. It's sociopathic, but it's
30:57
also incredibly inept oh Completely months before Sonya was killed
31:01
in late two thousand and six, Dela Cruz initiates this bizarre,
31:05
torturous extortion campaign against Larry Riskin's grieving family.
31:09
Speaker 2: Yet this part is hard to read.
31:11
Speaker 1: It is he sets up a fake email account and
31:13
poses as Sonya's son, Jis Bordeaux. He reaches out to
31:17
Larry's sister, Sherry Jackson. He knows that Larry's ashes are
31:21
still stuck in the Philippines, and he knows how much
31:23
agonizing pain that is causing the Riskin family, so he
31:28
offers to leverage his connections in the Philippines to retrieve
31:31
the ashes for a price.
31:33
Speaker 2: He is literally holding the remains of a murdered man
31:36
hostage for cash, yes, and the demands escalate rapidly. He
31:41
starts by asking for thirty five thousand dollars and eventually
31:44
the demands balloon to two hundred and fifty thousand dollars
31:47
chameleon exactly. He instructs the family to deposit the funds
31:50
into a bank account that investigators later linked directly to
31:53
his girlfriend.
31:54
Speaker 1: But it gets so much worse in these emails, while
31:57
he is extorting them for the ashes, he brazenly offered
32:00
to organize a hit on Sonya in writing I have
32:02
the exact quote from the court documents here. He writes
32:05
to Sherry, I have a friend in la and he
32:08
can find a way to kill Sonya Rios Riskin. All
32:11
you need is your permission. You don't have to pay
32:13
him right now. He will kill her first and then
32:15
you can pay him later.
32:17
Speaker 2: Let's talk about the mechanisms of digital forensics here, because
32:20
this is where Delacruz's sheer incompetence seals his fate. Please
32:24
do we discussed how Sonya operated in the shadows in
32:27
the nineteen eighties, relying on cash payoffs and lack of
32:30
international communication to hide her crimes. Delacruz operating in two
32:35
thousand and six leaves a digital footprint the size of
32:38
a crater.
32:39
Speaker 1: But wait, how does a twenty nine year old Navy
32:41
sailor think he can extort a US family and solicit
32:44
a murder using an email address without realizing he can
32:47
be tracked. What was his technical blind spot there?
32:50
Speaker 2: It's a combination of technological ignorance and immense arrogance. He
32:55
likely thought that by using a free, generic email service
32:58
like Yahoo or hot Mail and a fake name, he
33:00
was totally anonymous.
33:01
Speaker 1: Like it couldn't be traced back right.
33:03
Speaker 2: What he didn't understand is how military networks actually operate.
33:07
All Internet traffic on a US Navy vessel is routed
33:10
through specific satellite nodes back to Department of Defense servers.
33:14
Oh man, Yeah, So when investigators subpoenaed the email provider
33:18
for the IP address attached to those extortion emails, the
33:21
provider handed over an IP the detectors ran that IP
33:25
and it didn't point to a local coffee shop.
33:28
Speaker 1: Where did it point.
33:29
Speaker 2: It pointed directly to the Department of Defense and specifically
33:32
to the USS Ronald Reagan.
33:34
Speaker 1: That is amazing.
33:35
Speaker 2: From there, Naval Criminal Investigative Service NCIS can easily match
33:39
the exact log in time of those emails to Delacruz's
33:42
shifts or his specific terminal access. He essentially sent murder
33:46
for higher solicitations from one of the most heavily monitored
33:49
networks on the planet.
33:50
Speaker 1: It's just unbelievable stupidity, and the irony compounds because after
33:53
Dela Cruz and Romero actually follow through, go to the
33:56
house and murder Sonya, what is the very first thing
33:59
Delacruz die?
34:00
Speaker 2: He asks for the money.
34:01
Speaker 1: He contacts Sonya's a state attorney to ask about the inheritance.
34:05
He thinks he's about to walk away with millions, and
34:07
the attorney informs him that because Sonya never actually drafted
34:10
a will, the entire estate defaults to her legally adopted son,
34:14
John Bordeaux. Delacruz gets absolutely nothing zero.
34:18
Speaker 2: His entire brutal, convoluted scheme was built on a legally
34:22
illiterate assumption completely he executed the woman who raised him
34:26
for an inheritance he wasn't even legally entitled to receive
34:30
in the absence of a will.
34:31
Speaker 1: So, realizing he just committed murder for free, what does
34:34
he do? He pivots right back to extorting the traumatized
34:38
riskin family.
34:39
Speaker 2: Unbelieva.
34:39
Speaker 1: He demands one hundred and seventy thousand dollars, claiming he
34:42
needs the money to pay off corrupt judges and crooked
34:45
cops and the Phutippians to release Larry's ashes, and he
34:48
escalates to threatening the risk and family with kidnapping and
34:51
torture if they don't comply.
34:53
Speaker 2: It is relentless sociopathic predation. But unlike Sonya, who maintained
34:58
a discipline facade of normalcy to the the outside world,
35:01
Dela Cruz's desperation made him sloppy.
35:03
Speaker 1: Very sloppy.
35:04
Speaker 2: Between the DoD traced emails, the bank accounts linked to
35:07
his girlfriend, and basic cell phone forensics I mean cell
35:12
tower pings place both Dela Cruz and Romero's phones in
35:15
Lomita on the night of the murder.
35:16
Speaker 1: Right their location was burned.
35:18
Speaker 2: Exactly and records showed Delacruz Cold Romero repeatedly right around
35:23
the time of the Salon warning shot. Investigators just had
35:25
a watertight, circumstantial case.
35:28
Speaker 1: So when you step back and look at this family dynamic,
35:30
it's like looking at a toxic corporate culture that finally implodes.
35:34
You have a CEO Sonya, who builds an empire using ruthless,
35:38
violent tactics. She raises a protege, her grand nephew, Delacruz.
35:42
He watches her, He sees how she solves her problems
35:44
with violence and gets rich doing it, and he essentially decides,
35:47
you know, I want the CEO position, and I'm going
35:49
to use your exact tactics to execute a hostile takeover.
35:53
She built the exact culture that destroyed her.
35:55
Speaker 2: It is a slawless analogy. It is the multi generational
35:58
transmission of sociopathy. She normalized the concept that family members
36:02
are just financial assets to be liquidated. Delacruz simply applied
36:06
her lesson to her.
36:07
Speaker 1: He learned from the best he did.
36:09
Speaker 2: And this brings us directly to the trial, which presents
36:12
one of the most fascinating legal and moral dilemmas in
36:16
recent true crime history.
36:17
Speaker 1: The trial takes place in twenty eleven in Torrent Superior Court.
36:22
You have a brilliant prosecutor, John Lewin, facing off against
36:26
defense attorneys Donald Levinson and Ludlow Creery.
36:29
Speaker 2: We really need to look deeply the legal strategy here.
36:32
Think about the monumental challenge for the prosecution and the
36:35
unique opportunity for the defense.
36:37
Speaker 1: Okay, set the scene.
36:39
Speaker 2: The victim in this murder trial, Sonya, is widely believed
36:42
by the public, the media, and even law enforcement, to
36:46
be a prolific serial killer herself.
36:48
Speaker 1: Right. So the defense strategy is brilliant in its cynicism.
36:51
They utilize what is essentially a blame the victim or
36:54
misdirection defense, combined with severe character assassination. They put Sonya on.
36:59
Speaker 2: Trial is smart from a defense perspective.
37:01
Speaker 1: It is they stand before the jury and paint her
37:03
as a monster, an evil murderer. They argue that a
37:06
woman this wicked at a massive list of enemies, any
37:09
one of whom could have pulled the trigger.
37:11
Speaker 2: Plausible deniability.
37:13
Speaker 1: Right. They point out that the evidence against Dela Cruz
37:16
and Romero is technically circumstantial. There was no physical DNA
37:20
of the nephews at the crime scene, no fingerprints, on
37:22
the gun, just phone pings and traced emails. They even
37:26
try to claim the arrests were rushed just to satisfy
37:29
the massive media pressure from shows like forty eight Hours.
37:32
Speaker 2: It's a very effective psychological tactic. The defense is essentially
37:36
telling the jury, don't look at our clients, look at
37:38
how terrible the victim was. Do you really want to
37:41
send two young navy sailors to prison for the rest
37:43
of their lives for taking out the trash?
37:45
Speaker 1: Wow?
37:46
Speaker 2: Right, logically to a layperson, it has an immense emotional appeal,
37:50
But Prosecutor John Lewin's counter argument is legally and philosophically profound.
37:55
Speaker 1: Lewin doesn't take the bait. He doesn't stand up and
37:58
try to defend Sonya's character at all. In his opening statements,
38:01
he actually concedes the defense's point.
38:03
Speaker 2: He leans into it.
38:04
Speaker 1: He does. He openly admits to the jury that Sonya
38:07
was a despicable human being and likely a double murderer.
38:10
But then he makes this famous, defining statement to the court.
38:13
He says, our system of law is bigger than who
38:16
she was.
38:17
Speaker 2: We really need to explore the weight of that argument,
38:20
because it is the cornerstone of American.
38:22
Speaker 1: Jurisprudence break that down for us.
38:25
Speaker 2: Lewin is explicitly addressing the jury instructions regarding a victim's character.
38:30
The law cannot and does not operate on a tier
38:32
list of moral worthiness, meaning meaning, you do not lose
38:37
your constitutional right to life simply because you are suspected
38:40
of a crime, or even if you are a provably
38:43
terrible person. Lewin is arguing that vigilante justice, or in
38:47
this case, opportunistic murder disguised as karmik justice, destabilizes the
38:53
entire foundation of society. Even a monster is protected by
38:56
the law, because if the law is allowed to have
38:58
blind spots based on popularity or morality, it ultimately protects
39:02
no one.
39:03
Speaker 1: But put yourself in the jury box for a second.
39:05
Let's say you're a jury number four. You've sat there
39:07
for weeks hearing forensic evidence about a woman who very
39:10
likely orchestrated the brutal execution of two innocent men, one
39:13
of them a beloved special education teacher, and she manipulated
39:17
international law to get away with it and get rich.
39:19
Speaker 2: It's a lot to take in.
39:20
Speaker 1: Is it human nature to secretly feel a little bit
39:23
glad that her killers took her out. How hard is
39:26
it to actually convict these two nephews when a primal
39:29
part of you feels like they did the world a favor.
39:32
Speaker 2: It is incredibly difficult. You are asking twelve ordinary citizens
39:37
to suppress their visceral human sense of karmic justice and
39:41
adhere strictly to the cold letter of the law. You're
39:44
asking them to protect the rights of a woman who
39:46
denied those exact rights to others. It requires immense civic.
39:50
Speaker 1: Discipline, and remarkably, the jury found that discipline. On February eighteenth,
39:54
twenty eleven, after deliberating, the jury convicted both Dela Cruz
39:59
and Romero a first degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder.
40:02
They did it, they did. The judge sentenced them both
40:05
to twenty six years to life and state prison. But
40:08
there is a detail from the sentencing hearing that really
40:11
stuck with me. What's that During the victim impact statements,
40:14
where family members usually ask for maximum penalties or talk
40:17
about how much they missed the deceased, no one spoke
40:20
on Sonya's behalf. No One, not a single person stood
40:23
up in that courtroom to defend her life or mourn
40:25
her passing.
40:26
Speaker 2: It is a stark, haunting testament to the absolute isolation
40:30
she ultimately built for herself. She died surrounded by money,
40:34
but entirely devoid of human connection. However, while the court
40:37
rendered its verdict on Dela Cruz and Romero and locked
40:39
them away, the story does not end neatly with the
40:42
strike of a gavel.
40:43
Speaker 1: No, it doesn't.
40:44
Speaker 2: There is a massive wake of multi generational damage.
40:47
Speaker 1: Left behind because despite everything we know, despite the trials
40:51
and the media coverage, Sonia Rio's Riskin was never definitively
40:55
charged by Philippine or US authorities for the deaths of
40:58
Earl Borgeaux or Riskin.
41:00
Speaker 2: She evaded official justice entirely. And if we zoo out
41:04
to look at the systemic gaps this case exposes, it
41:07
is terrifying. We are looking at massive vulnerabilities in how
41:10
our world operates.
41:11
Speaker 1: What kind of vulnerability well.
41:12
Speaker 2: International jurisdictional sovereignty allowed a suspected killer to hide behind
41:16
a border, A lack of cross border law enforcement cooperation
41:20
meant evidence couldn't be shared, and glaring loopholes and life
41:24
insurance payouts allowed financial institutions to fund a suspected serial
41:28
killer simply because the paperwork from a foreign, potentially corrupt
41:32
precinct looked official. She operated within these systemic blind spots
41:37
with total impunity for twenty years, and it leaves.
41:40
Speaker 1: The surviving families in an agonizing limbo. Now, there was
41:44
eventually some resolution for Earl Bordeaux family through the relentless
41:48
investigations driven by journalists in forty eight hours and complex
41:51
DNA confirmation. Earl's remains were finally located in the Philippines
41:55
and repatriated to Iowa in late two thousand and eight
41:58
or early two thousand and nine.
42:00
Speaker 2: Wow.
42:00
Speaker 1: After two decades, he finally made it home.
42:02
Speaker 2: But the trauma for Larry Riskin's family is heavily compounded.
42:06
According to the records, Larry's ashes remain lost or their
42:09
locations entirely unclear from public documents. Still think about his father,
42:15
Law Riskin Senior, taking the stand during the extortion trial.
42:19
The grief in his testimony was palpable. He stated, Delacruz's
42:23
family had not only killed my son, but now I
42:26
had to deal with the fact that Delacruz, along with
42:28
his sociopathic family members were attempting to extort money. They
42:32
took his son's life, and then they weaponized his son's
42:35
ashes for profit.
42:37
Speaker 1: And then there is John Bordeaux, Sonya's adopted son, the
42:40
boy she brought from the Philippines in the sixties, who
42:43
grew up in this house of secrets, and who ultimately
42:45
found her dead body in the hallway.
42:47
Speaker 2: Yeah.
42:47
Speaker 1: John, his quote to the press really sums up the
42:50
entire Bleak saga better than any legal analysis could. He
42:54
simply said, it's a waste of life. I'm feeling sad
42:57
for everybody.
42:57
Speaker 2: It is a profound tragedy. And which should you, the listener,
43:01
take away from this? It should force us to realize
43:03
that the systems we place are implicit. Trust in the
43:05
rigor of international law, the oversight of financial institutions, and
43:09
even the fundamental safety of the family unit are deeply
43:12
fragile when they are exploited by someone who lacks basic
43:15
human empathy. So true, it requires vigilance. It requires an
43:18
understanding that borders can easily become shields for bad actors,
43:23
and that financial assets, if they aren't rigorously protected by
43:26
clear wills and legal scrutiny, become the very motives for
43:29
our destruction.
43:31
Speaker 1: To summarize this incredible dark arc, we are looking at
43:34
a woman who escaped deep systemic poverty, came to America
43:38
and built a suburban empire. But she built it on secrets, manipulation,
43:43
and alleged bloodshed overseas. She navigated legal and financial systems
43:48
flawlessly for decades, orchestrating the deaths of two husbands to enrich.
43:53
Speaker 2: Herself, only to meet her end in her own.
43:55
Speaker 1: Hallway, exactly wearing her pajamas, executed by a family member
43:58
who was driven by the exact same greed she had normalized.
44:01
Speaker 2: The black Widow moniker she was given by the press
44:04
is incredibly apt, but not for the reason they initially thought. Right.
44:08
It isn't just apt because of her dead husbands. It's
44:10
apt because the web of violence she allegedly spun eventually
44:14
ensnared her. She proved definitively that you cannot cultivate a
44:17
culture of ruthless predatory opportunism within your own family and
44:20
expect to remain immune to it forever, Which.
44:23
Speaker 1: Leaves you listening right now with a final concept. Tim
44:27
all over. We talked at the very beginning about that
44:30
Hollywood noir script, the predictable tropes.
44:33
Speaker 2: Yeah, the movie feel of it all.
44:34
Speaker 1: Well, think about the psychological concept of inherited trauma. Usually,
44:37
when we talk about that in therapy or in the media,
44:39
we talk about trauma in terms of victims passing down pain, anxiety,
44:43
or fear to the next generation. We view it as
44:45
a tragic inheritance of suffering. Right, But in the case
44:48
of the Lamita Black Widow, did Sonia Rios riskin pass
44:52
down something much more dangerous? Did she pass down a
44:55
blueprint for sociopathy?
44:57
Speaker 2: That's a dark thought.
44:58
Speaker 1: If you build a family culture entirely around manipulation, deceit,
45:01
and using the people who love you as literal stepping
45:03
stones for financial gain, is it absolutely inevitable that one
45:07
day you become the stepping stone yourself.
45:10
Speaker 2: It is a chilling question. It suggests that we don't
45:13
just pass on our genes. We pass on our morality,
45:16
and sometimes we reap what we sow in the most literal,
45:20
violent ways imaginable.
45:22
Speaker 1: It really is thank you for joining us on this intense,
45:25
deep dive into the sources today. It is a heavy story,
45:29
but an essential look at the darker mechanics of human nature,
45:32
the fragility of the systems we trust, and the long
45:35
destructive shadow of greed. Remember to stay curious, keep questioning
45:39
the simple narratives, and always keep seeking the mechanisms behind
45:41
the headlines. We'll see you next time.