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Generals, A Bar, and a Body in the Dam · Scary Paranormal Stories

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Her body was found floating in the reservoir. Two days
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: after she vanished. Not downstream. Not somewhere remote. Floating in
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: the water that ran directly alongside the military base where
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: she had been stationed. Where her commanding officers knew her name.
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: Where she had reported for duty. Eight months in a
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: row without missing a single day. The official cause of
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: death was not drowning. There was no water in her lungs.
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: no water in her stomach. She was already dead when
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: someone put her in that reservoir. And then the institution
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: that was supposed to protect her told her father she
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: had simply decided not to come back. That detail stopped me,
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: cold the first time I read this case. Not the violence,
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: the phone call. There is a version of this story
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: where a young soldier goes missing and the system works.
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: Where the base locks down, where superior officers cooperate, where
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: the truth surfaces in days rather than years. This is
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: not that version. This is the story of Brenda Okwudem Matuszczakon,
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: 26 years old, eight months into active service with the
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: Mexican army, stationed at the Chicosen base in Chiapas. And
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: it is the story of what happens when the people
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: who should protect you are the ones you need protecting from.
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: Brenda called her father On April 4th, 2019, the call
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: was short and warm. She told him she had a
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: few days off coming. She was going to use them
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: to visit her grandmother, who was terminally ill. The grandmother
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: lived near the Emiliano Zapata agricultural colony, close to the
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: Mexico-Guatemala border, the same region where Brenda had grown up,
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: where her father Jesus Matos Montesinos still had roots. She
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: sounded like herself. She sounded fine. That was the last
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: conversation Jesus would have with his daughter. Brenda had come
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: from a place that does not produce many career soldiers.
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: The Emiliano Zapata colony sits at the edge of the
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: country in every sense geographically remote, economically precarious. The kind
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: of place where joining the military is less a calling
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: than a calculation. Eight months into service, she had been
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: assigned to the Chikosen base in the highlands of Chiapas,
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: a facility built at the edge of a hydroelectric reservoir
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: of the same name. The reservoir is enormous and dark,
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: even in daylight. The water does not move the way
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: natural water moves. It is held, contained, still, except for
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: the currents generated by the turbines below. From certain points
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: on the base perimeter, you can see it clearly. It
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: is always there. It was always there. Jesus had arranged
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: to live near the base so he could be close
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: to her. That detail matters more than it might seem
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: at first. He was not a distant presence, waiting for updates.
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: He was nearby, in her daily orbit, aware of her schedule.
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: When Brenda stopped answering her phone after April 5th, he
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: did not wait long before something started pulling at him.
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: The night of April 5th, began ordinarily enough. Brenda had
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: been granted a few hours of leave. She went to
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: a bar in Tuxtla Gutierrez, roughly 20 kilometers from the base,
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: as part of a group of five. Two generals named
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: Agustin and Jose Antonio, two enlisted soldiers, one man, one woman,
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: and Brenda. The group arrived around three in the afternoon
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: and stayed through the evening, eating and drinking. By the
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: time they left, it was approaching midnight. What happened at
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: the entrance to the base is where the story changes.
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: The two enlisted soldiers went inside. Brenda, General Agustin, and
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: General José Antonio did not. Witnesses would later say they
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: saw Brenda near the base entrance, talking with General Agustin.
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: She was visibly intoxicated, swaying, laughing. That image... Witnesses outside
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: a military base, in the small hours of the morning.
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: A young soldier, unsteady on her feet between two superior officers.
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: He's the last confirmed sighting of Brenda Okwudia Mutushakon alive.
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: Additional witnesses placed all three of them near the reservoir.
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: She never reached her father. She never reached her grandmother.
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: The grandmother died days later, without seeing Brenda one final time.
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: When Jesus began asking questions, the base did not offer answers.
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: What they offered instead was a story. Brenda had gone
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: absent without leave. She had decided not to return. She was,
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: in the language of institutional deflection, a personal problem rather
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: than a military one. Jesus knew his daughter. He knew
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: the call from April 4th. He knew she had been
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: counting the days to see a dying woman. She loved.
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: The explanation the army gave him did not fit the
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: person he had raised, and he made sure everyone around
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: him knew it. The bar in Tuxla Gutierrez was loud
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: and ordinary. That is the detail that keeps returning. How
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: completely normal the afternoon looked from the outside. On April 5th, 2019,
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: Brenda left the Chico Hussain base with four colleagues, General Agustin,
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: General Jose Antonio, and two other enlisted soldiers, one man
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: and one woman. They had hours of permitted leave. The
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: bar was roughly 20 kilometers from the base, far enough
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: to feel like a different world, close enough that the
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: night always had a scheduled end. They arrived around three
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: in the afternoon. They ate, they drank. Witnesses inside the
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: establishment would later describe a relaxed group, conversation, laughter, The
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: unremarkable rhythm of people who had earned a few hours off.
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: Nothing recorded inside. That bar gave any indication of what
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: would happen before sunrise. Near midnight, the group returned to
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: the base. Here is where the evening stops being ordinary.
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: The two enlisted soldiers, the other man and woman, entered
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: the base together. Brenda did not go in. Neither did
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: General Augustine. Neither Augustine. at General José Antonio. The three
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: of them stayed outside, at the entrance, as the gate
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: closed behind their two colleagues. Witnesses at the base recorded
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: what they saw. Brenda was visibly intoxicated. She was swaying, laughing,
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: struggling to hold a straight line. She was last seen
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  Speaker 1: speaking with General Agustín at the entrance. That image, Brenda
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: laughing at the gate, two superior officers on either side
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  Speaker 1: of her, is the last confirmed sighting of her alive.
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: After that, witnesses reported seeing all three of them moving
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: toward the reservoir, the reservoir that sits directly beside the base.
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: Approximately 48 hours after that night, Brenda's body was found
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: floating in the hydroelectric reservoir at Chikusin. The army's initial
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: response to her father, Jesu's, was that Brenda had simply
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: decided not to come back. She had gone AWOL. These
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: things happened. Soldiers made choices. Jesus should not worry in
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: the way he was worrying. Jesus knew his daughter. He
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: knew the call she had made the day before. April Force,
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: her voice clear and specific, asking about days off so
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: she could visit her grandmother before it was too late.
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: That is not the call someone makes the night before
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: they abandon their life. He did not stop pressing. The
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: forensic results are where the army's version collapsed completely. Brenda
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: had a cranial fracture. She had cervical fractures. The forensic
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: determination was unambiguous. These injuries were not consistent with an
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: accidental fall into water. They required a hard, smooth object
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: applied with force more than once. And then the detail
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: that dismantles every remaining theory of accident or drowning. There
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: was no water in Brenda's lungs. There was no water
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: in her stomach. She had not inhaled. She had not swallowed.
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: Her body had made no biological attempt to breathe. Because
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: she was not breathing when she entered the reservoir. Brenda
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: was already dead before she went into the water. Someone
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: put her there after... Forensic investigators then turned to the
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: vehicles belonging to the men who had been with her.
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: On one of the vehicles belonging to one of the
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: two convicted generals, they found bloodstains. That alone would have
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: been damning. What the investigation added to it changed the
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: evidentiary picture entirely. There was a dent in that vehicle,
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: a specific dent with a specific shape. The forensic team
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: compared its morphology against the fractures in Brenda's skull. The
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: shape matched. The curvature aligned with one of the blows
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: that had killed her. The army had initially presented the
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: possibility of negligence. A terrible accident. A soldier who had
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: too much to drink near a reservoir in the dark.
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: That version required the forensic evidence to say something different
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: than what it said. The rational explanations stopped working here.
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: But the forensic findings were only part of what Jesus
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: was fighting against. while investigators were still establishing the basics
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: of what had happened. Colonel Constantino Sánchez Ramírez, the commanding
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: officer of the Chico Zen base, was already moving. According
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: to Jesus, the colonel had a plan to transfer witnesses
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: from the base to the military quarters at Rancho Nuevo
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: before the civilian prosecutor's office could reach them. The transfer
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: never happened. Jesus made the situation public. The media attention
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: came fast enough that the plan was blocked before it
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: could be executed. But the fact that the plan existed
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: met the fact that the plan existed. That someone with
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: command authority at that base was thinking about witness locations
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: before the investigation had formally begun said something the army
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: could not take back. There is no version of this
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: story where everything makes sense unless you accept that what
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: happened after Brenda's death was not confusion. It was management.
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: The prosecutors who built the case against General Agustin and
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: General José Antonio did not rely on a single piece
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: of evidence. The case rested on a chain. The last
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: confirmed sighting. The last confirmed sighting. The witness accounts placing
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: all three near the water. The forensic determination that Brenda
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: died from blunt force trauma before entering the reservoir. the
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: bloodstains on the vehicle and the dent who shaped the
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: forensic team matched to her skull. The determined motive was
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: an attempted sexual assault that escalated to homicide. The two
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: generals had rank, proximity, and the cover of a military
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: installation that initially treated its own account of events as
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: the operative version. What forensic science established was the sequence.
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: Brenda did not fall. She was struck. She died from
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: those strikes. Her body was then carried to the reservoir
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: she had seen every day she reported for duty, and
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: she was placed in the water, as if the water
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: might explain everything. It did not explain anything. It became
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: the detail that proved the opposite. Jesus Matus Montesinos identified
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: his daughter's body himself, the man who had lived near
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: the base with her, who had listened to her voice
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: on the phone on April 4th, as she made quiet plans,
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: stood over her, and confirmed who she was. That task,
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: the most unbearable task a parent can perform, was one
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: the army did not spare him. Brenda's granddaughter died in
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: the days following her granddaughter's disappearance. She died without seeing
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: Brenda one last time. The visit that Brenda had asked
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: permission to make, the reason she had called her father
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: with hope, still in her voice... Never happened. What was
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: stolen was not only her life, but every moment she
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: had arranged to live inside it. In December 2021, Judge
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: Juan Carlos Alfaro Cruz of the Chiapas Tribunal sentenced both
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: General Agustin and General Jose Antonio to 30 years in prison,
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: each for aggravated homicide. They were remanded to Penal No. 14,
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: the Amate facility in Sintalapa. The court also ordered a
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: reparation payment of 520,000 pesos, approximately $ 25, 000, to Brenda's family.
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: But Chiapa's prosecutor's office did not publicize the details of
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: the case until after the sentence was handed down. The
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: investigation existed largely because Jesus refused to accept the first
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: version he was given, and because the public pressure he
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: generated made it impossible for the witness transfer plan to
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: be quietly completed. Jesus said afterward that killing Brenda had
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: also killed something in all of them. The family that
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: remained was not the same family that had existed before
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: April 5th, 2019. That statement is not a metaphor. It
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: is a forensic fact about what violence does to the
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: people it does not physically touch. The question the case
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: leaves open is a structural one. Jesus pressed. He had
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: access to media, He had the will and the voice
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: to make noise until someone listened. The colonel's plan to
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: move witnesses failed because the story became public fast enough
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: to stop it. What happens in the cases where the
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: father does not press? Where the media does not arrive?
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: Where the witnesses are transferred before anyone outside the base
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: knows to ask where they went? Brenda's name is document.
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: Her killers are in a penal facility. in Sintalapa. Her
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: grandmother never said goodbye, and the reservoir at Chicosan is
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: still there, quiet and wide, beside the base where Brenda
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: reported for duty every morning for eight months. In December
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: of 2021, Judge Juan Carlos Alfaro Cruz read the verdict
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: allowed in the Chiapas Tribunal. General Agustin and General Jose Antonio,
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: guilty of aggravated homicide, 30 years each, each. No suspended sentence,
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: no administrative discharge, used as cover. 30 years in penal
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: number 14, in Amit, Sintalapa, a prison whose name Brenda's
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: family had never heard before. April 5th, 2019, and will
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: never be able to forget now. The court also ordered 520,000
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: pesos in reparation damages. roughly $ 25, 000, the family accepted it.
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: They had no reason to refuse, and every reason to
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: understand that no number assigned to what was taken from
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: them would ever be the right number. Jesus Matus Montesinos
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: had spent more than two years doing what no father
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: should have to do, fighting an institution that outranked him
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: in every measurable way. pushing against a colonel who had
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: tried to move witnesses before the prosecutor could reach them,
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: speaking to journalists when silence would have been easier, and
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: identifying his daughter's body from the edge of a reservoir
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: that sat 50 meters from the base where she had
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: been stationed. He had done all of it. The verdict
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: was his. He said, in the days after the sentencing,
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: that killing Brenda had also killed something in him. Not
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: the version of grief that passes, the kind that reorders everything,
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: the kind that means you carry the shape of what
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: was taken with you for the rest of your life,
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: pressed against everything ordinary. Breakfast, a phone ringing, the sound
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: of a young woman's laugh in a crowded place. There
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: is something worth holding still for a moment, not to
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: make this smaller, but to make it exactly the size
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: it is. Brenda Orquidea Matushakorn, had been in uniform for
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: eight months. She had called her father on April 4th,
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: with a simple plan. Free days. A bus. Her grandmother's house.
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: Time that was finally hers. That call was the last
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: ordinary thing. Her grandmother died in the days that followed,
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: without Brenda ever arriving. Two losses in the same window,
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: one of them waiting for the other, neither of them aware.
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: The conviction in 2021 close the legal case. It did
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: not close the other one, the one Jesus had been
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: carrying since he stood at the water's edge, and recognized
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: what the reservoir had given back, what the forensic evidence established,
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: and what the tribunal confirmed, is that Brenda was already
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: dead before she entered the water. The generals put her
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: body into a reservoir, hoping it would become an accident.
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: The dent in the vehicle, the bloodstains, the fractures in
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: her skull, and cervical vertebrae, the dry lungs, all of
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: it pointed inward toward that car, toward that night, toward
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: two men who believed that Rank would protect them from
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: what they had done. It did not. But here is
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: the question. The verdict cannot answer. And the one that
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: Jesus Matus Montesinos has asked publicly more than once. How
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: many cases like Brenda's never became cases at all? How
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: many families received a phone call telling them their daughter
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: had simply decided not to come back, and had no
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: journalist to call, no platform, no relentless father willing to
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: go on record. The 2021 conviction exists because one man
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: refused to accept the first explanation. Most people, faced with
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: the weight of an institution, telling them they are wrong,
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: stop pushing. Jesus did not stop. the Chiapas Attorney General's
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: office withheld the details of the case from public release
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: until after the sentencing. Not during the investigation, not during
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: the trial, after. The verdict arrived before the public knew
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: the full shape of what had happened inside that base.
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: That sequencing is its own kind of answer about who
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: the system was designed to protect. Brenda never sent the
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: message she had planned to send from her grandmother's house.
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: The phone call on April 4th was the last one
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: What she said that afternoon, that she had days off,
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: that she was going to finally go, that everything was fine,
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: is the last version of her that her father keeps intact.
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: Everything after that belongs to someone else's story. Two men
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: who were now in penal number 14 and a reservoir
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: that held what they tried to hide. The water gave
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: her back. That part, at least, did not work. This
• 20:39
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