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The Palm Tree Hole: She Knew Her Killers · Scary Paranormal Stories

• 0:03
  Speaker 1: The hole was already dug before anyone knew Elena was missing.
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Three weeks before October 30th, 2012, a gardener in San
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: Juan Opico was paid $ 6 to dig a hole approximately
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: one meter deep in the backyard of a residential property.
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: The woman who hired him said it was for palm trees.
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: She never bought the palm trees, and when investigators finally
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: opened that ground, They found Elena Stephanie Arias Moreno, 20
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: years old, second of five children, business administration student, wrapped
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: in three black garbage bags. She had been dead less
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: than 24 hours. There is something that has stayed with
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: me about this case, something I couldn't set aside no
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: matter how many times I read through it. Elena didn't
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: disappear into the unknown. She walked toward people she recognized,
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: people she trusted, and the ground that was waiting for
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: her had been prepared weeks before she ever took that walk.
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: This is the story of what happened in those hours,
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: who planned it, and why. After three trials, the question
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: of motive still has no official answer. Elena Stefaniarius Moreno
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: arrived at the shopping center near her university on the
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: morning of October 30th, 2012, driving her beige Toyota. She
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: parked it by the pedestrian exit and sat down on
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: a bench outside. Security cameras recorded her there for approximately
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: 40 minutes. Phone pressed to her ear, making calls, waiting.
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: She wasn't frantic. She wasn't hiding. She was waiting for
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: someone she expected to arrive. Eventually, she stood up. She
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: walked past her own car, without stopping, crossed the pedestrian path,
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: and climbed into a vehicle that was already idling at
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: the curb. That vehicle was registered to Juan Jose Bobadilla,
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: 44 years old, the father of her boyfriend. Inside the
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: car were two women, Claudia Patricia Liva de Bobadilla, 33,
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: Jose Alejandro's stepmother, and Andrea Alexandra Bobadilla, 33, his paternal aunt.
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: Elena knew both of them. That detail matters more than
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: almost anything else in this case. Elena wasn't taken by
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: strangers in a dark parking lot. She stepped willingly into
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: a car, driven by women who had shared meals with her,
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: who had gone with her to the salon, who had
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: been part of her life for the two years she
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: had been with José Alejandro. Whatever the official reason for
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: that meeting, Elena had no reason to be afraid when
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: she got in. The Bobadilla family lived inside Quintus de Gratamira,
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: a gated residential development in San Juan Hopico that sat
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: at a different economic altitude than most of El Salvador.
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: Juan Jose had received a severance payment of $ 57, 000 in
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: June of 2012. By late October, his account was nearly empty.
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: Andrea's house in the development was rented in Juan Jose's name.
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: It was the kind of neighborhood where security guards tracked
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: comings and goings And that, as it turned out, would
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: become a problem. Elena's family, the Arias Meredos, were middle
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: class and working. Elena was the second of five children,
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: enrolled in her second year of business, administration, at Universidad
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: Jose Matias Delgado. She had been with Jose Alejandro Papadilla
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: Barrientos for two years, long enough for his family to
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: have become familiar territory. The lunch was set for two
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: in the afternoon. Elena never arrived. Her brother Brian waited.
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: Then her family called her phone. No answer. Messages went unread.
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: By that evening, there was no version of Elena's silence
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: that made sense. She was not the kind of person
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: who disappeared without a word. By the next morning, her
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: car had been found, exactly where the cameras had already
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: shown her leaving it. sitting alone in the shopping center lot,
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: door locked, everything inside undisturbed. It was her boyfriend, Jose Alejandro,
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: who knew something the rest of them didn't. He knew
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: that Elena had been going to meet Claudia and Andrea
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: that day. He didn't tell her family that until hours
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: after she vanished. His explanation, he had forgotten. San Juan
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: Opico sits in the Laliberta department of El Salvador, west
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: of the capital, The kind of mid-sized municipality where gated developments,
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: like Quintus de Gratamira, represent a sharp divide between those
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: inside the walls and those outside them. The security booth
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: at the entrance kept a log. The guard on duty
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: knew the residents by sight. He noticed things. On October 30th,
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: he noticed that Claudia left the compound four separate times.
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: Each time she passed the booth, she asked him the
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: same question. had her husband come by. Had Juan Jose
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: asked for her, the guard found it strange enough to remember.
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: He also followed the vehicle at one point, quietly, without
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: the women noticing, and saw them remove a large black
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: bag from the car. This contradicted Claudia's later claim that
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: she had spent only 15 minutes at Andrea's house that day.
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: Inside Andrea's house, another witness had been there earlier and
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: would not be there when Claudia... and Andrea returned. The
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: domestic worker who cleaned for Andrea received a phone call
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: from Claudia on the morning of October 30th. Claudia told
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: her to come to the shopping center, that she had
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: something for her, that they should meet. The worker went.
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: She waited four hours. Claudia never appeared when the worker
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: returned to Andrea's house. Later that evening, she found the
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: two women freshly bathed. The house smelled heavily of cleaning products.
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: One bathroom door was closed, and she was told, firmly,
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: not to open it. She testified to all of this
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: at trial. The physical evidence that eventually came from Elena's
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: body told a different story than either woman would later claim.
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: A story of resistance, not passivity. Elena had fought. She
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: had scratched. She had grabbed. Investigators found 20 blunt force
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: injuries to her head. There were marks on her neck
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: consistent with a cord or rope used to strangle her.
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: When Claudia and Andrea were detained, both women had fresh
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: scratches and bruising on their bodies. On Elena's skin, forensic
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: examiners found a single acrylic fingernail. It belonged to Andrea.
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: Tangled in Elena's hands were strands of hair, from Claudia
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: and from Andrea both. The hole in Andrea's backyard had
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: been planned on October 16th. That was the date a
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: domestic worker overheard the two women talking about digging a
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: hole for palm trees, they said. Days later, they paid
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: a gardener $ 6 for the labor. The depth was specified,
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: one meter. Andrea never mentioned the palm trees again, and
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: no record of a purchase ever emerged. Elena's remains were
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: found on October 31st, 2012, buried exactly one meter down,
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: in three black bags, in that hole. What no one
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: has officially explained, not in 2013, not after three separate proceedings,
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: is why. The motive the prosecution argued was a debt
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: of $ 1, 000 that the Bobadilla family owed to Elena's family.
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: compounded by financial desperation. But the Bobadillas owned property worth
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: multiples of that amount, and if the plan was a
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: ransom kidnapping, as Claudia later claimed, it made no sense
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: to use women. Elena could identify a witness who survives,
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: go straight to the police. A kidnapping scheme built around
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: known faces is not a scheme at all. The real
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: reason Elena climbed into that car is still Officially unknown,
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: the cameras at the shopping center captured everything. That is
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: the detail that makes this case so hard to process.
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: Helena was not taken from a dark parking lot or
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: a deserted road. She disappeared in broad daylight, in a
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: public place surrounded by people who never noticed anything was wrong.
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: The footage shows her arriving near noon on October 30th, 2012.
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: She parked her beige Toyota and walked to a bench
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: near the main entrance. For approximately 40 minutes, she sat
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: there making phone calls. Anyone watching would have seen a
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: young woman waiting for a ride. Nothing more. Then, she
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: stood up. She walked past her own car without stopping,
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: crossed the pedestrian crossing, and climbed into a vehicle that
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: was already waiting for her. That last part is what
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: the rational mind keeps returning to. Elena chose to get
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: in that car. She was not forced across a parking lot.
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: She was not grabbed. She walked toward that vehicle calmly, deliberately,
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: because she had no reason to fear it. The two
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: women inside were people she knew. She had been to
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: the salon with one of them. She had shared meals
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: with them. She trusted them. And that trust is what
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: the cameras recorded in those final seconds before she disappeared.
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: The vehicle belonged to Juan Jose Bobadilla, the boyfriend's father. Inside,
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: Claudia and Andrea. Jose Alejandro knew that morning that Elena
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: was meeting them. He knew the time and the place.
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: He told no one. That silence would become its own
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: kind of evidence. When Brian... waited at the lunch table
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: that afternoon, and Elena never arrived, the family's first calls
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: went to José Alejandro. His answers were vague. Hours passed.
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: The phone rang, and rang at Elena's number, and returned
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: nothing but silence. It was not until much later that
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: José Alejandro mentioned, almost in passing, that Elena had gone
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: to meet Claudia and Andrea. He said he had forgotten
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: to tell anyone. Phone records told a different story. Records
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: confirmed calls between Jose Alejandro, Claudia, and Andrea in the
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: hours before the meeting, during it, and after. The timing
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: of those calls does not resemble forgetting. It resembles coordination.
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: The next morning, October 31st, Elena's car was found in
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: the shopping center parking lot, parked near the pedestrian exit.
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: A phone. A bag. The engine called. Investigators pulled the
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: security footage and saw what the cameras had seen. They
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: now knew she had gotten into a car registered to
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: the Bobadilla family. That narrowed everything quickly. By that same morning,
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: authorities moved toward Quintus de Grata Mira, the gated residential
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: compound where the Bobadilla family lived. And where Andrea rented
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: a house on the same block What they found in
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: Andrea's backyard ended the search. Three black garbage bags. Buried
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: approximately one meter underground, Elena's body wrapped inside them showed
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: 20 impact injuries to the head. Strangulation marks on her neck,
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: consistent with a rope or cord, browsing across the lower
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: half of her body. Her clothing was torn. She had
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: not gone quietly. On her skin, Investigators found one acrylic nail.
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: It was identified as Andrea's. In her hands, gripped there
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: even in death, were strands of hair. They belonged to
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: Claudia and Andrea. When Claudia and Andrea were detained that
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: same day, both had fresh scratches on their arms and faces.
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: The hole in the ground had been dug weeks earlier.
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: A domestic worker employed by Andrea later testified, that on
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: October 16th, two weeks before the murder, she had overheard
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: Claudia and Andrea discussing the need to dig a hole
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: in the backyard. The stated reason, they wanted to plant
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: palm trees. Days later, they paid a gardener $ 6 to
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: dig it, one meter deep. Andrea never bought any palm trees.
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: There is no version of this story where everything makes sense.
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: Claudia and Andrea gave investigators their accounts. Both accounts agreed
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: on very little. Claudia said she had been driving, that
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: Andrea was in the back seat with Elena, and that
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: by the time they reached Andrea's house, Elena was already dead.
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: She claimed she spent only 15 minutes inside the house
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: and refused to help with the body. She denied knowing
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: anything had gone that far. Andrea's version placed the violence
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: with Claudia She said Claudia put a rope around Elena's
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: neck in the car, that Elena lost consciousness. And that
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: when they arrived at the house, Claudia gave her a
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: pill that made her sleep deeply. Andrea claimed that when
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: she woke up, Elena was already in the bags. She
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: said she had only helped move her from the car.
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: Both women had scratches. The surveillance footage already established that
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: Claudia left the Quintas de Gratamira compound, Four times that day,
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: the security guard on duty noticed. He found it unusual
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: enough to follow the vehicle at one point, and he
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: watched one of the women remove a black bag from
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: the car. Claudia later told investigators she had been inside
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: Andrea's house for only 15 minutes. The guard's account and
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: the gate records said otherwise. The domestic worker had been
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: deliberately removed from the scene. Claudia called her that morning.
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: and told her to come to the shopping center. The
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: woman waited four hours. When she returned to Andrea's house
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: that evening, Claudia and Andrea were freshly bathed. The air
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: inside was sharp with cleaning products. One bathroom door was locked,
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: and she was told not to open it. One bathroom, locked.
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: Brian Arias, Elena's brother, gave investigators something harder to quantify.
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: He said he had overheard José Alejandro speaking on the
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: phone with his aunt that day. The words he reported
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: were direct. José Alejandro asked, What happened with the bolado?
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: In El Salvador, bolado is a word for a thing,
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: a situation, a matter. Something you do not want to
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: name out loud. There was a piece of paper recovered
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: from the house during the search. It contained song lyrics
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: and band names written in English. Nirvana My Chemical Romance, She-Wolf, Charlotte,
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: and above them, the words Simple Plan. The prosecution presented
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: it as evidence of premeditation. The defense called that interpretation absurd,
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: arguing it was nothing more than music notes from a
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: phase José Alejandro had gone through years before. There was
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: a second sheet covered in what Claudia described as drawings
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: from his emo period. The paper proved nothing by itself,
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: but it sat beside the phone records, the dug hole,
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: the scratches, the locked bathroom, and the guard at the
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: gate who watched a black bag come out of a car,
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: and it became part of a picture that kept expanding
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: in every direction. The official motive was never confirmed. Prosecutors
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: argued that the Bobadilla family owed Elena's family $ 1, 000. That debt,
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: combined with a financial collapse that investigators could document, became
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: the stated engine of the crime. Juan Jose had received
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: a severance payment of $ 57, 000 in June of 2012. By October,
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: those funds were nearly gone. The family that lived in
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: a gated compound with multiple vehicles and the outward markers
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: of comfort was, according to bank records, nearly empty. The
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: theory was that Claudia and Andrea lured Elena to the
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: shopping center under the pretense of settling the debt. That
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: the real plan was to take her, hold her, and
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: demand a ransom from the Arias family. But the logic
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: of that theory has a wall in it that investigators
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: never got past. Elena knew Claudia and Andrea. She had
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: gone to the salon with Claudia. She knew their faces,
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: their names, their address. If the plan was to take
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: her and demand money and then release her, she would
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: have gone directly to the police the moment she was free.
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: Any ransom plan that involved people the victim could identify
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: was not a plan at all. It was something else.
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: Claudia herself offered a different version at trial. She claimed
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: the scheme was Andrea's idea entirely. That Andrea wanted to
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: kidnap Elena as a way of generating money. Because Andrea's husband,
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: imprisoned in Guatemala, had been demanding funds, and Andrea could
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: not provide them. She said, the plan had been Andrea's
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: from the beginning, that things went wrong, and that she
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: had simply been present. Andrea's version blamed Claudia, Claudia's version
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: blamed Andrea. One thing both versions share, Elena was supposed
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: to survive the car ride, whether as a ransom hostage
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: or as leverage for something else. Both women claimed the
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: intent was not to kill her. She arrived at Andrea's house, alive.
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: The 20 injuries to her skull and the ligature marks
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: on her neck do not support an accident. They support
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: the opposite. What happened in that house during those hours
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: is something only two people fully know. Both of them
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: have been telling different stories since the afternoon. They were
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: found with scratches on their arms. and the smell of
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: bleach still in the bathroom. The real reason Elena Stephaniaris
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: Moreno walked across that parking lot and into that car
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: has never been officially confirmed. The court convicted, the sentences
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: were handed down, and the motive remains. officially unresolved, a
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: word in a document where a reason should have been.
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: The verdicts arrived in November of 2013. Claudia Patricia Liva
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: de Barbadilla and Andrea Alexandra Barbadilla were each sentenced to
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: 40 years for aggravated homicide. Jose Alejandro Barbadilla Barrientos received
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: 26 years and 8 months as an accomplice. The Arias
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: Moreno family sat in that courtroom and heard three different
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: people held responsible for Elena. It was the closest thing
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: to an answer they would ever receive. It did not last.
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: Between 2013 and 2016, Jose Alejandro's legal team challenged the
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: convictions on grounds of insufficient evidence. The sentence was annulled.
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: In April of 2016, he walked free. The phone records
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: that showed him calling his aunt and his stepmother before
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: during and after Elena entered that car were not enough.
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: The courts determined that being on the other end of
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: a call is not the same as placing a hand
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: on someone. Legally, they were right in every other sense.
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: That answer does not satisfy. Juan Jose Bobadilla, whose vehicle
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: carried Elena to Andrea's house, had been absolved before the
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: trial even began. The judge found no direct participation. The
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: car that appears on the shopping center's security footage. The
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: car registered in his name was apparently not enough to
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: connect him to the act itself. He walked. His son
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: eventually walked. The two women who entered that car with
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: Elena did not. Claudia and Andrea are still serving their sentences,
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: 40 years each. The official motive was never confirmed by
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: the court. The prosecution argued financial desperation after Juan Jose's $ 57, 000
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: severance was nearly gone by October of 2012. But that
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: theory always had a gap the size of everything. Helena
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: knew both women. She had been to the salon with Claudia.
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: She had laughed with her, sat beside her, trusted her
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: enough to step into her car. If the plan had
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: ever been ransom and release, Helena would have gone directly
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: to the police the moment they let her go. There
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: is no version of this story where the plan was
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: ransom and release. Claudia said things got out of control.
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: Andrea said she was asleep when it happened. Both women still,
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: years later, point at the other. The hole in Andrea's
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: garden was dug on the 16th of October, two weeks
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: before Elena disappeared. The gardener was paid $ 6. No Pamiras
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: were ever purchased. That detail, $ 6, two weeks, no trees,
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: tells you more about premeditation than either woman ever admitted
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: in court. There is something in this case. that I
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: have not been able to set down since I first
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: read through the evidence. It is the 40 minutes. Elena
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: sat on that bench for 40 minutes, making phone calls,
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: before she stood up, walked past her own car, and
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: crossed the street. She had choices in those 40 minutes.
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: She did not know that. She was 20 years old,
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: and she was doing what people do when they trust someone.
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: She went. The Arias Moreno family lost their second child.
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: Elena had four siblings. Her parents received the call on
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: October 31st. 2012. When investigators found three black bags buried
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: one meter deep in the garden of a woman, Elena
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: had considered part of her extended family. That is not
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: a detail that leaves you. The people who killed her
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: had eaten at the same table. They had touched her hair.
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: What justice looks like in this case depends on what
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: you believe justice is capable of doing. Two women are
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: in prison. One man is free. The motive is officially unresolved.
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: The question of who planned it, who made the call,
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: who decided that Elena would not walk out of that house,
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: that question has no court-confirmed answer. Each woman still carries
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: her version. Each version requires the other to be lying.
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: Elena Stephanie Arias Moreno was a second year business student
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: with four brothers and sisters and a lunch she never
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: made at two. She left her car in a parking
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: lot where it sat through the night and the next
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: morning someone found it parked neatly beside the pedestrian exit
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: as if she had every intention of coming back. She
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: never came back for it. This show is made by
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: Oba Media.