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MIKE AFRICA JR. I've been livin'
in a prison for 38 years

because my mother and father
are both in prison.

Four minutes of gunfire,

one policeman killed,
and members of group MOVE

have been routed
from their house.

So, this would have been
her cell?

Yeah.

The MOVE organization
experienced so much hate

and anger from the system.

What can I do about that
except just keep on pushin'?

Bishop Gerardi was
the parish priest

at the church of San Sebastián

in an old historic center
of Guatemala City.

It's location is
super interesting

because it's only blocks
from the, uh, National Palace,

uh, the Presidential...
you know, offices.

Uh, the... It's inside

what they call
the security perimeter.

It's also only a few blocks
away from the cathedral,

where the offices
of the archdiocese,

office of human rights
were located.

San Sebastián is a, uh...

old-fashioned
neighborhood parish.

He shared his duties there
with another priest,

Father Mario Orantes.

Why would they kill someone
as eminent as Bishop Gerardi?

A 78-year-old bishop,

two days after he's released
this human rights report

that has captured
the world's attention.

Given Guatemala's history,
everyone's going to assume

it was the army that did it.

That's gonna be...
that's what I first thought

when I first heard it.

You know, everybody
was gonna react that way.

This is a country
that had just come out of

more than 35 years of war.
It signed peace accords.

And so for him to be murdered
in the way he was,

a lot of people really felt that
it was gonna restart the war.

Church and human rights leaders
fear the Bishop's murder

could jeopardize the work
they've been doing

to uncover Guatemala's
savage past.

That victims may now be
too scared to come forward

with their stories.

Too scared to fight to prosecute
the perpetrators of the crimes.

Because they say, "If a bishop
who was searching for the truth

can be murdered,
then no one is safe."

Joan Leishman, CBC News,
Guatemala City.

You will read the papers,

you know, see the TV news shows,

and see a lot of voices
claiming for justice.

The murderers cannot get away
with this murder.

This murder happened inside
the security circle

of Álvaro Arzú.

I mean,
it happened two blocks away

from the presidential house

of the most powerful man
in Guatemala.

So, you know, the intelligence
services must know something.

Whether out of incompetence,
panic,

uh, some devious design,

uh, the crime scene was very
seriously mishandled.

If you were going to
make video to show

future forensics people
how not to handle a crime scene,

I guess you could show them
a video of what happened there

that night.

They did everything wrong.

When they did finally
get around to putting up

yellow security tape,
it was way too small

and protected too little space
and it was just...

People were allowed
to just come in

and literally tramp blood
all over the place.

'Cause imagine what
a bloody crime scene it was

and anyone that came
into the garage

and walked anywhere else
in the house was gonna be

tramping blood around.

So the crime scene itself,
in terms of

the kind of forensics
you expect were gone.

The first thing
and the first hypothesis

that you're tempted to think of
is it's political.

But as an investigator,
you have to try and...

You really have to try hard
to remove that

from your thought process

and you have to go through
the evidence

and you have to follow
the evidence.

So in those first days,
as we were all sad,

we were all shocked,

but on those
first days of the investigation,

we talked a lot
about being objective

and to follow the evidence
and to follow the leads.

Monsignor Gerardi was killed
on a Sunday.

Monday, some, um, media outlets
already had theories

of what happened.

Theory about
this being a crime of passion.

People got confused,
and they're confused even today.

I mean, just go out...

to any Guatemalan in the street

and ask,
"Who killed the bishop?"

I mean, they are confused.
They can't say, like,

"Oh, it was
in a homosexual thing.

There were things going on
inside the church."

Or, "It was a gang."

I mean, they don't have
an idea of, you know,

what was the real cause.

I think Bishop Gerardi always
represented justice to people.

In a country where there was
no justice.

I think he represented
a figure of authority and power

who would listen to people

in a country where nobody
who had authority and power

would listen to anybody.

And when the archbishop's
office of human rights,

ODHA, gets established in 1989,
which is to say,

through all those long years
of the war,

Guatemala had basically
been without

consequential human rights
groups.

Whenever one would form,

either their leaders
would be murdered,

or chased into exile.

Uh, why was this different?

Because it was the church.

The army can't move
against the church,

and the church has incredible
reach throughout the country

through all its parishes,
through all its churches,

through all its people
who work for the church.

It has trust in all
the communities, basically.

And because of that,
this human rights group

is capable of doing
what no other group

had ever been able to do,
which is sort of gather

information from everywhere.

REMHI was the first

really ambitious full accounting

of the human rights violations
of the war

that anybody had attempted.

The army and the powers that be
in this country

never thought it could amount
to what it amounted to,

never foresaw
such a thorough undertaking.

In the end,
it was a four-volume report.

They identified specifically,
you know,

something like 435 massacres.

The final volume lists by name
50,000 of the war dead.

It had extraordinary volumes
dedicated to unprecedented

investigation and analysis

of how various military units
had operated.

The conclusions of the report

were that the military committed

far and away the vast majority
of atrocities in the war.

The report had made it seem

that this terrible reign
of silence and terror

could finally be broken.

Let the truth be known,
which is incredibly liberating.

NEVER AGAIN

WE CONDEMN THE MURDER
OF MONSIGNOR JUAN GERARDI

Bishop Gerardi spoke publicly

about the importance
of having that hope

and the importance of at least
creating some conditions.

By which justice
could be achieved.

They had a fight,
and the other man kills Gerardi.

The prosecutor's office
thought that Father Mario

had, um, sort of a relationship
with Monsignor Gerardi,

and that because of
that relationship

they had gotten into
an argument, into a dispute,

and it escalated all the way up

as for Mario Orantes,
Father Mario, to sic his dog

on Monsignor Gerardi.

Balú's arrest really did turn

this incredibly grave murder

into a carnival,
into an incredible show.

People were just fascinated
by Balú.

Rather than talking about
the REMHI report,

people were...
talking and speculating about

the sex lives of the church.

Priests
and gay crimes of passion

and dogs and everything else.

Well, the story took off
because it had all the...

the elements you need
to entertain.

You have full entertainment.

Otto Ardón needed proof.

He took this to Spain.

To Spain's most revered
forensic anthropologist...

Dr. Jose Reverte Coma.

Ardón ordered a second autopsy
to resolve the question

of whether they were dog bites
or not.

Because this was
so controversial,

Jose Reverte Coma himself,
the great eminence,

was going to come
and conduct the autopsy

and draw his own conclusions
to confirm his findings.

Ardón certainly seemed convinced

of the truth
of those accusations.

You could hear people saying,
"Let this man rest in peace."

It was unbelievable.
It was a shock

to hear that
he had to be unburied

to find out
if he was bitten by a dog.

NEVER AGAIN

The church needed
an internationally prestigious

counterweight
to Dr. Jose Reverte Coma.

They needed experts

that you couldn't get
in Guatemala.

They needed real experts,
gente de peso, you know?

People whose names
would mean something

and even raise eyebrows.

I was contacted
by Amnesty International

and the Catholic Church.

Rather different
than my usual clients.

We were in this cavernous space

and there are 50, 60, 70
people, coming in, going out.

And over it all
is this Spanish character.

Coma was his name.

He had
a really imperial presence

and fully anticipated he would
be always the final authority.

And one of the first things
he does

is he decides to remove
the fungus

that is covering his face

by scraping it away with
a scalpel, causing abrasions

on the very skin
that you want to examine,

destroying the possibility,
already difficult

given the deterioration
of the body,

of picking up serious
forensic evidence off of it.

The dog has a canine,

and it's the reason
we call these canine teeth.

The dog has long canines
and small incisors,

much more differentiated
than a person.

So if, in fact,
the four little marks over, uh,

the Bishop's left eye

are made by a dog bite,

then... and the incisor
is a part of that,

then the canines would have to
penetrate through the skin,

and penetrate into the skull.

The skin is peeled back
and there are no marks at all

on the skull,

which means it could not
physically be a dog bite.

You could not have the marks
on the skin

without penetration through
the skull.

At the end
of the second autopsy,

it was clear that it had not
been dog bites,

and I think that Ardón
at that point

knew there was no way
you could take this to trial.

He had lost all credibility.

He knew it.

And he had no other option left
other than to resign,

which he did.

The bottom line here is that...

the real murderer,

the real attack
has nothing to do with a dog,

and is still out there
and the government has basically

come up with a theory
that keeps them

from having to look for them.

People had reason to be
suspicious of Father Mario

early on,
in part because of something

that the homeless witness
Rubén Chanax had said.

We investigated the background
of Father Mario.

We found a lot of information
about his connections

and his connections
to the elite.

To me, one of the most
striking things, for example,

having grown up here,
and having partly grown up here,

and having been around,
and having been here

all through the '80's,
and being really...

known way, um, right wing
upper class Guatemalans...

express things,
and what they mean to say,

so when a week after
the murder, Father Mario says,

the reason Bishop Gerardi
was killed

was he was a jefe de todos
los guerrilleros.

He was the chief of all
the guerrillas.

That is... I can hear, like,

my most right-wing aunt
saying that.

That's exactly the kind of thing
they say.

You know...

He told us then the story about
how he was assigned

to Monsignor Gerardi's case,
file 27.

And how he, um,
kept the records,

cassettes at that time,

and how other members
of the intelligence community

fed him information
and pictures and reports,

and he kept all
the files together.

Monsignor Gerardi was seen
as an enemy of the state.

But way before.

HISTORIC
CLARIFICATION COMMISSION

GUATEMALA,
REMEMBERING THE SILENCE

Now, you can declare an amnesty
as the Guatemalans did,

for prosecutions for war crimes,

but you cannot declare
an amnesty

for a crime against humanity
like genocide.

So, essentially that undid
the amnesty.

But it didn't undo the fear
of trying to prosecute

military officers
for war crimes.

People were afraid again.

Like when Monsignor was killed.
If they can kill Monsignor,

they can kill anyone.

If they can do this to
Ronalth Ochaeta,

they can do it to anyone.

And I confirmed
that he's a great investigator,

has an acute mind,
and he's very great with details

and he's really great
connecting dots.

Rubén Chanax,
the homeless witness,

is sort of the forgotten person
in this case up to this point.

He has been
for the longest time now,

in a kind of protective custody

of the police, sitting
in these kind of pensiones,

these sort of hotel flop houses
in the center.

Strangely forgotten,
but yet they're keeping him.

And probably they were getting
ready to let him go,

I would guess,

when Zeissig gets the case,
and Zeissig makes the decision

that turns the Gerardi case
around really,

and says, "Let's go take
another look at this witness."

Cases like this don't rely
on a single piece of evidence

or on a single testimony.

Cases like this
are complex cases.

So they rely on the integration
of information of several,

many, many pieces of evidence.

In the early days
of the investigation, a tip came

and it was naming
the Lima family

as... as one, um...

as people
that we should look into.

It just was afterwards when...

several other pieces
of information

led up to that name.

JORGE MANUEL AGUILAR MARTÍNEZ,

A MILITARY EX-SPECIALIST OF
THE PRESIDENTIAL GUARD...

The suspicion on Father Mario
has always been that he was...

the person inside
the parish house,

who opened the door to the man
who killed Gerardi.

Colonel Byron Lima Estrada

was one of the most notorious
figures of the war.

He was your classic, um...

gung-ho, uh,
insanely anti-communist,

extreme right wing,

very vocal military commander.

But he had also been head
of G2 military intelligence

at a time when
they were committing

some horrible
human rights crimes.

And his son,
Captain Byron Lima Oliva,

was a member of the EMP,

the President's bodyguards
and that intelligence unit.

Which is the most feared unit

of not only the Guatemalan army
but in Latin America.

Sergeant Obdulio Villanueva,
he's working in the same unit

than Captain Lima.

Even though he's
a low-rank member of that unit,

he's always next
to Captain Lima.

Like his right hand.

ANOTHER MILITARY MAN CAPTURED

OBDULIO VILLANUEVA
EX-SPECIALIST TO THE EMP

LINKED TO THE ASSASSINATION
OF GERARDI BY THE POLICE

There were meetings and...
and discussions

about how to keep everybody...

or try to keep everybody safe.

As soon as that witnesses
have given their declaration

to the judge,
at which point, you know,

it becomes known
that they've become witnesses,

they have to get out
of the country.

They have to get them out.

The threat just felt so real.

No, uh,
Guatemalan military officers

had ever, um, been found guilty
of participation

in a state sponsored execution.

I believe Captain Lima thought
that he was going to be

out of prison before getting
into a trial.

I believe Captain Lima was sure
that he was not going to step

in the courtroom
and face a trial

for the Gerardi case.

And so this was the huge test
of which...

it was the Guatemalan justice
system ready to affirm

the most basic,
democratic values.

When Captain Lima was talking
about his case,

by March 2001,

you had to have in mind is,
the trial was about to begin.

It was two or three weeks
before the trial begun,

that we had the interview.

So, he was not sounding really,
really sure or confident...

THE CAPTAIN IS LEFT ALONE

...about getting away with it,
as he sounded before.

I was very aware by that time
that...

he used reporters to spread
his propaganda.

And we were the perfect means
to spread his threats,

to spread his intimidations,

to spread his, you know,
subliminal messages.

I was totally aware of that,
and...

People doubted, they said,
"No, you're not gonna be able,

and Public Ministry is not
gonna be able to convict

this military person.
They're too powerful."

I really thought that she was
going to excuse herself

from the trial. Come on, a bomb

just exploded at her house.

And I thought, like, I mean,
it's your life or the trial.

Then I looked
at her and I thought,

"Oh, my gosh,
she's really brave."

She didn't excuse herself.

Standing so quiet
and so, you know, firm.

I think almost every reporter
missed a lot

of the most important testimony.

They never heard it
because it was boring.

Because it would happen during
the slow hours of the trial,

when... because so many
of the important witnesses

were in exile,

were in prison,
or missing, or...

so a lot of the most important
testimony

was read out loud
into the court.

This was the taxi driver's
testimony.

This was Aguilar Martinez's
testimony.

Right? I think was Oscar Chex's
testimony.

A lot of the key witnesses,
they weren't there.

No. So, these people never
heard it,

because I think I only knew
one reporter

who was nerdy enough

to sit there and listen
to every word of it

and take notes.

And that was Claudia Méndez.

It was a dangerous time,
and you can feel it.

You know the air was so thick
in the trial,

in the courtroom
with the judges,

with the witnesses,
with the prosecutors,

with the defense attorneys.

The air was so heavy and thick
that you could feel it.

People had no idea
of what was coming.

People had no idea that ODHA
and that prosecutor's case

was really that strong or not.

They thought he would be afraid,

uh, they thought he'd be easy
to intimidate.

Um, they thought he'd be easy
to confuse.

You know? And they thought
they could just show him up.

And, uh, nobody was
prepared for what happened.

It was extraordinary.

Chanax did not change
his testimony.

He augmented it.

Right? He always... it was like,

first was like
the basic narrative,

and the basic narrative
never changed.

And he would just always
add more and add more

and add more.

And one reason he had to do that

was because Guatemala
did not have

a protected witness program.

Right? If he said anything
that implicated himself

in the crime, he could be
arrested right there.

And I think the defense
thought that might happen.

That was one of the things...
Ways they'd hoped to trick him.

Right? But he was too careful.

He's so wily,
he's such a survivor.

Nobody doubted that Father Mario

had some involvement.

Was it just unlocking
the door to the sacristy?

Or was it much more sinister?

I think to this day,
some of those questions

are still hanging over the case.

But that he was involved?
Um, without a doubt.

No, had he been blackmailed
into doing something,

or did he actively take part?

In the build-up of the verdict,
we were all waiting

at the courthouse.
It took many hours.

You could cut the tension
with a steak knife.

It was crazy.

The hours passed,
the hours passed,

and then it just came the time.

is when she reads that
the crime was political.

It was a straight crime.
That's the conclusion,

which means they were not
convicted only, you know,

by the charges of assassination,
but they were convicted

by being state members

and using all the state means,
not only to commit the crime

but to cover the crime.

Um, proving to society
that justice can be served

no matter who the defendant is,

and giving that hope and
just breaking a little brick

of that impunity wall
that has done so much damage

to the Guatemalan society.

Guatemalans recognize
that the place to draw the line

to protect Guatemala
from becoming

the completely failed state,
the narco state,

was by protecting
the justice system.

And that's why we've seen
so many

of the, uh, extraordinary things

that came out of
the Gerardi case

a strengthened, idealistic,
ennobled justice department

has pulled off some
incredible things in Guatemala.

That there are people here
ready to... you know,

willing to wage these kinds
of fights and to win them.

They don't always, you know,
and especially now.

We're heading into some
really dark times.

GERARDI LIVES

All of that is
Bishop Gerardi's legacy,

and it's why you still see
his poster everywhere,

and his spirit's behind the way
Guatemalans are living now.

GERARDI LIVES!

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