The Yellow House | Translation
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Translated by MC Editorial
[Daniel Alarcón]: A warning before we begin: This episode contains scenes of violence and explicit language. Discretion is advised.
This is Radio Ambulante from NPR. I’m Daniel Alarcón.
On the morning of August 28, 2019, Ismael Martínez got on a bus on Tepeyac Avenue in Guadalajara, Mexico. It was just after 7:30 and he wanted to get to the office early so he could leave early and spend a few hours at the gym.
He had been following an exercise routine for months, and at age 37, for the first time in his life, he was comfortable with his body. He felt handsome.
[Ismael Martínez]: I was living one of the most beautiful stages of my life. I had just reached my ideal weight and I was already showing signs of abdominal muscles. I felt on top of the world with my new body.
[Daniel]: During the trip, Ismael took out his phone and started searching through his apps until he found the icon he wanted, a yellow mask on a black background: Graindr or Grinder, a dating app mainly for gay men that is used mostly for casual sexual encounters.
This app is much more explicit than others: most of the profiles have photos of naked or half-clothed torsos. It also allows its users to remain anonymous. In fact, that mystery is part of the game of spontaneous encounters that Grindr proposes. Hence its logo: a mask.
In his profile, Ismael did have pictures of his face and chest. He also included his age and sexual preferences. He had used the app since it appeared in 2009, but before that, he had participated in similar dating forums or chats. He had never had any problems. In fact, most of his sexual encounters have been through these platforms.
[Ismael]: And I’ll be very honest with you, I had some really good experiences through Grindr. I even met some boyfriends. And for me it was a common practice.
[Daniel]: So with the first light of morning shining through the bus window and a song playing in his headphones, he started scrolling.
[Ismael]: It’s like Pokemon. When you open Grindr, you can see whether a gay guy is nearby.
[Daniel]: This is how Grindr works: the algorithm sorts profiles by distance, showing you the ones that are closest to you.
[Ismael]: So just passing by Chapultepec I see this profile of a man with an athletic body, that is, with muscles and body hair, which is exactly how I am attracted to men. And I contact him.
[Daniel]: Ismael doesn’t remember whether the profile had a name or not. They started chatting. Ismael asked him to send him photos of his face, but he didn’t want to, and Ismael didn’t insist. He had already spoken to this type of person who preferred to remain anonymous, so it didn’t seem so important to him.
[Ismael]: So I said, “Well, it doesn’t matter. He doesn’t have to send me any pictures. He’s yummy.”
[Daniel]: The man invited him to his house. Ismael checked the address to see how close it was: it was Efraín Gonzalez Luna 1857, in Colonia Americana, an area he knew well because he had lived there before. It was very close to his office; if he got a cab, he would be there in five minutes.
[Ismael]: And being horny is a bitch. And back then, with a great body, seeing this man who I thought was a hottie, I said, “Let’s do it.”
[Daniel]: Before leaving for the meeting, he sent his best girl friend some screenshots of his Grindr profile and shared his location in real time. He had heard many stories about dates that went wrong. Stories of abuse, robbery, or extortion. So whenever he arranged a meeting like that, he followed recommendations that were posted on social media.
[Ismael]: Such as “safety tips if you are going to have encounters on Grindr”: Tell the person you trust the most who you are going to be with. Share photos, phone number and location of the guy.”
[Daniel]: Ismael arrived very quickly at the house where the man had said to meet him, a two-story yellow building with straight and simple lines and a porch in the front. Still in the taxi, before getting out, he saw a man standing outside, next to the gate. Although he hadn’t seen his face in the pictures, he assumed it was the man he had chatted with. When he got out and came closer, the first thing that caught his attention was his gaze.
[Ismael]: A very deep look, one of those looks that really make you feel like you’re being searched.
[Daniel]: He was about 1.75m tall, had a few gray hairs and a thin beard. He had light skin and black eyes. He was wearing a T-shirt and shorts. He didn’t look how he had imagined him. His body was a little different from the photos…
[Ismael]: And the first thing I thought was, “Wow, maybe he took that picture a few years ago or a few kilos ago.” And I say, “Who am I to judge, if I’ve always been fat? And now I’m just a reformed fat person. It doesn’t matter. We all deserve pleasure.”
[Daniel]: And anyway, what he was seeing now still attracted him.
[Ismael]: He still had that something that I liked, that air of being mean, of a bad boy…
[Daniel]: So when the man invited him in, he didn’t hesitate.
[Ismael]: I said, “Well, let’s go in, then.” He takes me into his house and says, “Don’t be scared.” And I said, “I’m not scared.”
[Daniel]: Ismael went in while the man guided him from behind. The first thing he came across was a large, bright living room and a wide staircase with a metal railing, imposing but with a certain air of decadence.
[Ismael]: I mean, you could see that it had seen better times… It was like entering a house that had been new, but seeing it after many years and saying, “Oh, maybe nice things happened here.”
[Daniel]: As they climbed the stairs, the man told Ismael that his grandfather, a somewhat ill man whom he had to take care of, was also in the house.
When they entered his room, Ismael saw a large fish tank with corals and tropical fish. In one corner, there was also a small altar to Saint Jude Thaddeus, the saint of lost causes, which some relate to the world of drug trafficking and crime. Ismael noticed that the man was also wearing a necklace with yellow and green plastic beads, the colors that identify the saint.
On a desk, he saw a computer on and a monitor with the screen divided into images from several security cameras.
[Ismael]: A lot of things went through my mind, but I said to myself, “Of course, insecurity is an issue. Right now everyone needs these security systems. I don’t blame him.” Well, the truth is, at that moment, I must admit, I was not only nervous about seeing this guy, but also very eager, I mean, let whatever happens happen…
[Daniel]: They began to kiss, but Ismael felt some resistance in him, as if he didn’t want to be kissed on the lips. They lay down on the bed, Ismael on his back and the man on top of him.
[Ismael]: He takes off my shirt and helps me take off my pants, and he stands up and says, “Let me get a pill or the condoms.” The thing is, he lifts up the mattress, pulls out his hand, and he had a butcher knife about this size.
[Daniel]: A knife about 30 centimeters long with a wooden handle.
[Ismael]: And he tells me, “Now you’re screwed, you fucking queer.”
[Daniel]: As he stared at the knife, Ismael heard the closet door open. He looked behind him and saw another man emerge, holding a gun.
[Ismael]: And he was the one who said, “Don’t even try to escape, little bitch.” My first thought was, “Holy crap, it’s a good thing I have tattoos, so they’ll recognize my body.”
[Daniel]: We’ll be back after a break.
[Daniel]: We’re back with Radio Ambulante. Our producer Emilia Erbetta picks up the story.
[Emilia Erbetta]: Ismael’s head kept spinning with different ideas and images. His mother, the fear of dying, remorse at being there… The whole scene had changed so quickly that he could barely understand what was happening. Being in that situation, sitting on the bed, almost naked, made him feel even more vulnerable in front of those two strangers who were pointing a gun and a knife at him. He asked them whether he could get dressed.
[Ismael]: “Of course not. You’re here because you’re horny; this is what you get for being a fag. For going around giving your ass to just anyone.”
[Emilia]: They took off the smart watch he was wearing on his wrist, and took his cell phone, which had been left with his clothes, lying on the floor. And while one held the knife to his abdomen and the other pointed the gun at him, they asked him for the passwords to access his accounts and take his money.
Ismael was so nervous that he did not remember the password to unlock the phone and the watch.
[Ismael]: I said, “I don’t remember. I need to see a keyboard.” He presses with the knife here and I hear the gun make that typical click. He says, “Are you sure you don’t remember?” My voice was shaking… “I swear I don’t remember. Please.” And in my head I was like, “What is it? What is it? What is it? What is it?”
[Emilia]: It took him a few minutes to remember the password and give it to them.
[Ismael]: “So you do remember, motherfucker? Open your online banking.”
[Emilia]: Ismael did as he was told, but since he hadn’t received his salary yet, his account had only a few pesos. There wasn’t much they could take. That made them more impatient—and more violent.
They opened his wallet and took out his IDs, his credit cards, one by one, and took pictures of them. For a while, they searched his cell phone thoroughly, looking for ways to get money from him.
Meanwhile, Ismael began to think about how minimal the security measures he had taken with his friend had been.
[Ismael]: “What’s the point of sending that to her if she won’t start worrying until about an hour later? These people will have killed me by then.”
[Emilia]: On top of that, the kidnappers had disabled the location tracker on his cell phone and removed the chip. Even if his friend tried, she wouldn’t be able to contact him.
By that point, it was clear that no one was going to rescue him, and Ismael began to question why he was in that situation. He was afraid, yes, but he also felt guilty and ashamed.
[Ismael]: “I’m an idiot, what a stupid bitch. Who told me to do this? I deserve this.”
[Emilia]: At some point, he dared look up and look around. He observed in detail that strange room where he had already spent almost an hour. The screens, the altar of Saint Jude Thaddeus, the closet door through which the armed man had come out—everything that had previously seemed somewhat eccentric now looked sinister. But his eyes were looking for something else.
[Ismael]: I remember that at some point I started to look out of the corner of my eye, like at the windows or something where I could, I don’t know how, maybe plan some escape or something.
[Emilia]: He remembered the route he had taken to get in: the hallway, that large staircase, the door, the porch, the gate. He knew that getting to the street would be very difficult. And besides, he was being watched very closely.
[Ismael]: He kind of noticed what I was doing with my eyes because he says, “And don’t try to be too smart, asshole, because you’ll end up with the other fags in the yard. You don’t know how many bodies of fags we have buried in this yard.”
[Emilia]: “Bodies of fags.” Fags, gays like him. Those words paralyzed him. Ismael knew very well what it meant. And there was no reason not to believe them: in Guadalajara, the capital of Jalisco, the state with the highest number of missing people in all of Mexico, the idea of a clandestine grave in any backyard was terrifying but plausible.
It was an image that filled him with dread, but also with another kind of guilt. Guilt for his mother and what she was going to feel.
[Ismael]: I said, “Oh, she won’t know where I ended up. I’m going to be declared missing. My mother’s anguish…”
[Emilia]: It was the kind of anguish he had seen so many times on television, when the city reported one, two, ten disappearances, every time a new mass grave appeared in Jalisco.
He doesn’t know how long it took exactly, but he spent a while like that, lost in his thoughts, praying even though he was an atheist, asking God to let him get out of there alive, until suddenly, for no apparent reason, they told him:
[Ismael]: We’re going to let you go, but you have to do something first. I said, “Whatever.” “You’re going to let me record you.” And I said, “What do you mean?” “Yes, you’re going to let me record while I fuck you.”
[Emilia]: Ismael doesn’t know, can’t, and doesn’t want to say how long it all lasted. But he does remember that he was later ordered to record another video.
[Ismael]: “You’re going to record a testimony that you came here to steal and that everything that happened to you happened because you are a fag.”
[Emilia]: It was the final humiliation.
[Ismael]: And again with my own phone. They started recording. “I am Eduardo Ismael Martínez García, and I broke into this house at Efraín González Luna 1857, but the owners of the house caught me and gave me what I deserved.”
[Emilia]: When it was over, they let him get dressed. They gave him money so he could take a bus, and they told him that if he wanted his cell phone back, he would have to come back with 1,500 pesos more, about 80 dollars at that time. That made him feel for the first time that they really were going to let him go, because what they wanted was the money. The cell phone was of little use to them.
Before leaving, one of the men made him one last threat:
[Ismael]: “Don’t you even think of going to the police,” because I didn’t know who he was, and he had contacts…
[Emilia]: Ismael didn’t say anything. In silence, he took his clothes, got dressed, and began to walk toward the door of the room. It took just a few minutes to retrace the path he had taken a while before, past the fish tank and the altar of Saint Jude Thaddeus again, while the other man followed him closely, pointing the gun at him. The two of them went down the stairs and crossed the living room until they reached the door.
Then he crossed the porch, and before going out into the street, he hugged this man as if he were an old friend, so that the security cameras would record him. That’s what he had been ordered to do.
He was there for no more than two hours, but it felt like years, and when he finally left the yellow house, he was no longer the same person as when he entered.
Once on the street, he began to walk. He didn’t have his cell phone or his watch, but he calculated that it must be around noon. He went to a nearby government building, where he had seen police officers from time to time. When he arrived and told them that he had been the victim of an express kidnapping, without giving many details, they told him he had to go to the Prosecutor’s Office.
First, he thought, he had to tell his mother. He wanted to tell her that he was okay, but also to warn her in case they called to extort her. His mother’s was the only number he remembered by heart. He didn’t want to wait any longer, so he went into a beauty salon, the first place he saw open, and asked to use the phone. He heard the line ring a few times, and when his mother answered, Ismael started talking:
[Ismael]: And I said, “Mom, I was just kidnapped. They took my phone. If they call you to ransom me for something, don’t believe them. I’m fine.” “Did they do something to you?” “No, Mom, I’m fine.”
[Emilia]: Afterwards, he asked to be taken to his workplace. He told his boss and some of his colleagues that he had been kidnapped for a few hours, without mentioning Grindr, and took advantage of the fact that he had his Facebook session open on the computer to make a post. In it, he warned his contacts in case they received messages from him asking for money.
A few hours later, he entered the building of the Attorney General of Jalisco to file a complaint. There, sitting in front of two men, he told them about the bus ride on the way to work, the meeting in Colonia Americana…
[Ismael]: When I told them it had been through Grindr, “Hey, so you end up seeing a person you didn’t even know?” And I said, “Yeah.” “And you went into his house just like that, without knowing anything about him first?” “Yes, sir.” “Well, that’s risky, isn’t it?” I mean, I remember that during this process I felt like a fool, “Well, yes, it’s true, I do deserve it.” I mean, who… who in their right mind does what I’m telling you?
[Emilia]: He felt so bad, so uncomfortable with those questions suggesting that because he had gone to that house voluntarily, he had no right to report it, that he decided not to say anything about the sexual abuse.
[Ismael]: Because I was there to have sex. And I came out saying that I was raped. Who would believe me? I didn’t want them to laugh in my face.
[Emilia]: He also didn’t want to go through the physical tests that would no doubt be done if he talked about the rape. It could be another humiliation, and he didn’t know whether he could bear it.
But what he did want to talk about, and what he wasn’t willing to leave out, was the matter of the bodies that were supposedly buried in the house.
[Ismael]: I told him. “Sir, he said there were more bodies.” I asked them: “And are you going to go?” “No, well, an investigation has to be opened…” “Sir, but I was just kidnapped a couple of hours ago.” “But we haven’t caught them in the act.”
[Emilia]: In the act: catching someone in the very act of committing a crime. Ismael did not understand. How could it not be in the act, if it had just happened, and he had given them the address of the house, he had described the facade…
[Ismael]: It’s not like I just thought this up. “Hey, there are bodies over there at that address.” I had just gotten away after being kidnapped. It’s like, “Dude, what else do you need? What more proof do you need? Go right now, go right now and you’ll see.”
[Emilia]: But they didn’t go at that moment. They simply finished the process of taking his complaint. That was all for the moment. Ismael left the Prosecutor’s Office disappointed, with the feeling that they hadn’t believed him and that none of it would do much good.
Maybe that’s why, when he got back home and saw all the messages he had received from his friends on Facebook, he didn’t even dare tell them how the kidnapping had happened. A day later, anger was added to his frustration, and he posted on his social networks again. Sitting there, waiting for someone else to do something, wasn’t his style.
He didn’t mention all the details, but he said enough—and the most important part: that he had been kidnapped in the house on Efraín González Luna 1857.
[Ismael]: I recounted how I had been kidnapped. I told the whole story. And that’s when it started. People started saying, “Hey, Ismael, me too…”
[Emilia]: These were messages from other men who told him about experiences very similar to his own, all in the same place: the yellow house in Colonia Americana. Before his kidnapping, he had never heard of it, but now he knew that others had also spent a few hours of terror there. And if he had not been the first, he probably would not be the last.
[Daniel]: We’ll be back after a break.
[Daniel]: We’re back with Radio Ambulante. Emilia Erbetta continues the story.
[Emilia]: The first few days after the kidnapping, Ismael spent his time at home, where he lived with his mother, trying to regain his spirits. He didn’t know how to go on, how to get his life back on track. The Prosecutor’s Office hadn’t called him back, but after his Facebook post, he hade made contact with other victims who had been attacked in the same house.
One of those people was Joe:
[Joe Reyes]: OK. Who am I? I’m 39 years old. And unlike Ismael, I really don’t have any dating apps. Not Grindr, Tinder, Bumble—I don’t use any of those apps.
[Emilia]: So that’s not how he came to the yellow house. His kidnapping happened a year before Ismael’s, one night in 2018, around seven o’clock, when he went out for a walk.
Joe was walking down Efraín González Luna Street when a man cornered him. He tried to get away, to avoid him, but the man was bigger than he was and managed to push him into the house. When he first saw Ismael’s post, Joe wasn’t sure that it was the same man who had attacked him. But when they began to share their experiences, they both noticed that much of what they had seen matched. The address of the house, for starters, but also the things inside:
[Joe]: The house is a two-story house. It’s an old house. I don’t know, a building from around 1960. We went in through the service door. From there, he took me up to the second floor, asking me not to make too much noise, because his father was in the next room and he was very sick. In the room there were many images of Saint Jude Thaddeus and there were some psychedelic paintings and so on.
[Emilia]: He was held captive for almost an hour. During that time, a young woman entered the room, pointed a gun at him and took his cell phone. If he wanted to get it back, he had to return with 3,000 Mexican pesos, about 150 dollars. Like Ismael, they threatened him before letting him go.
[Joe]: They said if I reported that I had been kidnapped in that house, he would say that it wasn’t true, because he had a lot of connections with the Guadalajara Police, so they would say that I had broken into his house and things would go very badly for me.
[Emilia]: In any case, despite the threats, Joe went to the Prosecutor’s Office the next day, accompanied by his mother. And what happened to him there was also similar to what Ismael experienced.
[Joe]: You know, it was that re-victimization story, saying, “And what were you doing there? And why at night? And why at those intersections? And why, if he was wrestling you, why didn’t you call for help?”
[Emilia]: Puzzled, Joe tried to answer them. Finally, he gave them the location of the house on Google Maps.
[Joe]: Precisely because I didn’t know which house it was, but I did identify the intersection of the streets. And, well, when faced with a traumatic event, it has become clear to me that you don’t forget certain things. You couldn’t forget some things or rather you want to forget them, but not the main details.
[Emilia]: They told him that was all, he could go, they would call him later. Joe thought that was enough for the authorities to do something, but the Prosecutor’s Office never contacted him again.
[Joe]: And that’s it… the complaint was forgotten.
[Emilia]: Joe tried not to think about it anymore, and he didn’t talk about it with anyone. He wanted to bury it in the past. Until a year later, in 2019, when he came across Ismael’s post. And then the memories came flooding back.
Ismael suggested they do some joint interviews. He wanted to make the story visible, and Joe agreed. Ismael contacted all the journalists he knew. One of those who responded was Sara Leos Andrade, who worked at Channel 44 at the University of Guadalajara. Sara still remembers how they organized everything for the interview at the channel’s studio with them: the lights off, a black blanket on the floor…
[Sara Leos Andrade]: Everything… everything was dark. And they were sitting on a bench with their backs to me while I asked them questions.
[Sara]: They were very scared. Very, very, very scared.
[Emilia]: After the interview, Sara went with a cameraman to Colonia Americana to take pictures of the facade of the house. She included them in the first part of the report, which was published on television and on the website a few days later. She was somewhat excited; it seemed important to cover a story like this, which could have an impact on the conservative society of Guadalajara; and she wanted to help seek justice.
But a few days later, Ismael realized that the video had been taken down from the channel’s social networks. He contacted Sara, asking her to explain what had happened.
[Ismael]: And she told me that two older people had come to the office. And that the agreement they had reached was to take down all the content from all the networks that pointed to that house.
[Emilia]: Those two people were supposed to be the owners of the house. I asked Sara about this, and she told me that it was her boss who made the decision.
[Sara]: If I understood correctly, we had posted a house, an address, some personal information, whatever. So that’s why we had to take it down, for… for security reasons. Okay. And it was taken down and, well, that’s the end of it.
If my boss tells me there is a risk, there is a risk. I mean, I don’t know how to explain it, but I didn’t turn around and say, “No, no, we need to publish that one.” I didn’t, because, you know, there is fear in the Mexican press.
[Emilia]: After speaking with Sara, I called her boss, journalist Víctor Chávez, and asked him what had happened. Víctor, who still works at Channel 44, confirmed what Sara had told me, and said they had received a formal request from the owners of the house, which was rented, to remove the article because it compromised the safety of others.
But the report on Channel 44 was not the only publication related to the subject that was removed. The same thing happened with a report on TV Azteca, by Alejandra Gómez Gómez and Jorge Covarrubias, a freelance journalist who was covering the case. They didn’t continue with the investigation.
I spoke with them as well. Via WhatsApp, Alejandra explained that not publishing her report was an editorial decision by the channel, because they considered that there were not enough elements and they did not have the version of the people who were being accused. For his part, Jorge told me that in his case there was no explanation other than fear. He had gone to see the house, and something he perceived there gave him pause:
[Jorge]: There was something dark about it, you know? I was frozen, to be honest. And I think I also got suspicious. And I didn’t follow up on the matter for… security reasons. I live near that place. And things in terms of security around here really don’t look good at all.
[Emilia]: And Ismael knew that practicing journalism in his country is a risky job. Since 2000, more than 160 journalists have been murdered in Mexico. And even though a part of him could understand these decisions, that didn’t stop him from feeling more alone and unprotected.
He began to not want to be there, in Guadalajara, not even in Mexico. And the fear increased when he started receiving threats on Grindr from anonymous accounts.
[Ismael]: I received messages like, “You do remember that we took pictures of your IDs, right, little fag?” And when I tried to answer, they blocked me.
[Emilia]: Still, despite the threats, he never really stopped using the app. He still liked to spend time browsing profiles, chatting with strangers, or sexting. He had always enjoyed that virtual flirting, and until his kidnapping, Grindr had been a safe place for him. He didn’t want to give that up.
But it was several months before he worked up the courage to go on a date again. It was a day in April 2020, at the beginning of the pandemic. He was at home, feeling bored and a little bewildered by everything that was happening in the world, when he got a message from a profile without a photo. According to the app, this person was about 20 minutes from his house.
Ismael replied to the greeting because that’s what he always did, and he asked for pictures. If he didn’t get them, he wouldn’t continue the chat. And when he got them, he liked them.
The guy said that if he wanted, they could meet up, so Ismael gave him his home address. He thought that seeing him there, with his mother sleeping in the other room, was safer than going out to someone else’s house. Half an hour later, his date was at the door with a bottle of red wine in his hand.
Ismael asked him not to make any noise, so as not to disturb his mother, and took him to his room. They began to talk, and then…
[Ismael]: I don’t know when I fell asleep. I only remember waking up the next day in my bed, and my room was a mess.
[Emilia]: And he was completely dizzy, kind of disoriented. He noticed that the place where he had kept the copy of the complaint of his kidnapping was also in disarray. And that the paper was no longer where he had left it. He understood everything right away.
[Ismael]: I knew it was them as soon as I realized the report wasn’t there. And the truth is that I don’t know what… what they gave me, because I felt drugged for about a week.
[Emilia]: This time, he decided not to go to the Prosecutor’s Office or post on his social media what had happened. It was too embarrassing, and after that day, he began to feel like he wasn’t safe anywhere. A few months later, he accepted a friend’s invitation and went to the United States with the intention of staying.
He landed in Denver in November 2020. He didn’t have a work permit, only a tourist visa, but he still got a job at a small liquor store. He fell in love with an older man. They were together for six months, until Ismael noticed that he was becoming more and more controlling. It was hard for him to accept that he was in a vulnerable situation again. He felt that the kidnapping had changed something very intimate in him, in his life. As if it had twisted his path.
[Ismael]: After the kidnapping, my life started falling apart. It was a series of one bad decision after another, but a series of… of bad things, one after the other.
[Emilia]: For the next three years, he tried to get things straight. He had started drinking and managed to quit. He got a job he could do from home. He began to gather the paperwork to request asylum and formalize his immigration status in the United States. But he never managed to stop thinking about those hours he spent in the yellow house in Colonia Americana, Guadalajara.
And that’s why, in March of 2024, he wrote us an email telling his story. And a few days later, on the occasion of Grindr’s anniversary, he posted a long thread on X, in which he narrated his kidnapping in detail.
The thread went viral in a few hours. In a couple of days, his timeline was filled with responses with more recent testimonies. The kidnappings in the yellow house in Colonia Americana had not stopped after his complaint. And unlike the comments on his first post, people now dared to include pictures of the house, and also screenshots from Grindr with pictures of a white man with light eyes and thick lips. It was the kidnapper. Not only was there a house, there was also a face. The only thing missing was a name.
And that name came a few months later, at the end of May 2024.
[Archive soundbite]
[Newscast]: The accused is Jesús Cornelio N., who must remain in preventive detention as a precautionary measure…
[Emilia]: Jesús Cornelio N. Ismael did not find that out from television but from another victim.
[Ismael]: He contacts me and says, “Hey, buddy, he has been arrested.”
[Emilia]: With the message, he also received a link. It was the statement from the Jalisco State Prosecutor General’s Office, announcing the arrest and giving some more details. Ismael read it, perplexed. There was no mention of the house in Colonia Americana; instead, there was an address in another neighborhood, 15 minutes away. But Ismael knew that Jesús Cornelio N. was the man from Grindr because the statement was accompanied by a photo that showed only his face, with his eyes covered by a black stripe. And although he was a little older, and disheveled, Ismael had no doubt: It was him.
When he finished reading, he froze for a few minutes. At last, what he had been waiting for for five years was happening.
[Ismael]: On the one hand it was a feeling of relief, a lot of resentment. A lot of thirst for revenge. I was very happy to know that he would lose his freedom. For a moment. Yes, for a moment I felt this… this feeling that finally justice is going to be done.
[Emilia]: He thought that maybe now he could return to Mexico. To be with his mother, with his friends, in his city. Everything he had had to leave behind.
But that idea didn’t last long.
[Ismael]: And suddenly I thought, “Hey, he has only been arrested. You don’t know how long he’s going to be there. And remember, he’s not alone.”
[Emilia]: The process was still a long way off, and the detention was preventive. A trial had not even begun, and there were no guarantees that if that happened, the guy would be convicted. The possibilities were many, including that he would be released due to the statue of limitations or even lack of evidence.
But Ismael was going to do everything in his power to prevent this from happening. Linked to his previous viral tweets, he published on X the statement from the Prosecutor’s Office and the picture of his kidnapper, with a request:
[Ismael]: If there is anyone else who has been a victim and is in Mexico, please go and report, go and report, and go and report…
[Emilia]: Within hours, his inbox was filled with messages.
[Ismael]: New victims started contacting me, asking me, “Where I should report? ”Who I should go to?” “What should I do?” “I was also a victim of this person.”
[Emilia]: He created a WhatsApp group with ten of those victims to share news about the case and provide mutual support during the judicial process. Although not all of them are sure about adding their complaints. Like Joe, whom we have already heard from before.
[Joe]: I like that a lot of people are filing complaints and so on, and right now I’m hesitant about whether to reaffirm my complaint or remain like this. Why? Because nothing guarantees me the certainty that nothing will happen to me.
[Emilia]: He is not only afraid of his kidnapper or his accomplices. He is also afraid of the judicial process, and in some ways, of himself, of the impact on him when revisiting what happened.
[Joe]: It’s about exposing myself again, it’s about reliving. I mean, it’s about seeing whether I’ll get any support or not. It’s about opening that Pandora’s box that I didn’t want to open again.
I don’t want to… Today I tell you: I don’t want to, I don’t want to open that box yet.
[Archive soundbite]
[Prosecutor’s Office Operator]: Welcome to the Jalisco State Prosecutor’s Office. If you know the extension number, please dial it now.
[Emilia]: After Jesús Cornelio N. was arrested, I contacted the Prosecutor’s Office several times. I wanted to know some details of the investigation. During my first call, in July 2024, they confirmed that 11 complaints had been filed against him, and that they didn’t rule out his possible involvement in more cases. But if I wanted to know more, I had to contact them by email.
I wrote several times to the Social Communication Department of the Prosecutor’s Office and then to the Transparency Portal, the area authorized to provide information to the press. I especially wanted to know whether there were complaints about events that occurred at the house on Efraín Gonzalez Luna Street and whether any searches had been carried out at that address. I also asked whether there were any indications that Jesús Cornelio N. belonged to a larger organization. They replied that it is confidential information.
In Guadalajara, the yellow house in Colonia Americana is almost an urban legend. Stories, rumors, and shocking accounts are woven around it, passed from mouth to mouth, in messages on social networks. There is even a post on the Reddit forum about it and even a video on TikTok. But its reputation is not new. Nor did it begin in 2019, with Ismael’s reporting of his case.
The news goes back at least to 2006, when journalist Vanesa Robles wrote a feature piece in the newspaper Público about that mysterious house planted in the middle of a traditional neighborhood in the city. There are no traces of that article anymore, because Público closed in 2011. Vanesa does not keep a copy, but she does recall the day when a friend who lived nearby told her about the house on Efraín González Luna Street.
[Vanesa Robles]: And I was told about this house that was very famous for these kidnappings…
[Emilia]: Vanesa asked her friend whether the people who lived there were the owners, and she answered they weren’t, that it was a family that had come there very recently, most likely renting.
[Vanesa]: Mother, father. I don’t know whether there are many children, but there is this guy called Jesús who boasted, for example, of having connections with very powerful people in the federal government…
[Emilia]: Jesús. So that name was known to the neighbors in the area since 2006.
At that point, Vanesa went to Colonia Americana to make some inquiries. She got several neighbors to talk to her off the record, and interviewed a young man who had been kidnapped there. He hadn’t come through Grindr, of course, because smartphones didn’t even exist in 2006, but he had been brought there by a man he had met on Avenida Chapultepec while partying in a bar.
Vanesa protected the victim’s identity with a fake name. Not only to protect him from his kidnappers, but also to protect him from the stares and prejudices of his social circle.
[Vanesa]: All this occurs in an environment of tremendous conservatism, that also does not allow homosexual victims or heterosexual victims who want to have a sex encounter to file a complaint without first being judged by a hyper-conservative society and culture.
[Emilia]: And that conservatism is another protective cloak for the people who commit crimes like this. Not only in Guadalajara, but all over Mexico. Vanesa published the article, but very little came of it. A few years later, she left journalism and today she works for a human rights organization in Guadalajara.
But when I asked her to talk for this story, she returned to Colonia Americana to see what the situation around the yellow house was like today, after the arrest of Jesús Cornelio N. This time, no one would talk to her, not even off-screen. Not even her friend.
[Vanesa]: People are very close-lipped. Of course, the context of violence in the country has changed a lot. I mean, we are a country with more than 115,000 missing people. In 2006, this context did not exist.
[Emilia]: And, as we have said, Jalisco is the place in the country where the largest number of people disappear. There are more than 15 thousand criminal complaints, and it is estimated that many cases do not even reach that stage.
[Vanesa]: This is the context that surrounds cases like that of the yellow house on González Luna Street. The family where these crimes are committed boasts of having connections with people in power, and so it is very difficult for someone, even one person, to dare report in the first place, and then pursue their case before the authorities, who rarely do anything.
[Emilia]: Ismael is one of the few who did dare. In 2019, after his kidnapping, and also now. When he learned of the arrest of Jesús Cornelio N., he decided he wanted to add his testimony to the new investigation. He learned that his original complaint was archived, and began a very bureaucratic process to have it retrieved and incorporated into the current investigation file. At this time, that process is still ongoing.
Since the arrest, Ismael cannot stop thinking about the victims who came after him, about everything that would have been different for them if his complaint had been handled seriously. For this reason, he hopes that justice goes beyond a possible conviction.
[Ismael]: To all ten victims that I know… Except Joe, as it happened to him before it happened to me. But to most of them it happened after me, I know it’s very unrealistic, but my expectation would be, first, that the Prosecution would offer an apology for their lack of action. Offer an apology to the victims. They were victims due to lack of… due to their incompetence.
[Emilia]: But that is his rational view of what should happen. When he thinks about his own story, he finds it harder to understand that chain of responsibility. He has been blamed so many times that he somehow came to believe it.
[Ismael]: And that is the Ismael who suffers from anxiety, and who often lets it take over. Who still tells me, “Dude, in the end, you really know that it is your fault for being horny.” And sometimes it‘s hard to turn off that Ismael, that little voice that still talks to me… Because in addition, the situation is that society tells me that that voice is right, you know?
[Emilia]: That voice in his head that says, “You asked for it,” repeats what many people still tell him on social media, what they told him at the Prosecutor’s Office, what his kidnapper also told him. And that takes him back to the yellow house in Colonia Americana. As if a part of him were still there today.
It’s not easy, but when he manages to shake it off, when he remembers that there is nothing to be ashamed of, his head comes out of that room and Ismael can fantasize about the idea of returning to Mexico, of walking free through the streets of Guadalajara, the place where he grew up.
Perhaps, if there is justice this time, the voice will be silenced for good and that fantasy will become a reality.
[Daniel]: The investigation against Jesús Cornelio N. is currently ongoing. Ismael still lives in the United States.
Emilia Erbetta is a producer for Radio Ambulante and lives in Buenos Aires. This story was edited by Camila Segura and David Trujillo. Bruno Scelza did the fact-checking. Sound design and original music are by Andrés Azpiri.
The rest of the Radio Ambulante team includes Paola Alean, Lisette Arévalo, Pablo Argüelles, Lucía Auerbach, Adriana Bernal, Aneris Casassus, Diego Corzo, Rémy Lozano, Selene Mazón, Juan David Naranjo, Melisa Rabanales, Natalia Ramírez, Barbara Sawhill, Ana Tuirán, Elsa Liliana Ulloa, Luis Fernando Vargas and Desirée Yepez.
Carolina Guerrero is the CEO.
Radio Ambulante is a podcast by Radio Ambulante Estudios, produced and mixed on the Hindenburg PRO program.
Radio Ambulante tells the stories of Latin America. I’m Daniel Alarcón. Thanks for listening.
