Dateline NBC - Talking Dateline: The Ranch

Episode Date: July 10, 2024

Josh Mankiewicz and Keith Morrison discuss Keith’s episode, “The Ranch,” about the harrowing 2007 kidnapping of Eduardo Valseca in the small city in Mexico where he lived with his wife, Jayne, a...nd their three young children. As Jayne worked to meet the ransom demands for her husband, Eduardo endured seven months of deprivation and torture before finally being released. Keith reflects on the strength of the Valseca family and their unbreakable bond in the face of tragedy. He also shares an extra clip from his interview with Jayne Valseca in which she speaks about how she met Eduardo, the man who would become the love of her life. Keith and Josh answer viewer and listener questions from social media. Listen to the full episode of "The Ranch" here: https://link.chtbl.com/dl_theranch

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Starting point is 00:00:00 Hi, everybody. It's Josh Mankiewicz, and we're talking Dateline today with Keith Morrison. Hi, Keith. How are you doing, Josh? I'm good. We're here to talk about Keith's episode called The Ranch, which is about the very frightening kidnapping of a guy named Eduardo Valseca. He's a father and husband. This all happened in a small city in Mexico. And what followed was a really unbelievable fight by his family, by his wife and kids to get him home. Now, if you have not listened to this broadcast yet, it is the episode right below this one on the list of podcasts that you just chose from. So you can go there and listen to it.
Starting point is 00:00:40 Or if you want to watch it, stream it it on peacock and then come back here in addition to talking about this episode keith has a clip that you're going to play for us from your interview with jane valseca and then later we will answer some questions about the broadcast from social media so stick around for that so let's talk Dateline. Let's do it. So this is, I'm going to say, an older episode. This was done in, what, 2010, something like that? Yes, we have done this several times. It remains one of my favorite stories ever, and it's probably the reason why we went back to recheck on it from time to time over the years and things changed.
Starting point is 00:01:26 Things changed in sometimes very dramatic ways, but the original story itself is extremely dramatic and also romantic and also terrifying and also life-affirming and the people in it, the people in this story, remarkable, remarkable family. Well, and as a story, it's got a couple of twists that you don't see coming. That is very true.
Starting point is 00:01:52 So let me ask you this to begin with. You know, I mean, Jane and Eduardo, their story is sort of fairy tale. I mean, like they, you know, they meet by chance. Next thing you know, they're going out. Next thing you know, she's coming down to Mexico. Then they're living together in this sort of beautiful bubble, as they call it. This kind of kidnapping for ransom is unheard of in the United States.
Starting point is 00:02:20 It is an absolute antique in terms of crimes in the United States, but not in Mexico and not in a lot of other countries too. So my question is, were they ever concerned about this when they moved down there? They were not. They moved to a lovely town. San Miguel de Allende is unlike any other place on the planet that I've been able to determine. It's just, it's an amazing place full of really beautiful, lovely, friendly people. It's also an extremely popular expatriate community. There are tons and tons of Americans and Canadians and Europeans who have decided just to move there and live there very happily in their retirement. It's a wonderful place. And Jane and Eduardo, both attracted to this place, found a piece of property at the edge of town on which they constructed an absolutely town, and they had this tradition of kind of going
Starting point is 00:03:26 off in the Jeep in the morning and bumping down the roads to the school that was on their own property. It was phenomenal. And that town, and much of Mexico, in fact, are often thought to be maybe dangerous places, but it wasn't dangerous. It was no more dangerous than it is in some of the towns in America. Except that people don't get kidnapped for ransom often enough to generate an industry that's there to respond to it the way it exists in Mexico. Sure. And there was a spate of them that occurred right around the time they happened to live there. And when we went to the very top of the Mexican law enforcement apparatus, and we're given an audience with the leaders of the Mexican version of the FBI, and they opened the doors to us to show us what they were doing.
Starting point is 00:04:21 They believed that this was part of a kind of a rebellious group that was committing kidnappings as a way to make political statements and to finance themselves, et cetera, et cetera. And so that's what they thought this particular kidnapping was too, and that's what the investigation was. And in the end, of course, it turned out it wasn't that at all. It was all the more shocking because it was just such a garden variety thing. Just a criminal.
Starting point is 00:04:49 A local guy doing a copy of this stuff and kidnapping a couple of people around town. We found, we believe, the kidnapper's house. And we were able to... I mean, he left in a hurry. That was clear. But he lived what appeared to be a classic middle-class life where he had a family. And he was, I mean, he sat on the board of the Waldorf School. They saw each other every day.
Starting point is 00:05:15 The kidnapper, on a regular basis, saw Jane Valseca as she was going through hell trying to find her husband. And he was the one who was holding him in a box. It was also instructive and illuminating to crawl into that little we built the box we built a box it was according to eduardo's constructions so it was about the same size about the same kind of material but that i have to say that box i mean i don't think of myself as claustrophobic but that box would have given me some serious issues. Oh, God. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:05:45 So this little box is not quite long enough for you to lie down in, certainly not high enough for you to stand up in. You can't really move around much in it. You're in a crouch all the time. The inside of it is carpeted with rough, rough carpet so that you move yourself on it. You're going to have bed sores in a matter of a couple hours. There's a light on 24 hours a day in the top of the box. It's right above your head. I mean, this is all very, very close to you. So it's bright light, this black carpet and rap music playing 24 hours a day. So you can barely hear yourself.
Starting point is 00:06:27 And the only thing you're going to have to eat in the course of a day is maybe half an apple or a slightly rotten egg that they throw in at you. I'm sort of surprised. I was thinking about this while I was watching the episode. I'm sort of surprised they didn't take better care of him because, I mean, he's their annuity. Like anything, like if he starves to death or has a heart attack or something, like they don't get any money. Yeah. Well, and they shot him several times.
Starting point is 00:06:57 It's phenomenal what they did to him. It's something that survived. No. somehow you survived no i mean i i the only part of what he quoted them uh as saying the kidnappers was that you know if you hear anything if you can hear what's going on that's why we have the music playing if you hear what's going on then we gotta kill you because you probably hear our voices and you'll know where we are um right but there's obviously ways to do that to soundproof a room that doesn't require you know deafening music and like starving your your your kidnapee to death i know that doesn't strike me as the smartest way of doing
Starting point is 00:07:32 that job if if they wanted to be cruel i could not think of many more ways to do it and he's half his body weight when he comes back and she barely recognizes him right Right. First time I met Eduardo, we went for dinner. And he was exclaiming on the delightfulness of food and how he loved all food now. So he ordered, remember he ordered a sardine appetizer. They brought the sardines to the table. And normally people will kind of like, just a full sardine came to the table, right? You'd take the fish off the bones and you'd eat the fish and you'd leave the bone. He ate the whole thing. He ordered chicken. He ate the bones of the chicken. He ground them up in his tea. He ate
Starting point is 00:08:14 the whole thing. He just loved all food. It changed the way he ate. It totally changed his appreciation of those kinds of things about life. I'm guessing that he should have gotten some significant psychotherapy when that period of captivity was over. Because that's a hard thing to live with. It's tough. And I have to confess to you, I can't be sure. I mean, he seems pretty well adjusted. He was phenomenally well adjusted all along.
Starting point is 00:08:44 And just so incredibly grateful to be sure. I mean, he seems pretty well adjusted. He was phenomenally well adjusted all along and just so incredibly grateful to be alive. Does Eduardo think that this was a one-man job or that he had help, that there were other people? There are thought to be three or four people in on this. There had to be other people for the actual snatch.
Starting point is 00:08:59 Yes, but they have not been charged in connection with Eduardo's case that I'm aware of anyway. They may be at some point. It's hard to know. When we come back, we're going to have more from Keith's interview with Jane Valseca. At the beginning, the way everybody's talking eduardo you think he's dead and they're even talking about him sort of in the past tense and the kids say things like i you know i knew
Starting point is 00:09:32 right then that i would never see my dad again right so i'm thinking like okay he doesn't make it back how does this how does this unspool how does it result i thought you guys did a great job with that but so by the time you went down there to do these interviews the first time around, he was already out, and obviously Jane was still alive. That's correct. Jane had had several bouts with breast cancer at that point. And just imagine this, and it's in our story too, but that she was suffering rather horribly with her disease. She should have been getting full-time attention, but she was concentrated on the effort to find Eduardo and to free Eduardo. And she would travel to the United States to get treatment
Starting point is 00:10:17 every once in a while, and then she'd be right back to Mexico. I've interviewed a lot of people over the years, and I will say this about those two. Eduardo Valseca is one of the most upbeat and full of life and interesting men I've ever talked to. You could be in a terrible, terrible funk, and you go see Eduardo, and five minutes later, you're dancing and happy. But Jane was... if you were going to write a romance story and you wanted somebody to be the maiden you fall, the hero falls in love with because of her attributes, her loveliness, her lovingness, her sweetness, her charm, it would be Jane Belseca. She was extraordinary.
Starting point is 00:11:07 I think we all, the whole crew was in love with Jane. And so when she died, it was heartbreaking. I can only imagine how difficult it had to be sort of, you know, reading these ransom letters that Eduardo, he's forced to write, you know, which he's talking to her clearly not in the way he normally talked to her. Yeah. You know, and he's, he's yelling at her and, you know, why don't you care about me? And I mean, I get it. I mean, your, your kidnappers are making you do that, but, uh, uh, it's a, it's gotta be a horrible thing. That's right. Yeah. You know, early on, you kind kind of learn they kind of learn what i sort of already know from reading about stories like this which is this isn't going to come back this isn't going
Starting point is 00:11:50 to be over in a day this is me over in a week this won't be over in a month this can be a long hard slog and expensive and filled with you know crushing uh you know sort of ups and downs and things you think are going to happen and then they don't happen. And boy, that was true because it just felt like she was disappointed at almost every turn again and again and again. And yet you really get the feeling that like, you know, I mean, as regrettable as it was, she was like the perfect spouse for that. Like she kept the family together and she, she knew what to say to the kids, or at least she figured out what worked and she never lost hope, which is just amazing. Well, you know, again, that's one of the elements that made this a great story. So let's listen to that sound about Jane, in which Jane talks about how she and Eduardo met,
Starting point is 00:12:40 and you get some sense of this sort of fairytale life they lived. Well, it's kind of like one of these fairytale stories. I had just come back from a big trip to Europe when I met Eduardo, my husband, at the Sutton Place Gourmet, which is a gourmet supermarket in Bethesda, Maryland. I was there to use the public phone at the entrance of the market, and Eduardo and his older son from previous marriage were in the shop buying chocolates.
Starting point is 00:13:05 So I parked my car, and I was running to the public phone to make a couple of calls that I needed to make. And he was coming out, thought I was trying to rush in before closing time. The manager had locked the door behind him. So he, being very friendly as he is, said to me, Oh, I'm sorry, miss, they've just closed the door behind us. They won't be letting you in. And I said, Oh, it's okay, I'm just going to use the phone, and that was it.
Starting point is 00:13:28 But I wouldn't say it was love at first sight, but there was definitely initial attraction. He went to his car, and I'm making my phone calls. And I hear moments later, a car passing. So because there had been this initial attraction, I went to turn with the phone over my right shoulder just to see if it was him. And it was. So our eyes met. So he ended up turning around and came back and we struck up a conversation. I asked him where he was from. He said he was from Mexico and I talked about my love of travel. He said, oh, if you go to Mexico, you have to go to San Miguel de Allende and friends had
Starting point is 00:14:07 just told me about it as well. So that was the excuse to exchange business cards and keep in touch, which we did. We spent the following month with lots of phone calls, letters, sent packages to each other, exchanged photographs and fell in love over the phone, really. So he convinced me after about a month to come meet him somewhere, and he rented a beautiful suite in Ixtapa that had two bedrooms. Wow. And so he was very much the gentleman, and I appreciated that. And so I went, and we fell in love.
Starting point is 00:14:41 Did you use the second bedroom? I'm sorry. I'll never tell. We fell in love. Did you use the second bedroom? I'm sorry. I'll never tell. Yeah, we won't go there. But we fell in love completely after our week together. And he had convinced me to go home and quit my job and finish the semester at school and come to Mexico, which I did. So it was just a couple of months and we were house shopping in San Miguel de Allende. That's a very sweet story. Nice story. Yeah. And good for you for grilling her on how
Starting point is 00:15:14 that weekend went. Tough questioning. Wow. You're savage. Don't try to get away with anything with me. No matter what. Yeah. Hey, you know, I met my wife in the TSA security line at LAX. I know. Just when I thought stranger things couldn't happen, sure enough. I know. I know. I know. They were busy that day. I offered to frisk her for weapons.
Starting point is 00:15:44 There you go. Next thing you know, we were married. married okay that part isn't true okay after a break we will be back to answer some of your questions from social media let's take some social media questions. Shannie B wants to know, how long was the ranch episode in production? The fact that Jane passed was heartbreaking. So, I mean, this was, what, 10 years from the first episode to the last. Yeah. We would go back repeatedly and re-interview and bring things up to date. And as we discovered more things, I mean, you know, we were,
Starting point is 00:16:27 this investigation went on for years, trying to figure out who it was and where they were. And we had sightings. We thought that we had them in our sights physically at one point, the kidnappers, that is, and came close. But anyway, yeah, so we had to redo the episode several times. Denise Tracy wants to know, came close, but anyway, yeah. So we had to redo the episode several times. Denise Tracy wants to know, uh, she says, I'm glad Eduardo and the ranch hand got out alive and the kidnapper got caught, but poor Jane.
Starting point is 00:16:53 Well, poor Jane, definitely. Um, uh, I'm glad they let the ranch hand go and didn't just kill him, which is kind of what I thought was going to happen. Well, yeah. And had they been the true bad guys that the Mexican state police thought that they were, they probably would have killed them. But this was this, you know, amateur kidnapper. When he realized he wasn't going to get any money, he just said, oh, to hell with it and let him go. Alba North, who's a friend of ours from social media,
Starting point is 00:17:21 says, I need a Keith and Eduardo positive vibes podcast. I think you may have hit on something there. Yeah. Yeah. It's a good idea. I like it. Jamal1028 says, I love Eduardo and Keith partnering like an 80s cop duo. Yes.
Starting point is 00:17:39 I totally see that. Yeah. Yeah. That's right. The Mexican guy, the Canadian guy, they're solving crimes on both sides of the border. Absolutely. Yeah. Right.
Starting point is 00:17:50 Happy solving crimes. One's in a great mood all the time. One's in a terrible mood all the time. Yeah. Yeah. Which one's in the... Oh, that would be me, I guess. Sorry.
Starting point is 00:18:00 Yeah. There's really not much question about that. Thomas Percy says, Jane and Eduardo left a beautiful legacy in their children. Such amazing and wise people they have raised. I'm sad that Jane did not live to see the abductors arrested. And she did not, right? Right. Please tell me everybody involved, with the obvious exception of Jane, is doing okay today.
Starting point is 00:18:21 Yes. Eduardo lived for a time in Spain. He came back to the United States. The children are all, they picked up a lot from their terrific parents. And they're living good lives. Okay.
Starting point is 00:18:39 That's nice to hear. That is Talking Dateline for this week. Keith, thank you. Oh, boy.eline for this week. Keith, thank you. Oh, boy. It was my pleasure. Everybody, thank you for listening to us. And if you have any questions for us about our stories or about anything on Dateline,
Starting point is 00:18:55 you can reach out to us on social at DatelineNBC. See you Fridays on Dateline on NBC.

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