Going West: True Crime - Debanhi Escobar // Patreon Sneak Peak

Episode Date: August 19, 2022

FIRST HALF OF OUR NEW PATREON BONUS EPISODE ON Debanhi Escobar. LISTEN TO THE FULL EPISODE: patreon.com/goingwestpodcast In April of 2022, an 18-year-old woman went to some house parties with her friends in Mexico. But after she began acting erratically, her friends sent her home in a car service. During her ride home, she excited the vehicle and stood in the highway before wandering off. Her father scoured the city looking for her, only to find her deceased in a motel’s water tank. After 3 very different autopsies were conducted, her family is still wondering what on earth happened to her, and who is responsible. This is the story of Debanhi Escobar. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What is going on going West patrons? I'm your host T and I'm your host Daphne and you're listening to Real Crime. Howdy patrons. Thank you so much for tuning in to yet another episode of Real Crime. Switching over my little saying over here. Today's case was recommended by one of our lovely longtime listeners and patrons, Eugenia. So thank you so much Eugenia for sharing this case with us. It happened this year and it is such a wild case. It actually reminds me a lot of Alisa Lam's case, which you probably know of.

So I think this is the craziest case that we have covered on Patreon thus far. So again, thank you for tuning in and don't forget to share the story. You can't show the episode, but you can share the story. Absolutely, yeah. This is one of those bizarre ones

that you can easily go down a rabbit hole with. Yeah, and I really wanted to cover this on going west, but we don't do international cases there, but this is that kind of case where it's like, what the fuck? Yeah, absolutely. Well, let's get into it guys. This is episode 41 of Real Crime. So let's get into it. In April of 2022, an 18-year-old woman went to some house parties with her friends in Mexico, but after she began acting erratically, her friends sent her home in a car service.

During her ride home, she exited the vehicle and stood in the highway before wandering off. Her father scoured the highway before wandering off. Her father scoured the city looking for her, only for her to be found deceased in a motel's water tank. After three different autopsies were conducted, her family is still wondering what on earth happened to her and who is responsible. This is the story of Devani Eskabar. Debeni Susanna Escobar was born on September 6, 2003 in Mexico City, Mexico. Though some report state she was born on September 4, 2003, but either way it appears she was born in early September of 2003 to parents Dolores and Mario Escobar, and she was an only child.

After completing her studies, Debony, being the bright and intelligent young woman she was, was excited to pursue a career in law, just like her father Mario. So at age 18 in 2021, she began studying criminology at the University of Nuevo Leon, which is located in Monterey, Mexico. And Monterey is a big city, and it's the capital of the northeastern Mexico state of Nuevo Leon, hosting over one million people. Monterey wasn't very close to her home of Mexico City, though, or it still isn't, still in the same place.

Yeah, it hasn't moved. It hasn't moved. It is like a 12-hour drive away, so it's 565 miles away or 910 kilometers, but you can get there much faster by taking an hour and a half flight. Debeni was known for always wanting to help people, which is why it's no surprise that while living in Monterey and going to university, she attended a gender violence march in Mexico this was earlier this year, in an effort to, early enough, in regards to what would happen in her just weeks later, protest violence against women. In April of 2022, 18-year-old Debony was in her third semester of law school at the University

of Nuevo Leon, and she decided to go out to a party with some friends of hers. The friends that she was with on the evening of Friday, April 8, 2022, were Sarai, whom she had known for three months and only hung out with a few times, Yvonne, whom she had only met that night, as she was a coworker of Saras, Alejandra, and Jissari. The five young women went together to a house party in Nueva Castilla, which is in the north of Monterey, and just about a 15-minute drive from the university. And it's also not far from the Texas State border, which is just less than a three-hour drive north to give you kind of a little bit of perspective here. Also, I should mention

that Nueva Castilla is a neighborhood in the municipality of Esco-Bito. At about 11.30 pm, Debeni, Sarai, and Yvonne left the party and headed to a convenience store via a car service called Dede, which is like an app-based vehicle for higher car service, pretty much similar to Uber. But it's most commonly used in Mexico, China, Australia, Japan, Brazil, and more. So while at this convenience store at 11.30pm, the girls got a 750ml bottle of Sky Vodka, a grapefruit soda, disposable cups, and ice. And while in the store, they were captured on surveillance footage. You can't see her facial expressions because she, Yvonne, and Sarai all had black face masks

on, but they look totally normal and are just making their selections, and none of them appear to be under the influence. Yeah, it feels like this was kind of more of the start of the evening. That's why they're getting alcohol. So after picking up the vodka, cups, ice, and soda, the three girls returned to the same house party that they were at before, and Debeni partook

in some drinking games with others at the party. At 12.49am, so about an hour after arriving back at the party from the convenience store, convenience store, Debony and Sarai and Yvonne called a DD car to take them to another party in the same area, and they were picked up by a man named Juan David in his white 2018 keyerio at 1am. They arrived just 15 minutes later only to realize that the party was over, so they went to a different party that was also nearby, and they arrived there just about 5 minutes later at 1.20am.

The three girls arrived and were seen on surveillance footage meeting up with a group of young men, and they tried to get into this house party, but they had apparently been uninvited and no one else there knew them, so they were not being let in. But they kept trying, and after about 10 minutes, the three girls got in at 1.30am. Now the next thing to happen was very eerie. Just minutes after entering the party, Debeni is seen on surveillance video running out of the house while a young man chases after her and eventually catches up. Now when he does, he tries to grab her and she hits him. Then, they're joined by

a group of young men who appear to be possibly the same young men that were outside of the party earlier. While standing there, Debeni took a swig directly from the sky-vodka bottle that she had purchased a couple hours earlier, and then she reportedly bites one of the young men in the group and then fell asleep somewhere for 15 minutes and locked herself in the bathroom for a while before trying to go in the pool. Due to her aggressive and out-of-character behavior, after an argument ensued, her friends called her a car to take her home at about 3.30am. The person who picked her up was once again, Juan David, and he's

a quote, trusted contact of the friends, as well as a driver for the DD app. We don't know if the friends knew him before this evening, or if they had just met him when he had taken them to the party earlier via the DD app. But, Iván contacted him again and asked her to pick up Debenyne instead of calling for a new driver within the app. And a lot of people are wondering why Sorai and Yvonne left her and didn't go in the car with her, but according to them, Debonne said that she wanted to be alone. So Sorai and Yvonne claimed that they were desperate and didn't know what to do because

she had never acted that way and they were really worried about what was going on with her. Obviously, Yvonne wouldn't have known because she just met her that night, but at least Sarai was like, this is not her. Yeah, she's not acting like herself. Right, so they abided her alleged wishes and put her in the car. So, Debony got into Juan David's car at 3.54am, But then immediately asked to go back to the party, according to the driver Juan. But she remained in the car, and 30 minutes later, at 4.25 AM, when Debeni should have been home,

since her home was only 15 or so minutes from the area of the party, and this was 30 minutes later, Juan messaged Ivan and said that he couldn't find Debeni's house. And he also wanted her parents' phone number. And again, her parents lived like 12 hours away, but this guy's desperate. He's like, how do I get her home? Because even though Debeni didn't know Yvonne well, she had met Sarai multiple times like I said, and Sarai even had Debeni's

father's phone number, so they supplied one with it. And something I want to mention is that one article I read referenced an interview that Sarai did with Tel Aviv Monterey, which I didn't watch since I don't speak Spanish, but during this interview, Sarai allegedly states that she and Debeni had been dating for a few months. So one article said the two girls were just friends who had hung out a few times, and this article claims that she said they were dating. But I also read a bunch of articles that were translated so poorly that multiple articles kept referring to Debony as he and him. So there's a lot of mistakes. Yeah, you can't we can't be too sure how Accurate some of those translated articles are yeah, I didn't translate them myself

There's just a lot of pre-translated ones that just seemed to be really poor But I just wanted to mention that because it could be true but back to one so One was like I said was having trouble finding Debinie's house, but that was because Ivon I don't know if she did this on purpose or an accident, but she gave One the driver the wrong address. So that's why he couldn't find Debinie's house And that's why it took so long for him to finally be like where am I going because she gave him the wrong address Right, so he's like let me talk to her parents, because she's only 18 years old.

And let me figure out what to do with her, because she's intoxicated and she's in my car. She's kind of my responsibility, right? So Juan tried to call Mario Escobar multiple times, but considering it was nearly 4am, it makes sense that he wasn't answering. Juan then contacted Ivan again and said he didn't want any trouble, but he didn't know what to do with her, that it seems like she was more than just drunk and that she seemed to

be on drugs, whether she took them on purpose or was drugged. At 4.26am, Juan took a photo of Debony that would end up going viral due to how haunting it is, along with being the last photo ever taken of Debony alive. She is seen standing in the middle of the Monterey-Lorrito Highway with her arms crossed in front of her stomach, wearing a long black Maxi skirt, a white tank top, black high top converse, and a black face mask. And she is just standing on the highway, looking forward. And make sure that you go and check out that photo so that you understand exactly what

we're talking about. When we say it's eerie, it is incredibly eerie. It's very black around her and she's just standing in the middle of the road. And it's the middle of the night, you know, or very, very early morning. But we posted that photo on Patreon and on our socials as well for you guys to see. But this photo has really like so many people have drawn this photo. We'll post some drawings of it, like a lot of people because this is the last photo of her. And even though it's such a haunting photo, it's also a very beautiful photo. And a lot of people have just made their own art with it. of her and even though it's such a haunting photo it's also a very beautiful photo and

a lot of people have just made their own art with it. So Juan took this picture of her in order to send it to Yvonne to help explain that Debony got out of the car while on the highway and wouldn't let him take her home. This particular stretch of road, which is 20 minutes from Monterey where she lived, is known to be so dangerous that it's referred to as the highway of the dead, or Ketertera de la Muerte. The reason it's called this is because just since October 2020, so in less than two years, 71 people have disappeared while traveling on this very highway, with just a handful or so being Americans. Meaning most of them are local. But some say that this number is twice as much as Mexico's National Search Commission

States, and that it's actually more like 150 people. Now three minutes later, at 4.29am, Debony walked three blocks down the highway, where she is then seen on security footage just still standing in the middle of the street, and actually a car had to swerve out of the way to avoid hitting her, because she was literally standing in the middle of the highway she walked over to the median. It was extremely dangerous, especially in the dark, where cars couldn't see her very well. Then, Debeny crosses the street to go onto the sidewalk and is seen walking towards a building. She looks around and looks as though that she may be entering

the building. But at that point, she's out of the view of the security camera. Three minutes later, at 4.33am, she's captured on a different security camera, one from inside a closed restaurant, where she's seen walking towards the Nueva Castilla motel by herself. This motel is since closed, but it's located directly along the Monare Laredo Highway. Four minutes later, at 4.37am, she's captured on yet another security camera at the reception of this motel. She then goes into the garden, where there's a pool that's connected to the restaurant that I mentioned a moment ago that's a part of this motel. And she's in the garden alone for 23 minutes, but she's just out of the view of the camera.

So it's unclear what she was doing there. Yeah, and it's really weird. The camera footage is really bizarre because you can't see anything very well. Like, from what you can see of her even passing the window slash door of the restaurant, it's not very clear, but they were able to determine that it's her.

So she's basically in this corner against a wall next to the window and the door. So there's no footage of her actually being there for 23 minutes, but we know she was because she didn't pass the camera again for 23 minutes. So it's just really weird because it's like, what was she doing? Was she on her phone? Was she, I mean, it's like it, who knows? Was she just standing there? Was she hiding? Like it's so unclear. Yeah, but at this point, no one else has captured on that camera. So it appears that she is by herself.

Out 4.56 a.m Debeni is captured for the very last time on a security camera, and the footage shows her leaving the garden and walking back towards the hotel. Again, no one else is captured on this camera. And for reference, the sun rose that morning at 7.24am, so it would have remained dark for another couple hours. According to Juan David, again the driver, Devinnie was hitting him in the car and didn't want him to take her home. He

stated in a rough translation quote, I tried to help her, but the girl was not in her right mind. She did not string sentences. She did not have a concise speech. Now of course this is coming from Juan, this is not coming from Devin who cannot defend herself, so we don't know how true this is, but this is why he's claiming. And Juan even claims that he tried to locate

a police patrol car to tell them about her whereabouts and see if they could help, but he gave up when he didn't see anyone on his drive. When Juan arrived home to his wife, he explained to her everything that happened, and they both returned to the motel to try to find Debeni, but they didn't see her. He even texted Yvonne later that day at around 2pm and asked what happened to her. But not jumping too much ahead, so let's go back a little bit so hours after DeBony left Juan's car at about 8.30 a.m. on Saturday, April 9, 2022, DeBony's

father, Mario, called Sarai after noticing missed calls from her because she had also tried to reach out to him at about 4 a.m. to help with DeBony. And that's when he learned about what happened. So it was only about four hours after anyone had seen Debony, but she still hadn't returned home and her location was unknown. Alright guys, that is all we have for you today for the preview. I wish we could have covered this on Going West, but I needed... I had already done the research for it for Patreon,

and we needed to come out with the episode, so... I didn't want to make them wait to come out with this episode on going west, but I hope you guys do go and listen to the full story on Patreon. If not, thank you for listening to this preview. And yeah, if you want more episodes, we have 72 full length ad free episodes. Their bonus episodes, some of them are international,

some of them are in the US. And all of those are accessible on patreon.com slash going west podcast. That's P-A-T-R-E-O-N dot com slash going west podcast. The way it works is we have about 42 episodes to listen to if you subscribe to the five dollar tier, including Debeni's case. And then if you subscribe to the $10 tier, you get access to all 72 full length ad free bonus episodes that we have on there. So just depends how many episodes you want. And yeah, head on over there if you're interested. If not, thank you so much for listening.

Thank you for supporting the show, and we love you. Oh yeah, and don't be a stranger. and don't be a stranger.