Prime Crime: Solved Murders - The Fight for Humanity: Chico Mendes

Episode Date: April 12, 2023

He dedicated most of his life to protecting rubber trees in the Amazonian town of Xapuri, where he lived. During that time, Chico Mendes received countless death threats. But on the night of December 22nd, 1988, somebody made good on their promise.  If you’d like to take action on the climate or learn more about the topics covered in “Dark Green: Earth Crimes and Conspiracies,” visit www.spotify.com/darkgreenresources. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hi, Parkast listeners, Carter here. And I'm Wendy. In honor of Earth Day, Alla Parkast is bringing you a special event called Dark Green, Earth Crimes and Conspiracies. For this event, we're investigating the shadowy corners where crime and the environment meet. And telling those stories. Because climate change isn't just about science and the weather, it shows up in all parts of society and culture, even crime. Did you know, for example, about the strange circumstances surrounding the 1974 death of a chemical technician?

Or that in the early 2000s, there was a serial killer with a very specific target, hikers in national forests. Or did you know about the many environmental activists who go missing or end up dead? To hear these stories and more, come along with us for a different kind of Earth Day celebration. And if you'd like to learn more and take action on the climate, visit www.spotify.com slash dark green resources.

Due to the nature of this murder case, listener discretion is advised. This episode includes descriptions of violence, torture, and murder. Consider this when deciding how and when you'll listen. A note before we begin. Though today's story is true, certain moments have been fictionalized and dramatized by actors. Even before it happened, Chico Mendez knew someone was going to kill him. He was one of the most famous labor and environmental activists in Amazonia, and this put a target on his back. Violence was nothing new for the small Brazilian town of shoppery.

Tensions mounted for decades between local rubber tappers and the wealthy ranchers who controlled the land. By 1988, it felt like the bloodshed had reached a fever pitch. The more the workers fought back, the more brazen the ranchers became. And soon they made it clear they wanted to stop the resistance at its source at Chico. As things came to a head, his friends and comrades urged him to leave Chapparee. But in his 44 years of life, Chico had received countless death threats and he wasn't the type to run. Chaperie was his home. He had dedicated most of his life to protect.

protecting this place and the people who lived there. As long as he was still alive, he still had work to do. Welcome to Solved Murder's True Crime Mysteries, a Spotify original from Parcast. I'm your host Carter Roy. And I'm your host Wendy McKenzie. Every Wednesday we step into the world of true crimes, most fascinating murder cases, and tell the tale of how real-life detectives close the case. You can find episodes of Solved Murders and Aller.

All other Spotify originals from Parcast for free exclusively on Spotify. This is our only episode on activist Francisco Chico Mendez. The story of his life, death, and the events that followed helped bring the subject of deforestation to the international stage. But not just that, Chico's work highlighted the human cost of the climate crisis, an issue that is ongoing today. We have all that and more coming up. Stay with us. Yamava Resort and Casino at San Manuel is California's number one entertainment destination for today's superstars. Catch the Jonas Brothers return to the Yamava Theater stage on April 30th,

the powerful vocals of Demi Levato on May 17th, and the signature Southern Country Rock of Eric Church on July 19th. Tickets on sale now at Yamavat Theater.com, only at Yamava Resort and Casino, celebrating its 40th anniversary. You in? Must be 21 to enter. The night of December 22, 1988, was unusually dry for the Amazonian town of Chaperie. The break from the rain was likely a welcome change for the 16,000 or so people who called this place home. Residents could enjoy the evening outside, sitting down for a game of dominoes, or strolling, winding past through dense thickets of rubber trees.

But later, whatever calm that had fallen over the Amazon was shattered by the car. crack of a gunshot. It was as if all hell broke loose. People cried out in terror, their calls mixed with the sound of all the town dogs barking. Then everyone ran. But they weren't running away from the gunfire. They were rushing towards it. The truth was, many knew exactly what the gunshot meant, the second they heard it.

And as a group of townspeople gathered at Chico Mendez's house, their worst suspicions were confirmed. There, lying on the floor of his kitchen was the man himself. As blood pooled around his body, it wasn't difficult to find the source. A single round of buckshot had hit Chico in his chest and right shoulder. There was no use trying to resuscitate him. He bled out in a matter of minutes. All that was left to do was share the terrible news.

Throughout the night, the jungle was full of voices shouting. They've killed Chico. The news spread across Shapuri, but it didn't stop there. It reached the entire Amazon region. Then the rest of Brazil. It moved through Latin America and the United States, across oceans into Europe and beyond. In a matter of hours, the entire world knew that Chico Mendez was dead.

This wasn't the first time a prominent activist had been shot by an unseen assailant, but Chico Mendez was different in some key ways. So before we continue his story, we need to pause to give some important historical context. Before anyone knew the name Chico Mendez, the town of Shapoari was mired in turmoil. It all started with one simple thing, rubber. In the 1940s, Chapparee and its surrounding towns were major sites of rubber production. In fact, the Brazilian Amazon was a primary source of rubber. for the United States throughout World War II.

Rubber tapping served as the main income for people in shoppery. The demand was so high that peasants from other parts of Brazil were sent to work among the thick groves of rubber trees. The process of rubber tapping is somewhat similar to that of maple syrup. First, rubber tapers put a diagonal cut in the trunk of the rubber tree. In response to the wound, the tree produces latex, a thick, milky white sap. Then the tapper peels back the bark from the cut and collects the sap as it flows out. All that latex is later processed into rubber.

It's a lot of hard work, but the process doesn't cause any permanent harm to the rubber trees. It's completely sustainable. But demand for rubber is not. When World War II ended, the so-called rubber boom fizzled out. Many rubber tapers were able to keep their jobs, but thousands of others were left stranded in the Amazon to fend for themselves. All the while, another phenomenon had been at play. Throughout the 20th century, the region of Akri, where Shapuri was located,

started being advertised as fertile, untouched land for wealthy investors. In order to encourage development, the Brazilian government even offered free land for settlers to relocate there. Akri was often compared to the American West of the 1800s, a promising frontier. for those looking to get in on the ground floor of a lucrative business. By and large, that business was cattle ranching. Now, this industry relied on the Amazon rainforest, just like rubber tapping, but in an entirely different way.

Cattle needs space to graze, and the vast Amazon had more than enough room, that is, if you cut down millions of ancient trees, and inevitably that included rubber trees. It would be an understatement to say that ranchers clashed with rubber tappers. To the ranchers, the peasant workers were in the way of their business venture and had to be removed. But for the peasants, the ranchers were like an invasive species. They had to be driven out to protect their way of life in the land they relied on. What resulted was a constant battle between the two groups. The rubber tapers unionized and staged massive protests to stall or stop the destruction.

of the rainforest, and in turn the ranchers, often with the help of hired hands, would intimidate, force out, or kill anyone who tried to stop them. This was the world in which Chico Mendez lived. Born in 1944, he, like many others, grew up in a community of rubber-tappers. Chico lived and worked among the trees and saw firsthand the violence his people faced almost daily. Because of this, he wanted to join in the fight. He became a member of the local Rubber Tapper's Union. And as time went on, his passion and charm helped him rise through the ranks and eventually become president.

At some point, Chico felt his ideas were too radical for the union, so he founded his own group in 1985, the National Council of Rubber Tappers, and quickly set himself apart. To rubber Tappers, Chico was a hero, a fierce advocate. for workers' rights, but he was also often a friend and a neighbor. To the ranchers, however, he was a problem. He got in the way of business, often literally. One of Chico's key strategies was a method of protest he and the other rubber tappers devised called the Empati or the standoff.

The way it worked was simple. Whenever ranchers made plans to raise a section of trees, Chico and his comrades would gather en masse at the site. Folks would bring their friends, sometimes their entire families. The goal was to put so many human bodies in one place that it would be physically impossible for the bulldozers to get through. And amazingly, this tactic worked really well. With Chico Mendez leading them,

rubber tappers were able to prevent the destruction of countless tracks of land in the Amazon. Soon, people around the world started to take notice. By the 1980s, Chico, was rubbing shoulders with climate activists and politicians from the United States in Europe. He befriended members of various activist groups and started receiving funding for his cause. He even won awards from groups such as the United Nations Environment Program for his use of the Empate to stop deforestation. And Chico made for an excellent spokesman.

The way he talked about the Amazon was intrinsically tied to the rights of the workers who relied on the resources the land provided, something that was a recurring theme in his conversations. The people on this land are not disposable. They are resilient. No amount of violence can destroy the root of the movement. They are just as strong as the rainforest itself and all of its life, its plants, no matter the attack, they will find a way to grow back. That's how we imagine, Chico spoke about the dual struggle of worker and environmental rights based on Andrew Revkin's book, The Burning Season. For Chico, the rainforest and the people who live there could not be separated. And soon, more of the world was supporting his message. But as much as his growing fame helped the cause,

it also had its problems. Chico's enemies happened to be some of the most powerful landowners in the region. and as he rose in prominence, their grudge against him only grew stronger and their threats more dangerous. This was nothing new for Chico. He'd received threats on his life before, but he'd also seen how quickly these methods of intimidation could turn deadly. Many of his own comrades had been killed over the years. And union leaders like Chico were most at risk. In 1988 alone, four other union leaders had already. been killed in the Brazilian Amazon. For Chico and his colleagues, safety was never an option.

And it was with that mix of grief and bitterness that people gathered for Chico Mendez's funeral. The event took place only three days after his death on Christmas Day, but by this point, the news of his passing had spread far and wide. Many of the people attending the service were rubber-tappers, though a good number of them were not from shoppery. Hundreds, in fact, had walked hours through the jungle to pay their respects to the man who'd fought for their communities. But they weren't the only ones who had traveled to grieve his loss. Environmentalists, politicians, and even celebrities made the trick from Sal Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. People flew in from New York, from Europe, and across the globe.

In total, over a thousand people came to grieve Chico Mendez's death. The church was over flowing with mourners, many of them crying as hymns were sung. Perhaps most interesting was the presence of journalists. Dozens of them were at the funeral to document the event. But the press wasn't just there to cover how Chico Mendez died. But who killed him? And as it turned out, this wasn't going to be a hard question to answer. In fact, virtually everyone in town knew exactly who was responsible.

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Has performance does not guarantee future results. Now, back to our story. By Christmas Day, 1988, 44-year-old Chico Mendez was dead and buried. Now it became a matter of finding the person who sent him to his grave. Luckily, Chico's supporters didn't have to wonder about the killer's identity. They knew it for sure. It had to be the work of two people, Darley Alvis de Silva and his 20-year-old son, Darcy. But to understand why their guilt was so obvious to everyone, we need to spend some time getting

to know these two men. The Alves de Silva family were unsurprisingly cattle ranchers. They, like many other landowners in the area, had come head to head with Chico and had struggled to stop land development. But they were not your average cattle ranchers. If the Brazilian Amazon was like the Wild West, then the Alvesta Silva family were the wild bunch. before the family arrived in the state of Akri in 1974, their reputation for violence and destruction preceded them. Rumors circulated around the Alvis de Silva's like flies. It was an open

secret that the family had moved from town to town, avoiding murder charges held against them in multiple states. On the surface, the family were ranchers, though it was widely assumed that they made supplemental income through less legal means. Specifically, drug smuggling. And in shoppery, the family operated a ranch straight out of a John Wayne film. It had a collection of buildings that housed the patriarch, Darley, his son Darcy, their families, and the band of Pistoleros, gunfighters who protected the Alvis de Silva's and their interests. In some ways, Darley Alvis de Silva didn't look like the leader of a crime family. He wore thick-rimmed glasses and had bony limbs that gave him an almost skeletal appearance.

His son, Darcy, however, made up for his father's relatively demure looks. He was the muscle with a strong, dense body and a prominent brow that hit his eyes in shadow. But neither man shrunk from their violent reputation. If anything, they leaned into it. Darley, Darcy, and other men from the ranch would stroll through town proudly brandishing the pistols strapped to their hips. Sometimes, if they felt like it, they'd enact their own version of a wild West showdown. They'd spot a rubber tapper and whip out their pistol,

ranishing it as if they were Billy the kid. This was usually nothing more than a fear tactic, a way of keeping the people of shoppery, afraid of the Alvis de Silva family. But other times, their threats became very real, very quickly. People who offended them had a tendency to disappear. A so-called enemy could be a union leader, or even just a ranch hand who was accused of stealing. As author Andrew Revkin describes it, quote, when somebody bothered the Alvis de Silva family, he usually turned up dead if he ever turned up again at all. Like other landowners in shoppery, the Alvis De Silva's publicly despised Chico Mendez, and they weren't shy about sharing their

feelings with anyone who'd listen. It was well known that they wanted Chico dead. But in 1988, a few months before Chico Mendez was killed, that tension reached a boiling point. Early that year, Darley Alphist Silva, purchased a tract of land near Shapuri called Kachoeira. He planned to raise the trees and turn the entire area into pastures for his cattle. There were just two problems with that. One, the region was already home to a dozen rubber tappers who lived there with their families. And two, this piece of land was very important to Chico Mendez. In fact, this was where he had grown up.

So, in other words, the purchase of this land was about to be a big headache for Darley Alvis de Silva. Sure enough, the moment news reached Chico about Kachuaera, he sprung into action. He and the rubber tappers who already lived in Kachuaera staged multiple Empatis. They gathered hundreds of people to camp out in the forest and stayed there for days, making it impossible for Darley to raise the trees. The protests were so successful, in fact, that after months of trying to drive people off the land, Darley was forced to give up and sell it back to the Brazilian government.

After the ranchers left, Chico then fought to have the forest declared something he called an extractive reserve, a piece of land that could only be used through sustainable means. Your request was approved. In hardly any time at all, Chico had saved Kashiara from destruction. This was a massive win for Chico and the rubber-tappers, but the activist wasn't finished yet. What Darlene Alvis De Silva may not have realized was that Kachauera wasn't just Chico Mendez's childhood home,

but also his strongest support base. And for Chico, this attack on Castroira was personal. So in addition to stopping Darley's development plans, Chico went after his reputation, too. He began speaking to any publication who would listen, encouraging journalists to look into previous murder charges that might involve Darley and his family. Chico even flew south to meet union lawyers for the same reason, and it didn't take long for the prosecutors to find some extremely damning evidence. Just as rumors had suggested, Darley was already wanted for murder in another Brazilian state

and had only evaded capture because he fled the region. But the lawyers knew that going after the Alvis de Silva's could have dire consequences. They warned Chico that accusing the family of murder may mean that he could be the next one steering down the barrel of a shotgun. But to Chico, his safety wasn't what was important. The warning didn't phase him. He would not lose the determination many had come to expect from him. And based on our research, we imagine his response sounded something like this.

My job, my duty, is to cultivate and protect what has already been here long before humans lived in the rainforest. But I am just one person. I am not a movement. And I expect I'll die for this struggle. Frankly, I don't think I'll make it to next year. But perhaps my death can be the last of the killings that have already come before me. If all I stand to lose is my own life, if all the movement loses as one man, then all of this is still worth it. The evidence against Darley and his relatives was handed over to the authorities with the hopes that arrests would be doled out quickly.

But then, things got tricky, though police finally had. something on the Alvis De Silva family, it was difficult to get anyone to actually do anything about the charges. It didn't take long for Chico to figure out why. He heard word that the Alvis De Silva's were friendly with the local sheriff. And after a couple weeks had passed, it seemed the police had lost their will to go through with the arrests. Chico tried writing letters urging for help from law enforcement and even the governor of the state, but his pleas for assistance were ignored. And it was around this time that he was dealt another blow. He received an Anuncio from the Alvis de Silvas. Far from a simple threat of violence, anuncio is more like a promise,

a guarantee that at some point soon the receiver was going to be killed. He can arrive in many forms, a telephone call, a letter, or a round of bullets shot into the side of the victim's house. The actual date of the killing is never acknowledged, an intentional choice to torture the victim on his few remaining days on earth. It isn't clear what form Chico's Anuncio took, but the message was perfectly clear. His days were numbered. This was in large part why virtually all of Shoppery knew that Darley and Darcy Alvis de Silva were responsible for Chico Mendez's death. Well, what happened next is a little surprising. Before Chico's assassination, the local police seemed uninterested in arresting the Alvis de Silva's,

but in the wake of his death, the cops suddenly got to work. In fact, both Darley and Darcy were under arrest within days after the killing took place. It's unclear how this happened so quickly, considering everything that came before it. Perhaps this crime crossed a line that even their allies couldn't ignore. Regardless, the two biggest suspects in Chico Mendez's murder, were arrested. As they sat in jail, this moment could have felt like an early act of justice, but the people of shoppery weren't celebrating yet. Just because those two men were in jail didn't mean they would stay there. After all,

Darley and Darcy had already shown their ability to escape murder allegations unscathed. There was no guarantee that this time would be any different. Coming up, the long road to conviction begins. and Chico Mendez lives on. Now back to the story. By the beginning of 1989, two men were already in custody for plotting the murder of Chico Mendez,

Darley, Alvis de Silva, and his son, Darcy, who was accused of pulling the trigger. There was ample evidence showing that the Alvis de Silva family wanted Chico dead, not only that, but they had a previous history of violence, intimidation, and murder. All signs pointed to an open,

in shut case, but actually convicting Darley and Darcy was not going to be easy, and there were a few reasons for that. For one thing, the Alvis de Silva's had alluded the courts before. Shortly after their arrest, their lawyers had begun attempting to delay the trial or to have the charges dismissed entirely. The attorneys demanded the case be thrown out for lack of evidence. They also requested that the charges be handled by different courts in other parts of Brazil. Probably in hopes of holding the trial where the Alvis De Silva's reputation wasn't so well known. Their motions began to pile up on the chief justice's desk, and each new request delayed the proceedings. The situation was also made worse by another factor.

The limitations of the justice system in shoppery as a whole. The town lacked basic resources to make convictions run smoothly. At the time, there were no full-time prosecutors available, almost anywhere in rural Brazil, which left a growing backlog of uncompleted cases. Over 1,000 of them, as Andrew Revkin explains in the burning season, quote, no murder case had proceeded to a judgment in Chappery for 20 years. The arrest of Darley and Darcy alone was an extremely unusual thing, and taking these two men to trial was even more controversial.

Like we said before, the Brazilian Amazon. was largely seen as a place where might made right. Law enforcement didn't carry much sway, and it didn't help matters that ranchers like the Alvis De Silva's were in shoppery with the government support. Needless to say, there wasn't much precedent for a trial like this. The odds were stacked against them. The limitations of the system coupled with the many efforts of the Alvis de Silva

lawyers dragged the case out more and more. Weeks turned into months, then years, By 1990, no trial date had been set, and during that time, Darley and Darcy declared their innocence from jail. But their lawyers weren't the only ones putting pressure on the powers that be. So did Chico Mendez's union, the National Council of Rubber Tappers. The union was furious. They claimed that officials were waiting until the state and local elections were finished to carry out the trial. To the Tappers, this delay was just an act of self-protection by the politicians.

politicians, many of whom likely relied on the votes of wealthy cattle ranchers. If Darley and Darcy were sentenced before then, they'd risk losing re-election. Other groups began sending their own letters to the Chief Justice of Akri State Court, urging the case forward. People who knew Chico Mendez's in life, activists, politicians, influential figures from around the world who hold their resources to demand officials take the case to trial. The battle between the defense lawyers and Chico supporters helped spread his story further. Chico was already a well-known activist who'd shed light on the issue of deforestation and workers' rights in the Amazon.

But in the wake of his death, those issues seemed all the more important. News from Chapparee during this uncertain period only confirmed that feeling. People complained that the intimidation and threats made by ranchers and landowners had gotten worse. As time passed, the trial for Chico Mendez's murder seemed to become the defining stage upon which these issues would be addressed. And the Alvista Silva family became the face of a much larger issue, mainly the unchecked power that cattle ranchers had over the Amazon in its people. All eyes were squarely on the Brazilian government to see if or when a date would be set. And after two grueling years of this endless back and forth, the trial finally began. It was December 12, 1990, just shy of the anniversary of Chico Mendez's death.

The small chaperie courtroom was bloated with onlookers, rubber-tappers, foreign supporters, and members of Chico's family. Everyone in the courtroom wanted to catch a glimpse of Darley and Darcy as they walked silently to their place in front of the judge. But on that first day, Darcy shocked everyone with an unexpected statement. After spending the better part of two years declaring his innocence, all of a sudden, he confessed to killing Chico Mendez. He even doubled down on his statement saying that his father had nothing to do with the murder plot. But this final detail seemed suspicious. Lees Slater speculated he likely was just trying to cast blame away from Darley. Regardless of Darley's role in the crime, his son did offer a clear, unfeeling depiction of how things played out on December 22, 1988.

Under the cover of darkness, Darcy had waited outside Chico's small, pink and blue house nestled in the jungle. He might have even been able to hear the muffled sounds of conversation or maybe the tapping of dominoes. Inside, Chico is playing a game with a couple of personal guards. At some point, one of the guards stood and closed the shutters into the kitchen, where the game took place. Darcy probably saw this happen, too. No matter, all he had to do was wait. Inside the kitchen, Chico was enjoying himself. He was a very competitive player and especially excellent at Domino's.

There was no conversation about work tonight. Still, all the men were on high alert. Anytime they heard an unexplained sound in the jungle, the crack of a stick, a seed pod falling from a tree. Everyone tensed. Even at home, Chico knew that he just wasn't safe. But the rest of the evening went on comfortably. Chico's wife Il-Zamar made everyone dinner.

But eventually, with the shutters closed, the heat in the house became stifling. Chico stood and, complaining about the weather, wandered into the bedroom to grab his flashlight. The shower for the house was outside, and Chico figured this. would be the easiest way to cool off. He slung a blue towel over his shoulder, flicked on his flashlight, and opened the back door of the house. Darcy only shot once. A round of buckshot straight through that blue towel into Chico Mendez's chest and shoulder. Stunned, Chico stumbled back into his house, falling onto the kitchen floor where he had been playing dominoes. Within minutes, he was dead. Darcy retold this story to the courtroom,

matter-of-factly without any suggestion of emotion. This information, coupled with his own confession, practically sealed his fate then and there. But there was still the matter of Darley, Alvis de Silva. Darcy had only implicated himself in the murder, not his father. But soon their violent reputation spoke for itself. Over the course of the four-day trial, witnesses helped paint a vivid picture of the sheer brutality of both men. One of the most anticipated witnesses was a teenage boy, Genesio Ferreira de Silva, who had lived on the Alvis de Silva ranch for a period of time. He told the court he had personally seen both Darley and Darcy plot the murder of Chico Mendez.

This testimony was crucial in the case against both the Alvis men, and ultimately it helped seal their fates. On December 15, 1990, Darley and Darcy were found guilty of Chico Mendes his murder and sentenced to 19 years behind bars. This conviction was historic, a rare exception to a long history of similar killings that never saw the light of a courtroom. And even so, the years following the trial were complicated to say the least. In 1993, both Darley and Darcy escaped prison, hiding out in the jungle for nearly three years before eventually being captured. And as of this record,

both have completed their prison term and now live in Brazil as free men. The situation in Shopery and the entirety of Amazonian Brazil is also a complicated one. Today, the destruction of the Amazon has continued at an alarming rate. Data shows that deforestation has increased 30% in recent years. Every day, it's estimated that 10,000 acres of land are raised. This has had a devastating effect in the region on both its environment and its communities. And as long as this destruction continues, we'll only feel its impact grow stronger and reach further. But that doesn't mean it's too late.

Today, the Brazilian government has dedicated 8 million acres of land reserves in Chico Mendez's memory. But Chico has also laid the groundwork for continued activism around the issues to which he devoted. his life. Many groups are still fighting for not only the protection of the rainforest, but also for the rights of the people who live there. And Chico Mendez himself has become a figurehead of environmentalism and the human cost of climate change. Even after his untimely death, the fight is not over. The dual issues of preservation and workers' rights are still a struggle to this day, and those two things cannot be separated. Chico said it best.

In the year before his death, he wrote to the Gaia Foundation in hopes of receiving a monthly grant of $500 to help him in his fight for environmental justice. In that letter, he said this. At first, I thought I was fighting to save rubber trees. Then I thought I was fighting to save the Amazon rainforest. Now I realize I am fighting for humanity. Listening to this episode of Parcast, Earth Crimes and Conspiracies, brought to you by Solved Murders, a Spotify original for Parcast. Be sure to check out our other shows, like Unsolved Murders, Unexplained Mysteries, and Serial Killers.

You can find all episodes of Solved Murders for free on Spotify every Wednesday. For more information on this case, amongst the many sources we used, we found The Burning Season, the Murder of Chico Mendez and the Fight for, for the Amazon Rainforest by Andrew Revkin, extremely helpful to our research. And if you'd like to learn more and take action on the climate, visit www.spotify.com slash dark green resources. We'll see you next time.

Solve Murder's True Crime Mysteries is a Spotify original from Parcast, executive produced by Max Cutler. Our head of programming is Julian Bois Roe. Our supervising sound designer is Russell Nash, with Nick Johnson as our head of production and quality control by Lisa Marie Gallegos. Stacey Nemick is our supervising editor, and Derek Jennings is our writing lead. This episode of Solve Murders is written by Georgia Hampton, edited by Sarah Batchelor and Alex Garland, fact-checked by Bennett Logan, researched by Mickey Taylor, produced by Joshua Kern,

and sound design by Kerry Murphy. It stars Joe Hernandez as Chico Mendez. Our hosts are Wendy McKinsey and me, Carter Roy.