Witnessed: Devil in the Ditch - 19 Days | 3. The Divide

Episode Date: April 15, 2024

The nephew of Esperanza “Hope” Herrera will drive across the country back to Austin when he hears what happened to his aunt, taking us inside his psyche and the aftermath of the bombing from his perspective. Meanwhile, as all the victims are minorities who have been targeted at their homes on the East side of Austin, Texas, the media and authorities begin to speculate — could these bombings be hate crimes? From Campside Media, Pegalo Pictures and Sony Music Entertainment, this is Season 6 of Witnessed: 19 Days Unlock all episodes of Witnessed: 19 Days, ad-free, right now by subscribing to The Binge. Plus, get binge access to brand new stories dropping on the first of every month — that’s all episodes, all at once, all ad-free. Just click ‘Subscribe’ on the top of the Witnessed: 19 Days show page on Apple Podcasts or visit GetTheBinge.com to get access wherever you get your podcasts. Find out more about The Binge and other podcasts from Sony Music Entertainment at sonymusic.com/podcasts and follow us @sonypodcasts and @campside_media Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

You're listening to Witness, 19 days. Before you dive in, if you want to listen to the whole story uninterrupted, you can. Unlock the entire season ad-free right now with a subscription to The Binge. That's all episodes, all at once. Unlock your listening now by clicking Subscribe at the top of the Witness show page on Apple Podcasts, or visit GetTheBinge.com to get access wherever you get your podcasts. This podcast contains descriptions of violence and harsh language.

Listener discretion is advised. Campsite media. The Binge. Take a little picture. So I was in South Dakota teaching. At that time I was in a PE class. I remember getting the call from my sister and and she sends me a link, and I think the headline said, gas leak. The gas explosion goes off in Austin.

And so I'm trying to figure out what it is, and my sister's doing a lot of the phone calling and messaging. Then alerts start to pop up. My sister sends me a link and she says, hey, it might have been a bomb. There's pictures of my aunt and my grandma's house, the ambulance and police officers. Another planet bomb critically injured a 75-year-old woman,

Esperanza Herrera. In the city of Austin, we see a large police presence and that big white truck that you see, that would be the bomb squad truck. It looks very similar to the one that was out on that other scene early this month. I remember sitting down in the front and I have a picture that the kids took of me. They were kind of like messing with me because they took the picture, they turned it black and white, and then they played like a sad song.

But they didn't know what was going on. So they were just like, oh, Coach is in his feelings, you know, he's in his feelings, he's over there sad. In that picture, you can see it in my face. I have no idea what's going on. So I pack up, I jump in my car and I start driving. I drove all the way through, all the way down to Austin, Texas. From Sony Music Entertainment, Campside Media, and Pegalo Pictures. This is Witnessed, 19 Days.

I'm your host, Sean Flynn. Part 3, The Divide. Mic check, one, two. Ziggy Zig and the Rabbit Hole podcast, one. Zik Prado is the nephew of Esperanza Hoperara, the 75-year-old woman critically injured by the third package bomb. On March 12, 2018, he was a coach at a high school in South Dakota. As soon as he heard the news, he got in his car and drove more than 17 hours straight back to Austin.

11.30 this afternoon, my aunt, Hope Esperanza Herrera, opened up the door to pick up a package. I opened up the door to pick up a package. The package exploded, which now put my aunt in the hospital in critical condition. That was the third package bomb. As updates came in from both his family and the media, he recorded this stream of consciousness voice memo as he drove south through the night. The police chief that had a press conference said he'll leave no stone unturned. I'm going to challenge him to that. I need some answers. I'm nobody, but this is my aunt. Whatever this is, whatever you want to call it, don't label it what the media has been labeling it, hate crime, terrorist, no, this is just a sick individual with mental health issues, no matter what his background is, if it's

a woman, then it is, but whatever, you know, it's a sick individual, it's a person. Who would do that? I don't know. The recording offers a glimpse into Zeke's fragile state of mind. A young man searching for answers. My aunt was supposed to, you know, just live as long as my grandmother. And in the absence of those answers, reacting accordingly. My grandmother's 92. She was also affected by it. She had no major injuries.

But can you imagine her daughter, or seeing your daughter, fuck, sick mother. Ah. Excuse me. I don't know how to react to this. I have a ton of anger built up, anger, anger, anger built up. As a believer, I'm supposed to do things like turn the other cheek or pray for that monster

that projected evil. What am I supposed to say? I'm supposed to forgive him. I'm supposed to just sit here and say, I'm praying for you, for your mental well-being. Will you try to take my aunt's life? You did it earlier today to a young man and woman. You did it 10 days ago to another family and I was supposed to sit here and pray for you.

And I asked those questions why? Why her? This has nothing to do with why does it happen to good people. Just why her? Why? Now, five years after the bombings, Zeke is one of the only members of any of the victims' families who will talk about what happened. Zeke starts at the beginning, when he was just a kid. My aunt, she has kids that grew up with my older brother and sister.

And then it was my brother and I itself. We spent a lot of time being taken care of by my aunts. My mom had to go to work or something. We didn't live near each other, but when we got together, it was always good. My aunt was always cooking. Like a little bit of meat, they would always have tortillas on the table, maybe tamales. As soon as you were done eating breakfast, it's like, what's for lunch? You know, and then, hey, you're done eating lunch, like, what's for dinner?

And even till today, nothing compares to Aunt Hope's breakfast. Hope Herrera was the eldest sibling, and like her mother, she helped look after the family. When her mom, Zeke's grandmother, reached her 90s, Hope looked after her. She was her daily caretaker. During the day, she would always go to my grandma's house and whatever she needed, help her run some errands. My grandma didn't drive. The one time she did drive, she wrecked on the very first time.

So she didn't drive. The one time she did drive, she wrecked on the very first time. So she didn't drive. Everybody picked her up and took her places. And so my own hope was that main person that took care of just the family in general, make sure things were in order. That was her role. ["The Star-Spangled Banner"] On the morning of March 13th, nearly 18 hours after he started driving, Zeke was hurrying into the hospital where hope had been taken after the bomb exploded in her arms.

I remember walking in and seeing the breathing tube. So that was probably the one thing that really humbles you. Man, my aunt was like 90 pounds, 95 pounds. She's tiny. I want to say she's probably under five foot for sure. I was preparing for her passing. And I think a lot of people in that room were. I think there was some thought of like, okay, this could happen. My cousins, obviously, they were in the hospital all the time.

Like, they never left. We stayed there nights. We stayed on the floor. My Uncle Joe never left my aunt's side. We had to force them just to go home and change and shower and all that. We weren't leaving until she was walking out of there. Listen now to the Proof Podcast Season Two, the murder at the warehouse. How'd you find out this thing had happened?

My mom called me and said, Lorie, the police found a body and they're pretty sure it's Renee. Right away you thought Jake. Right away. In my head already, I thought it was Jake. Season two of Proof is available now wherever you get your podcasts. I don't think that they arrested the right people. It's about time somebody's trying

to do something. Did you kill Marlene Johnson? I think you're one of the first people to have actually asked. From WBUR and ZSP media, this is Beyond All Repair, a new podcast about an unsolved murder that will leave you questioning everything. Wow, it just gets more interesting. Beyond All Repair. Listen and follow on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Wow, it just gets more interesting. Beyond all repair. Listen and follow on Apple podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Zeke stayed at his aunt's bedside all that day and through the night. Then he volunteered to go to his grandmother's house to pick up some clothes for her. Her house, of course, was at the moment an act of crime scene.

I remember driving out there and pulling in and telling him, hey, I'm here to pick up some clothes. The detectives had told them I was coming out. I remember, you know, walking up, nothing in that neighborhood changed since I was a kid. It's the same houses, the same fences, the same dirt lots, the same pecan tree in my grandma's front lawn.

I could see it. I remember walking up and they kind of came up and greeted me and shook my hand. And they had a makeshift table right by the mailbox. And that table was just plywood. And on that table had the bomb as much as they could gather. They had it kind of just in pieces. I remember like the galvanized nails because they looked brand new.

And I remember seeing that and just like thinking, man, these galvanized nails blew up and my aunt picked up the box. So I remember just kind of walking to the front and seeing the side of the house where the window and then where my aunt had got blown into the house and there was just marks from the galvanized nails and holes, and there was glass all over the floor. It just seemed real, real surreal. Like everything was enhanced and everything was slowed down

as I'm kind of navigating through that house. Nobody's just really paying any mind to me. While he was there, it became clear to Zeke that investigators didn't have much to go on. But it was the questions law enforcement raised with the family that made it abundantly clear they were grasping at straws. They asked a question like they were like, all right, is a 75 year old woman or 93 year old grandmother, if anybody had a problem with them? We thought like, no, we've been here forever.

They had the same routine every day for the last 30 years. They would go to the same store, they would get the same foods. And they even thought she got into an argument with someone at the store over some vegetables. That was their thought. Yeah, there was an argument with someone at the store over some vegetables. That was their thought. Yeah, there was an argument about some vegetables or something. It's just like, oh my gosh.

Despite holding a bomb filled with galvanized nails that, when it exploded, blew her backwards into her mother's house, 75-year-old Hope Harara survived the blast and then all the subsequent medical treatment. She had 22 surgeries. She had shrapnel, man, metal in her legs. She had her kneecap reconstructed. Her abdomen, she's got a scar. She's got, you know, nicks all over her body.

She had some infections during that process. There was still shrapnel. They didn't get all of it. It's just amazing that she survived that. She's still dealing with it, but she's so strong-willed. Her body will rest a little bit longer. She'll sleep till 10 or 11 during the day, get up and have some breakfast, coffee, sit around, make some phone calls, talk to my mom,

and they'll just chat it out, go about their business, all normal. The thought process, like, hey, I'm moving on. I don't know about you, but we're moving on. For the families of the other victims, Anthony, Stefan House, and Draylon Mason, the two men killed in the first two bombings. Moving on was never really an option. No one from House's family agreed to talk on the record to us about what happened five years ago, or even about House, a soft-spoken husband, father of an eight-year-old daughter, well-respected ex-athlete who was transitioning from project management into real estate. According to friends, he was setting up a business mentorship program to begin in the

summer of 2018 for kids who didn't have a father figure in their lives. Seventeen-year-old Draylen Mason, who stepped between his mother in the second package bomb and saved her life, was a musical savant. He played upright bass and it's his performance you're hearing now. Dreland's future was brilliantly bright. He played in the Youth Symphonies all over the country, from the Interlochen Bass Institute in Michigan to the Sacramento Youth Symphony Chamber Music Workshop, and he performed alongside members of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, one of the more esteemed orchestras in the world. Drelin had incredible talent, and he was also humble, kind. People who knew him and

spoke to the media after his death said Drelin understood the immense gift he had and that he needed to share it, both through his music and through Austin Soundwaves, a musical education program he'd been a part of. All of us are artists. All of us are writers, dancers, singers, musicians, choreographers, whatever you are. If you get rid of music education, we have nothing. We as the younger generation require creativity.

Shortly after he was killed, the Mason family found out that Draylen had been admitted with a full scholarship to Oberlin College for Music, as well as the Butler School of Music at the University of Texas at Austin. Yet beyond their shared tragedy, little else connected the victims. Here's Bomb Squad Chief Rob Dunias. From what I know, a lot of the focus was on trying to determine how these three victims were related and then use that relation to find out why that suspect is targeting these three people. There was a couple of people in the investigation

that were sure that none of these victims were related, and this was completely random placement of these bombs. But that's a little bit hard to accept, that even though, yeah, this is random, well, okay, it's random, but why these three? It doesn't give you anywhere to go with that information. There were, however, two things the victims had in common, both very apparent to anyone who looked at the basic details.

All of them were from black and brown communities on the East side of Austin. And to understand the significance of that, it helps to understand the history of Austin. Austin's history as relates to, specifically black and brown folks, can be traced back to 1928.

That's Chas Moore, co-executive director of the Austin Justice Coalition, a group of activists and organizers founded in 2015, shortly after the death of Trayvon Martin. Austin, believe it or not, was one of the first cities in the country that had freedman communities, communities where free black people could set up shop, build all communities. So before we even get to like East Austin, as we know it, you had black communities, black societies within Austin, like Montopolis. Montopolis is one of the first freedmen communities in the country. You got Clarksville.

A lot of people think these are just names of grocery stores, but these are names of historically Black communities. Also, 6th Street was a really vital place for Black and Brown and even Jewish business. But then something happened around 1928. The Powers That Be had a plan for the development of what we now know as Central Austin, downtown Austin, and that meant that they wanted to do a couple things. They wanted to have the west side of Austin, which means they had to get rid of all the black folks. In long story short, the deal was, all right, black people will give you the things you need, school, infrastructure,

but you can only get it if you move to East Austin. So these communities that were in Clarksville and Weasville were pushed out, forced to the East Side, and they did things like they cut off their utilities. They were making life really hard for them. And that's how the East Side became the East Side. In the early 60s, the dividing line between the East Side of Austin and the rest of the city became a physical barrier. A new highway, Interstate 35, bisected the city, running from north to south just to the east of the central business district and the state capitol. So East Austin had been literally separated from the main hub of the city.

So now, late 70s, 80s, early 90s, we started seeing the prequel to justification, which is beautification. And anybody that's listened to this, if you hear the word beautification around your neighborhood, that means they're literally planning to get rid of you and clean it up and make it look nice and pretty to let some more affluent people come into the neighborhood. So Austin went from being 40 percent Black, and clean it up and make it look nice and pretty to let some more affluent people come into the neighborhood.

So Austin went from being 40% Black and then thanks to the beautification and gentrification and just a blatant disregard for the quality of life of Black people, we've been dwindled down to 7%. By the 20 teens, Austin was one of the fastest growing cities in America, and longtime residents on the East Side began to be squeezed out of their own neighborhood. One of the main reasons the divide continues to grow is because historically, Black people, other people of color were not afforded seats at tables. They were not afforded the same resources as everybody else.

So as the boom continues to grow, it's more of like a gap that continues just to grow, right? When the developers and the people come in and they want to buy your house, even though you may not want to sell it, $500,000 is still a lot of money. And I can take this money, I can go to Fluidville and like be a part of a black community or I can take that money to like unlock some opportunities for future generations. It's just a really, this is a really tricky thing, man. So given the history of Austin, when three bombs exploded the homes of black and Hispanic

residents on the East side, it's understandable that people in those neighborhoods might think that race played a role, that the victims were targeted simply because of the color of their skin. Yet law enforcement was hesitant to label the bombings hate crimes. Special agent Chris Combs explains why. There was a lot of community pressure

and people were getting out there saying it was a hate crime. Why won't the FBI declare it a hate crime? But here's the problem. Once you say that, you can't reel that back in. The FBI can't be wrong. We have to be right or the media is gonna tear us apart. And if you're wrong, people lose faith in what you're doing. There's another camp that says,

you should declare this as terrorism. Why aren't you saying this is terrorism? We don't know what it is. And we have no evidence that it's anything to be quite honest with you. And in fact, even some conversations with DC where FBI headquarters was like, Chris, what are you doing? Like, what are you working it as? It's not good to tell your boss that, hey boss, we don't know what this is. But until we can definitively say what it is, we are not going to define it. It's a bombing. On Getting Curious, we love to deep dive into all kinds of topics, but we especially appreciate learning about issues

that impact our basic human rights. From voting rights to the history of abortion and so much more. So many of these core freedoms depend on the separation between church and state. Americans United for Separation of Church and State has been working towards a just future for 75 years. Do you want full civil and political rights for LGBTQIA plus people, for women, racial

and religious minorities, for disabled people? Then you should want to defend church and state separation. You can support a political future for the U.S. that helps all people by becoming a member of AU. Together, we can protect our individual freedoms and ensure freedom without favor and equality without exception. Learn more at au.org slash curious. Crypto is like the financial system, but different.

It doesn't care where you come from, what you look like, your credit score, or your outrageous food delivery habits. Crypto is financed for everyone, everywhere, all the time. Kraken, see what crypto can be. Not investment advice. Crypto trading involves risk of loss. Kraken's registration details at kraken.com slash legal slash ca dash pru dash disclaimer. In the chaos that followed the two package bombings on March 12th, Austin Police Chief Brian Manley cautioned the public about picking up packages on their doorstep and to call

authorities if they found anything suspicious. If you've received a package that has been left on your doorstep or left in your yard or left on your driveway that you were not expecting or that was not from someone you know, then give us a call. It was a short-term sensible thing to do in the name of public safety. On the other hand, those types of blanket instructions from a city leader can have unintended consequences, especially for, say, the bomb squad. Before, we would get maybe four or five calls a month that are suspicious package calls.

And me personally, after I left the scene there and started taking calls, I went to 25 suspicious package calls just in that day. So that's insane because if there's a suspicious package call to the Austin Police Department bomb squad, they're going to send two bomb technicians, a supervisor, a K-9 unit, a gigantic truck, some firemen, some EMS. So this whole circus shows up to every suspicious package call. That's just not possible.

So yeah, that was a seismic shift, if you will, on just the method of operations. We did not have a lot of time after the third bombing to think and reflect and plan. It was really just like, you two pair up in a car, you answer calls in this part of town. You two pair up, you go this way. Crazy things were happening. We would we would get called for a suspicious package and show up and it's just someone's mail. So you're like picking up their mail and you're like, there you go.

And it's like the circulars that come in the mail with like all the coupons in them. And at first you get kind of frustrated about it, but then you're like, Ron, what if I didn't know my job? And I just heard the police chief on the news and people were dying from bombs and this thing's on my porch and I don't know my job and I just heard the police chief on the news and people are dying from bombs and this thing's on my porch and I don't know what bomb looks like. I'd probably call too. There's more than a million people in Austin, most of whom get packages.

Journalist David Leffler remembers what it was like. To save people on edge would be an understatement. My mom lives in town and I was telling her not to pick up any boxes that came to her home. You drive down the street and you see row by row homes with boxes stacked up outside. I mean, it was eerie. I mean, you gotta remember this is 2018, so this is just about the time that I feel like everyone was ordering stuff online. I feel like everyone was ordering stuff online.

The bomb squad fielded hundreds of calls, almost all of which were easily dismissed. But every now and again, they'd find a package that was legitimately suspicious. And that would start the time-consuming process of examining and X-raying and securing what inevitably turned out to be nothing. X-raying and securing what inevitably turned out to be nothing. I remember going to a call on South First Street at an apartment complex.

A young lady had a box sitting on her porch and she didn't recall ordering anything. The dress wasn't visible. So she's like, yeah, yeah, I don't know what this is. So I was like, all right, so go on the other side of your apartment building. And I put on my protective equipment, go do some X-rays and all the diagnostics that we could get to do with it. And as soon as I shot an X-ray of it, I immediately recognize it.

It was lingerie. And then there was the physical and emotional strain on the bomb squad members themselves and on their families during this 24-7 round-the-clock suspicious package patrol that was also happening during one of the busiest times of the year. Jeff Joseph remembers this clearly. Your whole life is built around protecting people, first and foremost, your family. So whenever I would pull up at the house, I would look at the door, make sure there's nothing at my door.

I told my wife and my son, hey, keep an eye out for what's happening around you. Look around your car, look and make sure there's not something near your car. If there's a box outside, maybe let's don't pick it up and bring it in the house. It just adds to everybody's anxieties. I wouldn't want to be in my wife's shoes thinking about what I did every day. I'd much rather be in my shoes. I'm sure the stress level on her ratcheted up through the roof. Bomb squad officer Josh Oyhus was a new father, so even more on edge.

My son was super young. He was not even two yet, and he refused to sleep. The kid would not sleep. And so I had to sleep with him a lot of nights. I was like, I'm in a combat zone. So I was hypervigilant sleeping in his room at night. I had the whole house planned out. I'm like, all right, we're not going to go out the front right, we're not gonna go out the front door. We're gonna go out the back door. Because I locked the gate outside. The hardest thing was being away from him and not being able to, like, hang onto him and keep him from picking something up.

So, yeah, a lot of stress. Like I said, in my brain, we were in a combat zone. So, in a combat zone, I'm going to let my guard down and process things. Not a survivable mindset to have. And it wasn't just the bomb squad. Local cops and federal agents were working around the clock too. You're working so hard that when you get to go to sleep, you sleep pretty good. We go into 12-hour shifts and after 12 hours, you have to leave because there's a lot of studies out there that show after 12 hours, your mental capacity diminishes, accidents increase.

I'm pretty serious about starting at the top, all the way down. Hey, we have to leave and turn that over to the next team. We were there so long though, I did have to call my wife and say, hey, I need more clothes. I did not pack for 17 days. So my wife with the kids, they actually came up and spent two nights with me at the hotel just to give me a little mental break.

All those investigators working all those hours and they've got plenty of evidence. They just can't connect it to anyone. It's unfortunate to say, but really there aren't a lot of great hot leads. It's really just old fashioned detective agent work trying to figure out what is going on, trying to connect the victims, trying to gather evidence. There's clues in the evidence. There's always clues in the evidence. Sometimes it's easy, sometimes it's really hard. At this point, it's really hard.

Every day without an arrest or even a suspect, every hour that a lethal threat to the public goes unchecked, every minute that hundreds of thousands of people at an internationally renowned festival worry they might be caught in a random bombing, the pressure builds. And the whole country is watching on 24-hour cable news. There's the pressure of stopping another bombing and God knows how many people get killed there. stopping another bombing and God knows how many people get killed there. There's the pressure of you're in charge of this massive investigation. There's the pressure of you got 600 FBI agents in town and you got to manage that. And the way you deal with that is you have to bleed off some of pressure, and that's by building a proper command team.

And that's a skill set that I think we have better than anybody in the world. Yet the clock keeps ticking. Day turns to night, night turns to day. When you've got nothing, you look at everything. Rob Dunez was on the periphery of the hunt for a suspect. Being on the outside of the investigation, we were asking the homicide investigators and ATF, all right, what's next? What do you got?

There's a lot of theories and ideas about who this person was, about why it was happening. But again, they were just theories and ideas. Nothing was really going anywhere. They need another piece of the puzzle, but to get that... I'm on the night shift, get another call. Hey, there's been another explosion. The bomber would have to make another move. I was screaming down to the scene

as fast as I could possibly drive. I got mad at my suburban, it only goes 105. This is completely random because it's a tripwire so it doesn't make a difference if a three-year-old kid walks down the sidewalk or a 56-year-old man whoever walks down there is tripping this bomb. So it's completely random. That's next time on Witnessed, 19 Days ad-free right now by subscribing to the Binge Podcast channel. Just click Subscribe at the top of the Witness show page on Apple Podcasts or visit GetTheBinge.com

to get access wherever you get your podcasts. As a subscriber, you'll get Binge access to new stories on the first of every month. Check out the Binge channel page on Apple Podcast or getthebinge.com to learn more. This episode of witnessed 19 days was reported and produced by Eli chorus and Joshua Schaefer of Pegalo pictures and Alvin Cowan executive produced by Josh Dean Vanessa Grigoriadis Adam Adam Hoff, Ashley Ann Krigbaum, and Matthew Scherr of Campside Media. Hosted and co-produced by me, Sean Flynn, co-produced by Brian Haas, and co-produced by David Loeffler. Written by Eli Korus. Edited and assembled by Christy William Schaeffer. Original series theme by Kevin Ignatius of DOS Tapes, interviews recorded by Nicholas Sinakis, Eli Kors, and Alvin Cowan, sound mix by Craig Plackie, production legal by Sean Fossett of Raymond Legal PC,

and fair use legal by Sarah Burns and Diana Palacios of Davis Wright Tremaine. If you'd like to donate to the Draylen Mason Fellows Program, which helps young up-and-coming musicians in Austin, you can do so by visiting AustinSoundWaves.org. Please rate and leave us a review if you like what you've heard, and thanks again for listening.