T wo years and eight months after Berta Cáceres’s murder and five weeks after the Public and Oral Trial began, the prosecutors and defense attorneys finished their closing arguments on Saturday November 24. The tribunal of judges is now reviewing the weeks’ worth of evidence, which amounts to over 10,000 pages of reports, analysis, and testimonies from the investigation of the Attorney General’s Office.

The tribunal is scheduled to read the verdicts of the eight accused on Thursday November 29.

During the trial, the public prosecutors built a strong case against six of the eight accused, mainly thanks to an investigation by the Technical Agency for Criminal Investigation (ATIC) of telephonic evidence. The other two accused, however, will be more difficult to convict.

Four Suspects near the Scene of the Crime

In the days following the murder, ATIC agents began to build the investigation off of almost no evidence by soliciting lists of telephone calls made through the antennas around Cáceres’s house on March 2, the day of the murder. Through interviews with locals, the agents narrowed the phone calls down to four phone numbers that were not common to the zone.

With information from Tigo and Claro, the two cell phone companies in Honduras, as well as interviews with the suspects’ acquaintances, agents linked the unknown numbers to four murder suspects: Henry Hernández, Edilson Duarte, Oscar Torres, and Elvin Rápalo.

Following the locations of phone calls made by the suspects that day, investigators tracked the men from Atlántida at 7:30am to Comayagua at 2:30pm and into La Esperanza/Intibucá, where Cáceres lived, at around 4:00pm. Hernández made a phone call in Intibucá at 12:32am, just under an hour after the crime took place. The men were in Yoro by 6:20am on March 3.

A protected witness, who was staying in Cáceres’s home at the time, testified that in the moment a gunmen entered his bedroom, he heard shots fired in Cáceres’s room, confirming the presence of two gunmen in the house. The witness survived with slight injuries to his hand and ear.

Video footage of the entrance to Cáceres’s neighborhood shows three figures running towards a vehicle on the main road outside of the neighborhood’s fence at 11:38pm, implying the involvement of four suspects including the driver. The vehicle then turned to make its way back to the city center.

The involvement of the four material authors was confirmed by the confession of two of the suspects. During his arrest, Hernández confessed to ATIC agents his involvement in the crime as well as the roles of Rápalo, Torres, and Edilson Duarte.

A protected witness also gave a written testimony stating that Rápalo bragged of shooting Cáceres shortly after the crime.  

Suspicious Meetings and Phone Calls Prior to Murder

After identifying the four suspected material authors, ATIC agents examined calls made by the suspects in 2015 and 2016.

The information revealed a web of phone calls and messages linking the suspects, including Emerson Duarte, Mariano Díaz, Douglas Bustillo, and Sergio Rodríguez, as well as David Castillo who is undergoing a separate trial.

By coincidence, the government tapped Díaz’s phone in 2016 due to links with a suspected drug trafficker and kidnapper. In a conversation with Díaz weeks before the murder, Hernández urged Díaz to push forward with “grilling the meat”, code for a murder, and bragged about another murder his crew had committed. Though Díaz was reluctant to remain involved, he agreed to help secure money for the job. He also borrowed a gun for Hernández, which he discussed with both Hernández and Bustillo but had to return it to the owner before the murder.

The phone calls show that the three men coordinated meetings in Tegucigalpa and Comayagua in the weeks before the murder. In one such meeting between Bustillo and Hernández, Bustillo conducted an internet search for photographs of Cáceres on his phone. Investigators additionally found that Bustillo had received photographs of Cáceres and her house to his phone through WhatsApp. After the crime, he regularly searched for information about the murder up until his arrest.

Rodríguez had the least amount of contact with the other suspects, communicating only with his coworker Castillo and former coworker Bustillo. The most noteworthy call was placed to Bustillo at 6:29am the morning after the murder.

In his testimony, Rodríguez noted that he had received a call earlier that morning from a DESA coworker, Claudia Erazo. He claimed that Erazo informed him of the murder and that he called Bustillo with the news because Bustillo had a lot of contact with Cáceres when he was Chief of Security at DESA.

The prosecutors pointed out that Rodríguez had been inconsistent when testifying on his relationship with Bustillo. In the Preliminary Hearing, Rodríguez stated that he had not spoken to Bustillo since Bustillo left DESA. Then in the Public and Oral Trial, Rodríguez testified that they had spoken on occasion.

Emerson Duarte also had almost no communication with the other suspects other than eight calls to Torres and numerous calls between him and his brother.

Raids and Arrests

When ATIC agents raided suspects’ homes to make arrests, they found a gun underneath Emerson Duarte’s mattress. A forensic expert stated during the trial that, based on casings found at the crime scene, he was 100% sure the gun was the one used to murder Cáceres. Though there is little evidence linking Emerson Duarte to the planning and execution of the crime, he could be sentenced as an accessory to the murder for hiding the weapon.

At the family home of Hernández, ATIC found 101,165 lempiras (around $4,100) in cash. The agents claimed the money could not be justified. However, Hernández’s cousin testified that he was the treasurer for his church and that he had ledgers to prove that the church collected the money to fund a project.

When ATIC arrested Díaz at his home, Díaz told an agent that he knew about the murder plan but claimed that he chose not to get involved. During this confession, he implicated Bustillo as the one who planned the murder. He also stated that a young DESA manager offered 500,000 lempiras ($20,500) for his involvement and that it was the manager who later paid the gunmen.

Unjustified Earnings After Murder

A financial analysis by the Attorney General’s office showed unjustified earnings for Rodríguez, Bustillo, Hernández, Díaz and Edilson Duarte. Investigators did not, however, research the sources of the money to verify whether or not the money was connected to the murder.

Though the prosecution’s analysis showed earnings for Rodríguez that were not claimed on his taxes in 2015 and 2016, an expert for the defense stated that the untaxed amounts came from bonuses and travel expenses. He also stated that, according to interviews and bank records, the unjustified deposits came from family and friends who were paying back money that Rodríguez had loaned him. The analyst did not go into details about the loans. The expert connected other incomes to Rodríguez’s work with DESA, with his own company, and as a consultant. The analyst did not manage to clearly explain, however, why some payments came directly from Castillo’s account and not from the company.

Bustillo’s bank account showed a spike in spending shortly after the murder, including the purchase of a used car for 103,465 lempiras ($4,200) and a shopping trip to PriceSmart, a warehouse club that the financial analyst deemed excessive spending. The prosecution did not verify the origins of the money.

Similarly, Hernández had money when arrested that did not match his income. He claimed that the money came from selling his motorcycle on March 2. In a conversation with Díaz in February, however, Hernández lamented having to sell his motorcycle due to low finances and debt. The motorcycle was not registered.

The analyst also showed unjustified deposits totaling 37,400 lempiras ($1,500) in Edilson Duarte’s accounts and 87, 395 lempiras ($3,500) in Díaz’s accounts from 2015.

Tensions with DESA

Two witnesses from COPINH testified to the many threats that Cáceres said she received from Rodríguez, Bustillo, Castillo, and other DESA employees. One witness claimed that Cáceres received threatening text messages or phone calls from DESA employees weekly in the years leading up to the murder, including messages from Castillo with details about her whereabouts.

Rodríguez’s defense pointed out that in the Preliminary Hearing, the witness stated that she had been near Cáceres when Rodríguez threaten her a week before the murder during a COPINH protest against the Agua Zarca dam. In the Public and Oral Trial, the same witness stated that she was not in the area when Rodríguez allegedly made the threat, though she did say that Rodríguez had told her that if she moved ahead with the protest that night, he would do nothing to stop the men with machetes waiting down the road.

Two witnesses from the communities around the Agua Zarca dam stated that they had worked with Rodríguez throughout the project and not observed threatening behavior. Another witness who was contracted with DESA submitted a written statement claiming that he was by Rodríguez’s side on the night of the alleged threat against Cáceres and did not observe any such threat.

The Verdicts

Through telephone evidence and confessions, the prosecutors built a strong case for the involvement of Díaz, Bustillo, Hernández, Rápalo, Torres and Edilson Duarte in the murder or Berta Cáceres. However, the cases against Emerson Duarte and Rodríguez were weaker with little evidence connecting the men to the planning and execution of the crime.  

On Thursday, the public will learn how the tribunal weighs this evidence.

The eight accused