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Homicide: New York - Season 3 - Episode 04: Your Eyes Or Your Life
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00:28Transcription by CastingWords
00:36A Wall Street banker who took regular jogs through Central Park lies hospitalized.
00:41Police said she was left for dead.
00:43In April of 89, we had the infamous Central Park jogger case.
00:47It was a huge case because it was Central Park and because of the horrendousness of the crime.
00:53The victim in that crime, Tricia Miley, was sexually assaulted.
00:56She was left for dead.
00:58She was beaten so badly that she ended up in a coma.
01:01It really created this sense of abject horror.
01:04Police believe the gang confronted her here, then dragged her 200 feet into the woods.
01:10What is wrong with people?
01:11Definitely won't jog here at night, ever.
01:14It seemed like the NYPD had lost control.
01:17In 1989, the drugs and the violence was something I hadn't even seen in my career up at that point.
01:24I remember sleeping in this apartment, being so afraid.
01:27I was by myself.
01:28I used to steal a gun under my pillow.
01:31And I've been robbed eight times.
01:32I've been jumped three times.
01:34People wanted some kind of remedy to what seemed like an unsolvable crisis of crime.
01:40And we're just out for blood.
01:42So there was a big push to solve this fast.
01:46Five young males were bored in.
01:49Those boys were arrested and charged with rape.
01:51These boys were known as the Central Park Five.
01:54And the contrast between an affluent young blonde white woman and the young men of color, black
02:01and Latino, who were in the park and immediately blamed for the crime, just pressed a giant nerve
02:06of race and prejudice.
02:10And ultimately, these five men were convicted of sexually assaulting Trisha Miley.
02:16But there were people who had doubts as to whether justice was done.
02:21The physical evidence was non-existent as to any of these boys.
02:24And there may be a rapist out there who has struck or may be ready to strike again.
02:31But the Central Park Jogger case, it didn't begin with Trisha Miley.
02:39There are other victims who never became known at all, whose stories deserve to be told.
02:46Okay, speeding all around.
02:55Our job is to make sure you can go home and sleep at night.
03:00It's so important for a family to know who murdered their relative.
03:05Compassion for the victims, that's the most important thing.
03:09I've always liked the peek behind the curtain.
03:12What really happened.
03:15You want to find out the truth.
03:17That's what detectives do.
03:20Your instinct is to help people.
03:23In New York City, the NYPD.
03:29This is it.
03:47I was seven years old.
03:50Mom ordered Chinese food for us.
03:54We hear a knock on the door.
03:58And I assumed that it was the Chinese food.
04:04We opened the door and there was a guy there.
04:07He was asking for the super and we said the super wasn't there.
04:13Then he let himself in, shoved me to the side, closed the door behind him.
04:18Then he started asking for money and my mom's offered jewelry and money that she had.
04:25And she was holding my favorite sister Amanda at the time.
04:29And he got aggressive and I could tell my moms were scared.
04:34And then we started crying and stuff.
04:37We were confused of what was going on.
04:41He grabbed her and he asked your eyes or your kids.
04:48He made her choose.
04:51She made the decision.
04:53And that was the last time I saw her.
05:04My retired captain, NYPD, did 31 years.
05:09I wanted to go to West Point, but since I got a 40 in high school chemistry,
05:14I ended up being a policeman.
05:17That was my second choice.
05:20Summer of 89, I was the commanding officer of the 5th Detective Division,
05:25Manhattan North.
05:26I was on my way to dinner when I got the call.
05:29My pager dispatch said, Captain, we have a homicide on East 97th Street.
05:35So much for dinner.
05:39I responded to the location.
05:42The victim had been raped and stabbed.
05:45She had been taken to St. Luke's Hospital.
05:48Doctors worked on her, but she was pronounced dead on arrival.
05:52We were able to identify her as Lourdes Gonzalez, mother of three children and 24 years of age.
06:02There was blood on the walls, on the floor, and on the bed in one of the bedrooms.
06:10We looked for any knife with blood on it, and we couldn't find anything.
06:14We searched the apartment, the bedroom, the hallway, the courtyard, with negative results.
06:28When she was attacked, Lourdes was alone in the apartment with two boys and a baby.
06:34Her significant other, who was in super of the building, had gone to the Bronx.
06:40When he returned home, we informed him of what happened.
06:48He was shocked.
06:49You could see he was visibly shaking.
06:52But with multiple stab wounds, it's a crime of passion.
06:56So you would look for the significant other.
06:59Did they have a fight?
07:00Did they have an argument?
07:02The detectives interrogate him.
07:03He determined that he can establish where he was and account for his time.
07:08So it rules him out.
07:12Tony, you told me that she's not coming back.
07:15I didn't understand.
07:18What do you mean she's not coming back?
07:21I remember Carlos crying.
07:24He was just hyperventilating and in pain.
07:28My mom, she was a loving woman.
07:31She was very young when she had me.
07:34She was about 18.
07:36I remember her smile.
07:37I remember her laugh.
07:40And I love being with her.
07:42She brought joy to me.
07:45I felt like she was an angel put in my dad's life at the time to be able to get
07:50us straight and together.
07:53I started living with her when I was six years old.
07:56It was so seamless.
07:59Carlos was my roommate.
08:00That was my brother.
08:02During the times that we lived together, we did everything together.
08:06And she treated Tony like her son.
08:10I remember when she became pregnant with Amanda.
08:14Carlos and I were excited.
08:16We showed her so much love.
08:19She was always by one of our side.
08:22And that was just the dynamic of our family.
08:26And sadly, it was taken away as quickly as it happened.
08:37Detective Irma Rivera is one of my top special victims detectives.
08:43To the children, she signifies her mother, which helps in eliciting information from them.
08:49I got a call in my office to respond to the 23rd precinct because they had two children that they
08:55wanted me to interview.
08:57So I come into the room.
08:58I see the two cute little boys, dark hair, Spanish.
09:02They looked a little bit scared.
09:04When you're about to interview young children who had an experience like this,
09:07my main concern is trying to see how much information I can get from them.
09:11But doing it in a really slow pace, no rush.
09:16So I left the precinct.
09:18I took them to the bodega on 102nd Street off of 3rd Avenue.
09:22Got them some candy and drinks, and I brought them back to the precinct.
09:26And I just hung out with them.
09:28I interviewed them each individually.
09:30In the police station, I reiterated exactly what happened.
09:37He gave her an ultimatum.
09:39He said, um, your eyes are your kids.
09:44Your eyes are your kids is something that I've never heard any other perpetrator say before.
09:51She told him, not my kids.
09:56So my mom told me and Carlos to take Amanda and go to the room.
10:04Amanda was in the closet with a pillow.
10:06And me and Tony were on the ground and looking at the door.
10:13They went into her room and we hear everything.
10:18We were holding each other and we was either waiting for my moms to come get us.
10:25Or we was anticipating him coming in.
10:29I remember the footsteps of him traveling and leaving.
10:37When she yelled our name, I remember opening the door and seeing her in that long corridor of our
10:45apartment in a pool of blood asking us to go get help.
10:50Looking back at it now, she volunteered herself to be sacrificed.
10:58She didn't think twice.
11:05These kids just saw the worst thing that anybody can see.
11:09It shattered their innocence in a second.
11:13The little boys also gave a description to the New York City Police Department sketch artist.
11:19It gives the detectives an idea of what the perpetrator may have looked like.
11:23I remember distinctively his complexion.
11:26He was a darker person and his hair was flat.
11:30They describe a male Hispanic, approximately five foot ten, dark skinned.
11:35He has a blue striped shirt and a flat top here.
11:39What he did to these kids.
11:41I mean the children and your mother.
11:44Horrible.
11:45This guy was a real piece of crap.
11:52Tonight there is outrage over a murder and a manhunt to find a dangerous killer.
11:57She's a beautiful person.
11:58I can't even believe that she died.
12:02The medical examiner's report said that Lourdes Gonzalez had been stabbed nine times,
12:08raped and she was six weeks pregnant.
12:11Hearing that she was pregnant makes me feel even worse knowing that there would have been another child involved.
12:17Mayor Koch is offering a $10,000 reward to try to capture the man who killed a pregnant woman.
12:22This is a pathological killer.
12:24So we're putting every member of the police force out there looking for him as well as this reward.
12:30Yesterday's incident, he asked for the super.
12:33He's attired in a blue and white striped shirt.
12:36What we do at a press conference is to let the public know what he looks like and to be
12:42on your guard.
12:43And secondly, hopefully a witness.
12:45The child overheard a statement to the effect of your eyes or your children.
12:52When I saw the news report about Lourdes and I heard what he said to her and the circumstances
12:59and it sounded so familiar and I heard some version of your eyes or your life.
13:04It just clicked for me. I said, my God, son of a bitch, it's the same guy.
13:10In the sex crimes unit, we found a case on June 11th that had matched the same M.O. as
13:17Lourdes Gonzalez and spoke to the victim.
13:20Suddenly, new policemen came to talk to me and they had me retell the whole story again in excruciating detail.
13:33I was a girl from Brooklyn and I was living in the city and working after college.
13:40It was a beautiful June day and I was happy.
13:43I walked in Central Park.
13:46The attack on the Central Park jogger was something that I saw on the news.
13:50I read about it in the newspaper. It was everywhere. It terrified people.
13:55And the day of, I just remember I was being jumpy and antsy and just trying to be safe.
14:02I didn't know somebody was watching me, followed me home, rang the bell, told me he was the super sun
14:13coming to do the repairs.
14:16I was so naive and I just opened the door.
14:20He came in and he locked the door behind himself and I was like, oh.
14:29I resisted. He punched me in the face and broke my nose and I just completely stopped resisting.
14:40I was being very careful because I could recognize that he was crazy.
14:45I did this separation thing where you rise above your body and you separate and you look down.
14:53At some point after the sexual assault, he says, your eyes are your life.
14:59And I said, well, no, I need my eyes. And he tried to stab me around my face.
15:04Lucky for me, the knife was not very big, so I had some puncture marks on my face that I
15:09needed stitches for.
15:10I think he was just all about the violence. It was fun for him.
15:17I was on the floor of the bathroom, kind of curled up in a fetal position.
15:21And then he took all my money, all my jewelry and closed the door.
15:29And then I just said to myself, right now you feel numb.
15:34This is going to devastate you tomorrow. This is going to destroy you.
15:43And he did.
15:45The manhunt is in full swing. Police say they have a good description of the man believed to be Lord
15:50S. Gonzalez's killer.
15:52They say he could be the same man who stabbed a woman last Sunday in her apartment on East 116th
15:58Street.
15:59She survived.
16:00Among the similarities in the two cases, police say is the suspect's fixation with his victim's eyes.
16:05I knew I had a rapist with the same modus operandi, if you will, same weapon.
16:12He says the same thing.
16:14Prejudice's victim in the same manner.
16:16There were young females in their 20s.
16:19But the second victim had been raped, then killed.
16:27Friends and family of 24-year-old Lourdes Gonzalez gathered to mourn her death today.
16:34I do remember her funeral. I remember most vividly the church being full, full, full people.
16:44I really do not remember talking much to Carlos after that. We were already separated at that point.
16:54I think, you know, the easy fix was for Carlos to go with mom's side of the family, and then
17:01me stay with my dad.
17:04They didn't know who was going to take care of me, and I guess nobody wanted to take responsibility of
17:11taking care of me.
17:12And I felt that.
17:15And jumping from house to house, it was difficult for me.
17:23I didn't really understand the decision of having my sister go to Puerto Rico with my grandma.
17:30I don't think that my dad was in the right state to have me an infant.
17:39Carlos was like my best friend. We did everything together.
17:43Had we been able to communicate and talk, even though we were young, it would have gave us a support
17:51system.
17:53All this stuff that happened, I don't feel protected no more.
17:58The one person I did feel protected was my mom's.
18:09On July 19th, in the afternoon, in the Sex Crime Squad, we received a call from the 19th Precinct that
18:18there had been another rape.
18:20This rape occurred in 95th and Madison, close to Central Park. We responded to the hospital and spoke to the
18:30victim.
18:31She was seriously assaulted. She had cuts on her face, cuts on her legs.
18:39So you don't push.
18:41I went to the Sex Crime Squad because it was one of the few places that you could really make
18:46a difference in somebody's life.
18:48I wanted to be there helping the victims.
18:53I pretty much grew up in New York City and I heard about violence a lot.
18:59It's sort of a regular thing in New York. I mean, when it's not you.
19:05I had just turned 20 and I was taking art classes and I made my way home.
19:18So I took the elevator up and I'm standing in front of the front door to the apartment with a
19:27key in my hand.
19:28And I hear somebody coming with a strange kind of breathing. It was loud and it was rapid.
19:40This person walks past me and goes one flight up and then comes down.
19:47And I said, where are you trying to go? And at that point, he lunges at me with a knife
19:55and says, I just want to talk to you.
20:00And he has this knife to the back of my neck.
20:08So I let him in.
20:12And he says, take your clothes off.
20:16And I felt this reaction in me. I knew I had to
20:22be calm and take a soft approach just to get through.
20:34And when it was over, he ripped the phone out of the socket.
20:42He ties me up. That's when he said your eyes are your life.
20:49And then he went and got a blade thing and started cutting under and above my eyes and
21:05I had hit my limit. And luckily, he stood up and he walked out of the room.
21:16I want to forget that I never fought back.
21:24That natural reaction to have to subdue that was a sacrifice that I never quite repaired that.
21:35It's been an ongoing thing.
21:45You can never be sure it's the same, but the more information that I received from the
21:50complainant, the more I realized that we probably had the pattern. You have the MO,
21:57the same thing over and over. The perpetrator pushed into the apartment, raped, sodomized,
22:03robbed. And he said, your eyes are your life. And he has stayed in the same area.
22:09Criminals find something that works for them. It worked once, it'll work again.
22:15I knew I had a pattern, rapist. I tried not to bring my work home. But there's a serial rapist
22:22out there. You worry about your family, about your children. You're drilling them constantly
22:28to be careful. Your wife, you tell all the time, don't open the door until you know who it is.
22:35It's overabundance of caution. You know? Our biggest worry at the time was this perpetrator
22:43would strike again and we'd have another murder, another rape.
22:47It was put out on the news. Sketches were hung up all over the neighborhood. We knocked on doors and
22:52informed people in buildings what happened to see if anybody witnessed anything, if anybody recognized
22:57a sketch. Police have set up a hotline for any information concerning these cases.
23:01We've established a tips hotline. They're going to make phone calls. There's a guy that lives two
23:06doors down that fits that description. I never trusted him. He's kind of hinky.
23:12Or I saw him with a pocket knife the other day cutting an orange.
23:19You have to track down each one of these leads. Unfortunately, in this case, none of them work out.
23:27I knew, you know, women were raped in New York and all over the country. You know, I knew this
23:31happened.
23:33But I didn't dwell on it. You just try to live carefully. You think it's going to happen at night
23:40or a neighborhood that maybe is not so safe or whatever, but it was just a beautiful afternoon.
23:46You just don't think it will happen then. I came up to New York to go to a small fashion
23:52school.
23:53It was Saturday afternoon and I heard a knock on the door. I opened the door and he put his
24:00hand
24:00on my face like that and I think kind of pushed me back. You could feel the anger. You knew
24:06he was
24:07just a ball of rage. He raped me, I think, twice. And part of the memory is something that sort
24:14of gets
24:15muddled or lost or locked away. He wanted to take my bank card and get money. And then he said,
24:24I don't trust you. I'm going to have to tie you up or kill you. But I said, I'll get
24:28you scarves,
24:29you know. And so I had to walk by the door to go get the scarves. It's a tiny studio
24:34apartment,
24:35but he let me have that much distance, which was rare because he was on me. Something said to me,
24:41get out, get out, get out. You got one chance. Take it. I ran out screaming. He was inches behind
24:49me.
24:50And I ran into the super. I don't know what I said. I was raped. He's right behind me or
24:55something like
24:56that. Super caught him and someone else caught him and then held him for the police.
25:08We had a call that the uniform had a perpetrator under arrest.
25:13He gives his name, Matias Reyes. And without being asked or prompted, he says, I did it.
25:22He was an 18-year-old, quiet, 5'10", dark complexion. Once the detectives were interviewing him,
25:29they kind of realized that this could be the perpetrator from the previous rapes and the
25:34homicide. So we have the DA come down. They're beginning to see that the pattern is coming
25:40together and he may be involved in the homicide. All of them involved young women. All of them involved
25:48either a ruse or a push-in. All of them occurred within a 20-block area. All of them involved
25:55the
25:56use of a knife, robbery and rape.
26:01They wanted me to come down to the station immediately to identify just to take a look at
26:06a lineup. That's all they said. Just one glimpse and I knew who it was. I was shaking with fear.
26:13It was a visceral reaction. There was no doubt that this was the guy. No doubt.
26:21I remember hearing that he was arrested and I had to go meet the detective. Seeing him was shocking.
26:33He was wearing the same shirt that he wore and it was very concrete. Like I knew that was him.
26:43He told detectives that he made love to these girls. He's a sick individual.
26:51He says that he committed multiple rapes, but Reyes denies any involvement with the
26:58Lourdes Gonzalez homicide. And at that point, Reyes is shown a sketch that had been put together from the
27:08children of Lourdes Gonzalez. Mateus looks at it and the detective says,
27:14look familiar? And Mateus says, yes, looks like me. And looked at the detectives and said, I'm fucked.
27:24Mateus Reyes begins to give a confession to the murder of Lourdes Gonzalez.
27:31We get in on video. At times, he would rant and rave, really angry. And at other times,
27:39he was remorseful. Say, mommy, screaming. And she was like, tossing me and screaming.
27:46I mean, he says that Lourdes Gonzalez, she grabbed the knife, but she was shaking. She was scared.
27:53He says that he took the knife off her and that's how he eventually killed her.
27:59When this occurred, I had a nine-year-old and a one-year-old. So I could relate to the
28:06need to
28:07protect your children. You have to feel for her that the idea that someone could be so brutalized,
28:14to be stabbed nine times, it made me sick. Matias Reyes, he's someone who has impulsive rage.
28:22He's a ticking time bomb. He was formally charged with four counts of rape, first degree, sodomy,
28:29burglary and assault with a deadly weapon and one count of homicide. Locally, 18-year-old
28:36Matias Reyes is charged with a series of brutal rapes on Manhattan's east side, one of which ended
28:42in murder. When I saw he murdered Lourdes, that's what hurt the most was that I was alive and she
28:48was not.
28:52I remember receiving the news and feeling a sense of relief.
29:00I remember seeing it in the papers. He got caught when I seen the picture. I remember him.
29:08So I already knew that that was him.
29:15I get a phone call from my sergeant. She says,
29:18Irma, does Matias Reyes ring a bell to you? I go, yeah.
29:24On April 17, 1989, I had his name as a possible suspect on a case that I had involving a
29:31rape that
29:31occurred in Central Park on 106th Street on the east side. My case in Central Park was two days prior
29:38to the
29:38Central Park jockey case. We interviewed the victim and one thing that she noticed was that he had
29:45fresh stitches under his chin. Back then in 1989, a lot of the hospitals used to have a log in
29:52the
29:52emergency room who came in and what they came in for. So what we did was we went to every
29:58hospital,
29:58we checked the log. There was one guy who has fresh stitches on his chin and the name on that
30:04particular entry was Matias Reyes. I did background checks. He had no criminal record at all.
30:12There was no photo on file for him. There was nothing. And then my boss pulls me off the case
30:17and puts me into the child abuse team. I had no choice, so I was kind of a little pissed
30:23off.
30:24So it's like the case just died. It's an unfortunate thing that the leadership
30:30of the Special Victims Unit pulled Irma off this case and put her on another case.
30:35But you have to remember, this is 1989 and we're seeing tremendous big crime waves that are
30:42pushing our resources to the edge. The name Matias, you know, it always stuck in my head.
30:51When Sergeant McLaughlin called me that day and told me that that was the person who killed...
31:01When she told me that it was the person that killed that mother in front of the kids,
31:06it made me feel so horrible. And it made me feel horrible for years and years.
31:11I've always thought about them.
31:18If I had caught him on that case, I know that things would have been completely different.
31:23All these other victims would have not been victimized. Those kids would have lost their
31:27mother. And that's the part that bothered me the most. You know...
31:39Cases were children are involved. It's tough on detectives. Irma, as far as I'm concerned,
31:47one of the best detectives I ever worked with. She really cared about what she was doing.
31:55You are looking at a man police believe is a rapist and a cold-blooded killer, 18-year-old Matias
32:01Reyes.
32:04So I went into work that day. When I got into the office, I was shown a picture of him.
32:08And when I see
32:09his picture, I go, that's Matias Reyes. I know him. I knew him since he was a little boy. Like,
32:13I knew him. He worked around the corner from the 23 precinct.
32:17In this bodega, Reyes served coffee to cops from the nearby precinct.
32:21For me, he's a good guy. One of the best.
32:24I was in the 23 from 1982 to 1987. So I saw him all the time. I never knew what
32:30his name was,
32:31but I just knew of him as the kid that worked in the store. Then I started thinking, wait a
32:35minute.
32:35I definitely brought Carlos and Tony to that store to buy them candy. I know he wasn't there then,
32:42but still, ugh, that bothers me. We did learn from talking to Irma Rivera that they had even
32:52identified a person by the name of Matias Reyes as the possible perpetrator in another case. But,
32:58unfortunately, the victim left the state of New York and any attempt to find the victim was
33:03unsuccessful. 89, it was kind of the frontier for the use of DNA.
33:10We submitted DNA evidence samples from the three rapes and the fourth rape and homicide of Lordez
33:16Gonzalez to the FBI. All of the cases matched the DNA of Matias Reyes. And so, Matias Reyes decided to
33:27plead guilty.
33:30This sentencing hearing doesn't pass without incident. Reyes ends up turning his rage on his defense
33:37lawyer and assault him in open court. Like, who would do that? How could you sabotage yourself in that
33:46way? But he couldn't control his violence. He was sentenced to 33 and a third years. Eventually,
33:54he became eligible for parole. He has the option of coming out. He has the option of coming out. So,
34:01how am I supposed to live a life knowing that he could potentially come out? Why?
34:09At this point, we think this is the end of the criminal reign of Matias Reyes,
34:16but we were to learn later that there were other crimes that he committed that we did not know that
34:23he did.
34:362002, Matias Reyes called the district attorney's office and wanted to speak to someone regarding some
34:42information he wanted to give them. A man has come forward by the name of Matias Reyes. He claims that
34:47he's involved in the 1989 Central Park jogger case. It's not shocking and unusual for somebody to
35:09interject themselves in a media case, whether they're involved or not. The unusual piece of this was
35:15his claim to act alone. By the time Matias Reyes came forward and said that he alone was responsible
35:24for the rape of Trisha Miley, known as the Central Park jogger, five other young men had been convicted
35:31and served long prison sentences for this crime. They always said that they were innocent and always
35:38proclaimed it whenever possible. And in fact, one of them, Corey Wise, actually encountered Reyes in prison
35:46and had some kind of altercation. And that may have contributed to why Reyes came forward.
35:53Eventually, the NYPD decides to form an investigative task force that I led to look into Matias Reyes' role
36:02in the Central Park jogger case. We know that there was John Doe's DNA in that case that was never
36:09identified.
36:10So they've got DNA samples from Matias Reyes and matched them up. Matias Reyes absolutely did rape
36:18the Central Park jogger, Patricia Miley, because it was his DNA that was recovered on the morning she was
36:26brought to the hospital. I wish we had had a DNA data bank back in 89, 90 and 91 because
36:36that would have
36:36allowed us to connect all of these cases. It's not just about convicting defendants, it's also about
36:43exonerating the innocent. So with the new information that Matias Reyes is the unknown DNA
36:51and that he says he acted alone. The five defendants' cases were vacated and rightfully so.
37:02It's a people's victory. I think that's what we have to draw from it.
37:08Unfortunately, this will be a black mark on NYPD's relations with the black community
37:16for years to come. I was happy for the five young men that were falsely accused,
37:23but it really did nothing for me other than like rehash some emotions and feelings and memories.
37:34Did you attack the Central Park jogger? Yes.
37:38It was on 2020 and I'm like, what? You know, like what the fuck?
37:43Having the past resurface is like life telling you, you know what? This is always going to be there.
37:51And there's no such thing as a fresh start. I just got angry all over again.
38:00The injustice that was done to the Central Park Five needed to be undone, but a parallel injustice
38:07happened to all of Matias Reyes' other victims. And so in 2019, I wrote a piece for the cut called
38:15Before and After the Jogger. I ended up speaking not only to Lourdes' children, but I also spoke with
38:23the three women whose sexual assaults Reyes was convicted of. These were the people who were
38:31written out of the story of what we now put under the umbrella of the Central Park Jogger case.
38:38She deserved her story to be told and what better way to tell it than with her kids. I just,
38:47I thank her for everything she did for me.
38:51I always feel bad that she never got to meet what an amazing woman her mom was.
38:59Just the stories that I get from my brothers, she was an amazing person. Regardless of whether
39:07she's here physically, I feel like she's guided me.
39:12This happened in 1989. So any sports I played, that was my jersey number. Just paying homage to my mom.
39:22I feel like she was just somebody put in my path to lead me to something bigger.
39:32She told me to value education and make sure that I set a good example. And I did.
39:38And I kind of help instill those things in my own kids now.
39:46I felt guilty. I went to those stages of just being angry and blaming myself and blaming others.
39:58It's done a lot of damage to me because it was just destroying me mentally.
40:06Anybody talks about the case that haunts you. The case of Lourdes Gonzalez haunted me
40:12for years and years and years.
40:16Hi, Carlos.
40:19So nice to see you.
40:23I'm sorry.
40:26So it was important for me to meet Carlos.
40:29This case bothered me so much. I had his name on another case. I want to apologize to you because
40:36I feel like if I had gotten him, this wouldn't have happened.
40:40I was never mad at her. I would never want her to live life like that.
40:46The only person I'm angry at is Rez. Rez deserves misery.
40:53Don't give your power away to him at all.
40:56My life has been a mess. I've been incarcerated in and out.
41:01How many felonies do you have?
41:03I got three gun possessions.
41:07Okay.
41:08A homicide. I became a product of the streets. And there's always a beef. And there's always
41:15retribution. And I grew up wanting to destroy anything that destroys me or my family.
41:22And that's a never-ending cycle.
41:24Your life is not over. You can still do a lot with yourself. You know that?
41:28Your mother wanted to give you such a good childhood.
41:31Now is your time to honor your mother and have a good manhood.
41:36Yeah.
41:38I'm still striving for better. I'm still a work in progress.
41:43I'm on the path of doing better. And my mom deserves it.
41:54I was aware that there were two other women victims, survivors.
42:00But we didn't get to meet. We didn't get to talk.
42:04So I wrote a letter. And I said, we all went through the same thing. And it's absolutely horrible.
42:10But it would be nice if we could be there for each other.
42:13Because only we know and understand what each of us has been through.
42:24And we all decided to meet and get together multiple times over the years.
42:29Every year, the date would come. And I'd say, forget what the date is. Forget what happened. Just go
42:34about your life. Forget, forget, forget. And last year, I thought, why? So I invited my friends for
42:39dinner and I had a, fuck you, I'm still here party. I did. Melissa, Meg, and I have this friendship.
42:47We all are connected by this horrific story. But we're also connected by love.
42:55I thought to myself, my God, these other girls, they went through the same thing I did.
43:00Yeah. We have to become friends.
43:02It was like revolutionary to meet you. Yeah.
43:07Having them, I feel very lucky. I don't know what I would have done without them.
43:16Lourdes is one of us. She is a fighter. I've thought about her a lot. I really felt for her,
43:24and I really felt for her family. Lourdes isn't here to speak. So we wanted to kind of honor her
43:33and her family and to say that we never forgot Lourdes. I want people to know her and be like,
43:40she was more than just this little footnote. Lourdes was important.
44:30I don't think the NYPD or the city of New York ever saw this coming.
44:42My aunt Joanne, she worked in the North Tower. I'm like,
44:45how the fuck am I getting up there to get her out of there?
44:5078th floor of a building that's on fire, and I don't know how to get out of here.
44:58A lieutenant says, fucking run.
45:03I see a bunch of EMS. He was like, we're going to go back into the building. There's people in
45:07there
45:08that need to be removed. So I was like, okay, I'm not going to have a fireman embarrass me,
45:12so I'm going to stay. One thing about 9-11, it helped me get used to the smell of death.
45:18You find out what you're really made of. You find out what it is to be a team player.
45:23You're not dead. Get to work.
45:27.
45:27.
45:28.
45:28.
45:28.
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