Original subtitles

(dark atmospheric music)

(woman speaks in foreign language)

(woman speaks in foreign language)

(man speaks in foreign language)

- I think that my father was somebody who was willing

to go an extra mile for anybody who was in need.

I think my father turned impossible situations

into possible situations for many people who came

looking for his aid.

And something like the video for me

is something that would go completely in character with him.

And the fact that he would put his life on the line

for a truth to be known for somebody

that he cared deeply about

is something that I would definitely consider

part of my father's character.

(somber piano music)

I didn't know about the video,

but I did know he was conducting an investigation which at

the end of the day involved certain parts of the government

or people who worked in government.

So that was as far as I knew.

The funeral was horrible.

It was horrible, it was horrible, horrible.

I think it's something that nobody expected

and since nobody expected it,

it made such a profound effect as well.

There was also the murmur and the what had happened

and why was my father killed?

I mean, nobody expected this to happen.

I got up, I spoke, I thank everybody who was there

and helped us and accompanied us in our grieving process.

That's when Luis Mendizabal, a very good friend of my father

he asked me for permission if he could say something.

And he said, "all of us who are here loved Rodrigo very,

"very much, if you wanna know the truth about what happened

"to Rodrigo, then here is his testimony."

The news spread very quickly about it.

Before I knew it, my phone was ringing off the hook.

"Listen, I just saw the video."

And they were just speechless and that was all that they

managed to say is, "I saw the video."

- [Woman] The radio station was playing it already when

I was on my way to the newsroom.

The media was all over.

I mean, everybody was listening to the headphones.

- I won't ever forget the first lines.

I think nobody can forget the first lines of that video.

(Claudia speaks foreign language)

- "If you are watching this video,

"it's because the president killed me."

- The reaction was "what's going on, what happened?"

And I remember someone say it like, "if he is dead,

"I mean, this is the truth."

(moody atmospheric music)

- Then in that video Rodrigo had the video uploaded

immediately and the site crashed.

(protestors chant in foreign language)

- The result of that video, all the demonstrations,

was pretty shocking.

Demonstrations are not as spontaneous anymore.

It's not common to see the youth

involved in claims of justice.

That's another casualty of war.

We lost the value of life.

But that day, even a 15-years-old kid

is talking about justice.

I thought, something is going to happen.

- That video showed my father in one of his best moments.

The ideas that were conveyed in his message

were so powerful.

The way that he was able to transmit that

we are living a hypocritical lie.

We cannot go about saying that everything is okay

when it is not okay.

There is no excuse, there is no justification why

you are to behave in a way that it is not

consistent with your upmost ideals.

And I think it spoke to the very heart

of the person that he was.

As I was clearing up my father's office,

where you would expect to find the most important things,

the most confidential things ever, I found a file

for each of his kids where he had pictures

from when we were young, report cards from his children.

Full of all the things that I think

that he felt most precious.

He actually had love letters from my great-grandfather

to my great-grandmother.

He told me that for him, true love actually did exist,

and that it was part of any person's goal to find it

and to fight for it and to be happy and to be content

when you find love.

My father was a lawyer and I was born in England

where my father was getting his Masters Degree in law

in Cambridge.

Then after that we went to Boston.

And we came back here to Guatemala and that's where

my father lived ever since.

We shared the same office space.

We worked together, we were just nextdoor to each other.

So I had the chance to spend time with him, so much,

probably more than almost anybody else.

He wanted to have a role as a lawyer where as he can...

He was able to make a contribution in something good.

That's why he always stayed away from courts and

political intervention and intervention with government

and dealings with government because it's frequently

very corrupt.

My father prided himself on being a person

who was never corrupt, who was incorruptible.

I think that the fact that him living through the war made

him be very aware about how polarized our society really is.

Because after 36 years of internal conflict,

it's not just the time, it's a complete mindset.

Entire generations were born with a culture of conflict.

I believe that my father did feel the need to

promote a change in that sense.

(suspenseful music)

(protestors sing in foreign language)

- To be honest, I really didn't even know

who Carlos Castresana was.

On Tuesday I just walked into the office and my father's

partner told me, "listen, CICIG wants to talk to you."

- We went over to CICIG headquarters on Tuesday,

and we started saying everything we know about.

"Listen, my father was doing this,

"he was investigating that."

He needed to check my father's files and my father's

personal archives and he said he needed access

to his personal folders and computers.

After a while, Carlos Castresana said,

"You can rest assured that if we need to

"impeach the president, we will impeach him,

"and we will prosecute him if he is indeed responsible for,

"for what has happened."

Immediately after we had this meeting, we went over to my

father's office and we delivered his two personal laptops.

His office computer and his laptop.

CICIG got full access.

(moody piano music)

(gun fires)

- My father was very respected for being a very

impeccable businessman.

And my sister, she dedicated herself to work,

and her daughters and very sociable, you know?

She was like an angel wherever she was.

They left around 15 to one.

I left two minutes later.

Like three blocks from here, I saw my sister car had crashed

in a post, but I thought, it cannot be my sister.

And I parked and I called her.

When the phone rang and rang and nobody answered,

then I knew.

My father was attacked from the right side,

and one of the bullets shot my sister.

They both died immediately.

- At first glance and when it first happened,

nobody really understood what was going on.

And when I heard about the story

and when I read about the story in the paper and you see,

it was something like 15 shots were fired

into Khalil Musa's body.

And she was just, well apparently, collateral damage

to the incident.

- Rodrigo was very shocked with the killings

of my father and my sister.

So the day that my sister was buried,

he called me that afternoon, and he said,

"I need to talk to you," and I went to his apartment.

And he said, "I want you to know that I will be doing

"the investigation."

I was afraid that something would happen to him,

so I said, "please, Rodrigo, just don't go ahead with this

"because we suffered enough,"

but he said, "no, I will go on."

(moody guitar music)

- Ever since Khalil and Marjorie Musa's death,

he started on a path where he was decided

he was not going to simply accept

what we are used to accepting in our society

when something terrible happens.

And he was determined to take this to the last consequences.

- [Eduardo] He went to Luis Mendizabal.

I recall my father speaking of Luis Mendizabal as this

person who had a lot of information about what was going on

in Guatemala, in government.

Somebody my dad trusted implicitly.

(somber acoustic guitar music)

(chatter in foreign language)

- [Eduardo] This used to be my father's apartment.

About a year later after he died, I moved in.

For me the presence of my dad was always the,

the fact that he always came back from work

at lunchtime to have lunch with his family.

When he was a dad is when I feel that he was at his happiest

where he was most fulfilled.

One of the first presents I had from my father was a Walkman

like a really, really small Walkman,

even before I could walk.

(somber piano music)

- I was 10 when my parents got divorced.

We were coming back from this country club and

my father told me, "listen, I have something to tell you."

And he told me, "your mother and I are getting divorced."

That was actually the first time I ever saw my father cry.

I think my father felt that his father's shortcomings were

something that he was never willing to accept in himself.

And he told me that afterwards that he actually never,

never, never even considered the possibility

of him getting a divorce.

He always wanted to be a role model.

Somebody who's always there for his children.

I mean 'cause he had a responsibility to form a family

and a home together and he couldn't do it.

(suspenseful music) (camera clicks)

(camera clicks)

- My father was surrounded by situations in his life where

he found the law to be helpless in his aid.

He lived in a place where you were used to people

disappearing, you were used to people getting killed.

When he was very young, when he was about 18 years old,

or 20 years old, his brother was killed, he was murdered.

- My father had these horrible situations

where he really was helpless to do anything about it.

My uncle as well, he disappeared and then showed up

a couple of days later dead.

His nephews, actually, two of his nephews were killed

in also horrible circumstances, they showed up

a couple of days later and they were never really people

who worked with ties to government or with ties to

political involvement or something of the sort,

it was just violence.

- It was huge news, breaking news.

It was a big success.

You don't get crimes solved like that here.

It was less than four months and you have someone accused

of pulling the trigger.

- [Claudia] We didn't have information

how the investigation was going on.

The newsroom got this anonymous envelope,

with text messages, love text messages, from Rosenberg.

You know, I thought, how marvelous.

But then I begun reading them.

There's a certain point when you realize

that there's a very strong relationship.

We'd never publish a story on them.

(somber orchestral music)

(melancholic piano music)

(gun fires)

(somber piano music)

- I found my father at home crying.

He was obviously going through

one of the worst moments of his life.

When I closed up, I asked him what had happened

and he just said, "they killed her, they killer her."

And I was like, "they killed who?"

And he said, "they killed Marjorie."

It was at that exact moment that I realized

whom my father was having a relationship with,

after so much time, I mean, I had seen the,

obviously the signs and the indications that he was

with somebody and I was aware that he was having

a relationship with somebody, but I really never knew

until that moment in time that the person he had

the relationship with was with Marjorie.

(suspenseful music)

- What CICIG told me is "we traced back this phone number

"and we linked it to the place of purchase,

"and we were able to find some cameras in the store

"where it was purchased and even though the phone was

"paid for in cash, there is clear video depicting

"Luis Lopez as the person who was buying this cellphone."

(phone rings)

I remember that the first thought that went through my mind

was I don't know how or why, but I know that he is not

guilty of being part of a conspiracy against my father.

More than his worker, he was his friend.

My father confided in Luis in some things

that he wouldn't even confide in us.

And I told him, I said, "listen, Luis, I know that my father

"has trusted you with an amazing amount of information,

"and you were a very, very close friend of my father's,

"and I will make sure with every single force that I have

"and anything in my power that you will not

"get in trouble with this.

"But if you ever made any promise to my father,

"that you cannot tell anybody about this,

"you need to tell me about it now,

"and you need to tell CICIG about it."

(moody piano music)

(dark guitar music)

(suspenseful music)

- It wasn't until maybe the day before my father died

that I actually perceived that there was,

my father was in danger and immediate danger.

I got a call from my father very early.

He called me over and he offered me to go to Antigua.

From the moment I told my father I was going with him,

he sort of hesitated in terms of which car we should take,

where we should meet.

We started going out of his house, he was looking over

his shoulder and making sure there was nobody there.

And he said that he just simply felt that

there was something that he had to do because he could not

be at peace simply accepting the fact

that two people he cared about very much were murdered

and nobody was gonna do anything about it.

And he said, "even if that means that

"I'm willing to risk my life to do it."

When I heard that, I obviously was concerned,

and I turned to my father and I said, "listen,

"this is not something that you have to do.

"This is something where you can protect yourself."

He told me he had an offer from a person to leave Guatemala

and go to, I think it was Washington, and to present a claim

before some international court.

He told me, "listen, if something were to eventually happen,

"in terms of what's been going on, you have to understand

"that this is not your fight.

"This is my battle, not yours."

(dark atmospheric music)

(moody piano music)

(moody piano music)

- I was infuriated at first.

I was appalled.

The first thing that went through my mind is, of course,

why not, I mean, that's the easiest way to go.

Because at the same time, there was somebody to blame

but there was nobody to blame.

I told him, "we'll have our own private opinion about it

"from here on in.

"I do wanna ask you one thing," and I asked a favor of him

and I told him, "if tomorrow, in your press conference,

"you feel that my father was an honorable man, then I ask

"you to please say it during your press conference."

- The newsroom...

We all were paying attention to that press conference,

and I remember very well that it was like

shock after shock and the reporters were, (gasps)

(speaks foreign language) and then we all kept quiet

hearing the rest of the story.

(dark atmospheric music)

(upbeat horn music)

- You can never fully accept, or you can never really

comprehend how something so intricate

would have been possible.

You don't come to terms with something as difficult as that.

The sudden death of Marjorie Musa was something

that I think affected him greatly.

The worst part for him in all of this was that

he found himself completely impotent to do something

to make it right.

I think that dismantled him.

(somber piano music)

My father was an amazing person, regardless of the way

that his life came to an end.

The way he lived it was, for us, the most important thing.

(somber guitar music)