Chapter 84: Missing in Mexico-The Disappearance of Juana Ramirez

0:00 Hi guys. I'm Courtney and I'm Lisa, and welcome to the next chapter in the Book of the Dead. Brought to you by Dark Cast Network Indie Podcasts with a Twist. Hi, my name is Malory Jenner Robinson. Join me on A Hateful Homicide. A true crime, an investigative journalism podcast dedicated to telling the stories regarding the murders and hate crimes of our transgender, non binary, intersex and two spirit community members in the United States and abroad. This is a hateful homicide.

0:58 Hi, guys, Welcome to the next bonus chapter. We're actually changing things up and talking about a case with an ending that may surprise you today. So this may be a pleasant surprise. I don't know. You'll have to wait and find out. So this is a case that I actually heard about about a month ago or so, one that I've actually been waiting to talk about because it's like a lot of people aren't talking about this, and this is this is a case that people should be talking about. So this is the disappearance of Wanna Bernald Ramirez. It is actually very recent. The this case's resolution was only announced within the last year. I don't remember hearing about it, but maybe it will jog my memory. So Wana Ramirez was born on June sixteenth, in either nineteen ninety one or nineteen ninety two. I couldn't figure out what year, if I'm gonna be totally honest with you, and she lived in Mexico City, Mexico. Her mother's name was Lorena, although her father does not seem to be named in any English publication, so I'm not sure what his name is.

2:12 At the time of her disappearance, she had two brothers, but Lorena and her husband did have daughters after the fact as well. Now. On October first, nineteen ninety five, Lorena and her husband took their three children to Chipultapeck Park in Mexico City for the day to spend time with some relatives. It was kind of like a family gathering. This park is very expansive. It has a zoo, a big beautiful garden, like it's like half National park, half zoo, half community garden kind of thing. It's a really pretty area. I saw pictures online. It's really really beautiful, but definitely one that you could kind of lose someone in a crowd because it's really big. Yeah, lots of places too, wander off too, exactly so, after spending the day letting the children play, the ramirez Is are packing things up and saying goodbye to their family members at around four thirty in the afternoon. Now at this point, Lorena, who had been watching the children the whole time, is holding on to three year old Jana's hand when she lets go for a split second to hug a relative goodbye.

3:26 In that split second that Lorena let go of her daughter's hand, Wana would disappear without a trace. Children are so fast, they can disappear, as you said it, a split second, in a heartbeat. They and you'd think you know little one's little legs, but they're they're quick as lightning. Well. According to Newsbreak, Lorena realized Wana was gone within moments, and something in her gut told her that Wana hadn't just wandered off. Someone took her. She told The Independent quote, if it was a mother's hunch, but I knew in that moment that my daughter had been taken. For me to Lorena, this wasn't she wandered off somewhere like she is.

4:09 Something inside of her told her, like someone took my baby. That is a parent's worst nightmare. So she ran to a security guard and begged him to close the gate to the park in an effort to prevent whoever had taken Wana from leaving, but he refused. Wana told the Limited Times, quote, the first thing I did was run to the nearest door, the one that led to the Paseo de la Reforma. After the guard refused to shut the gate, she said, quote, we waited until the last person left to see if someone was waiting for us to hand over the girl. But that didn't happen. So the family immediately contacted the Support Center for Missing and Absent Persons to report Wanna missing, but they told her she had to wait seventy two hours to report her missing. Seventy two hours for a missing three year old. That's insane, That is absolutely that's that's like the thing like this wasn't a teenager with a history of breaking curfew, like this was a baby.

5:07 Well, that's what I mean. It's it's insane to say you have to wait seventy two hours for a three year old that's missing. I mean, how many times do you get the alerts on your phone that there's you know, there's an amber alert because a child has gone missing in the United States and you get the ever alert, like within minutes. I mean exactly, And according to Larna, allegedly they were told to wait just in case the abductor tried to return her, which is just such a backwards way of thinking. Again, I'm going this, this is not good.

5:48 A week later, the police would finally launch an investigation into Juanna's disappearance. Wait wait, you said seventy two hours for the police, it's an entire week. Then, what the heck is the seventy two hours? Yoricus is as good as mine. I don't know what the police were doing in that instant, but. They say, wait, seventy two hours, which I think is complete insanity. And now you're telling me. That it's a week later that they launched an investigation. Yeah, who knows what they were doing. But the Ramirez family, with the help of their friends and other family members, had launched their own investigation. They put a missing person's fires and joined an organization for Missing Persons Awareness. But there was very little media coverage about Wanta's disappearance, so no real leads were coming in none, I mean just researching this case. There are so few articles about it.

6:42 And most of them, really all of them are from current times like this year, last year, none from when this actually happened. I also don't understand that, like why wouldn't it be all over the news the. I really don't know. It's I mean, I don't know what the media was like in Mexico in the nineties. But Mexico City is It's a city. It's not a small little town. That's why I'm saying it should have been on the news, on TV, it should have been in the papers, it should have been pretty much plastered on every media source that there could be, radio, TV, newspaper. As I said, it's I don't understand what they were doing. Well.

7:37 The years passed with the Ramirez family waiting and hoping that a miracle would happen and Wana would come back to them. Meanwhile, in Teluca, Mexico, miles away from where Juana had lived with her family, a little girl lived with her parents and three brothers. Her name was Rossio Martinez, and as she grew up, her parents may have clothed her, fed her, and centered school, but they weren't good parents and they didn't treat Rossio very well. Now, as the years went on, Rossio felt very much in her heart that the family she lived with was not her true family, and eventually her neighbors confirmed those thoughts when they told her that her parents were not her real parents.

8:20 How did they know? Well. After getting into an argument with her mother when she was about twelve years old, Rossio confronted her asking for the truth of who she was, and Rossio's mother told her that Rosso was found wandering around Chapultepec Park and they took her in. That sounds a little stretched. Well, according to Rosso's mother, they found her wandering around and they just decided to adopt her, this abandoned little girl. There's some sketchy there. According to the Limited Times, Rossio knew from that moment that something was missing, but she didn't know how to go about finding it. Like whatever this missing part of her was, this missing peace, she didn't know how to find it. Well, she's twelve, yeah, exactly, and her parents, needless to say, not helpful. At seventeen years old, she moved out of her family's house and went to live with her boyfriend, who she would later marry and have two children with. And Rossio's husband would be the one to encourage her to look for her real family and supported her in her search, which I mean, what a great guy.

9:23 Yeah, I was just gonna say he gets the gold star for today for being a good good man. So one day, when her youngest child was still an infant, she came across a missing person's flyer of a little girl named Juana Ramirez. And when she saw the photo, the resemblance of the little girl in the picture was that of her child. Like her infant baby looked so much like this little girl, she said, quote the physical resemblance was so great that I said, I am that person. But there was a problem, she said, quote. When I found that photo, there was no phone number or address where I could go to. And I saw the missing missing person's fire there really was very little information on it, just like very basic stats with Wana's hair and I color, her age, and where she was last seen. That was it.

10:15 Like they didn't even put what she was last wearing, her approximate height or weight, Like there was like no information. So it seems like Rosia let years pass before she found the courage to try and hunt down the family of Wanna Ramirez, but she finally did it, which I mean that makes sense. That's probably very scary. Well, yeah, because you don't know if you are that person or not, even though you know she's sure that she is just for the you know, the it matching her child, you know, well he exactly like her child, But you don't know if this is not the case, you know, are you gonna put that family through more pain and suffering? You know, because you don't know a if they've ever found their child or if they're still searching, And this could be quote unquote a dead end, you know, and you you know, you have all that hope as her parents, and then to find out that this wasn't her.

11:19 Exactly, so it it could be very heartbreaking from on both ends, That's what I mean. Yeah, so I fully understand that. But she finally did it, and on August first, twenty twenty two, she posted a message to her Facebook with a photo of Wana, asking for information about the family, saying that she believed that she really was the missing little girl who had disappeared at this point twenty seven years earlier, and someone saw the message. Now, as the years went by, they were Mara's family, as I said, continued to look for Wana. In twenty twenty, Lorena's husband passed away without ever knowing what happened to his daughter, and in June of twenty twenty two, Lorena actually slipped into a coma from complications from COVID nineteen. Now when she awoke, things were very touch and go, and fearing that she would not survive, she asked her daughter Maria to keep looking for Wana. In July of twenty twenty two, Lorena had a life saving surgery and recovered from COVID nineteen and in August, a month later, Maria saw a post on Facebook about Wana, the post that Rossio had made claiming to be Maria's missing sister. So Maria reached out to Rosso and three days later Maria and her siblings met up with her, and they knew immediately that this was their missing sister because Rossio was the spinning image of Lorena, and I saw pictures of Lorena and Roseo together and they are like carbon copies of each other.

12:51 DNA tests not necessary, but they did have a DNA test performed, and in October of that year it was it was confirmed with a ninety nine point nine to nine percent match that Rossio was really one of Ramires so finally the real story of what happened to her came out. Rossio and she goes by this name still is it's the only one that she's ever known, So I'm just going to continue to refer to her as Rossio since you remember the day she disappeared. She remembered Lorena had let go of her hand, and then the next thing she knew, a strange hand was grabbing her wrist. So in the park that day was a couple name Antonio Martinez and Patricia Velasquez. They were in the park specifically looking for a child to take when they saw Rossio and also saw that her parents were distracted, so they took their opportunity. Now, it's interesting because most people that abduct children without the intent of something disgusting or usually doing it because they want a child of their own.

14:01 I agree with that, But Antonio and Patricia had two children already, so it was kind of weird that they were out looking looking for a child. Is It's very strange now in terms of Rossio won't talk about a lot of what happened, so I don't know the extent of what happened. But after they grabbed her, they drugged her so she wouldn't cry, and put her in a car taking her back to their home in Te Luca, which was fifty miles away, and when Rossio woke up, they told her that they were her new parents and their sons were her new brothers. According to Newsbreak, it seems like the reason they took Rossio was so that they would essentially have a live in slave, Like by this time she was seven, she apparently already knew how to cook and clean, and they would beat her if she didn't do what she was told. She wasn't allowed to leave the house unless it was for school, and Patricia also went on to tell Rosso that her parents were drug addicts and didn't even want her, which wasn't even close to reality. So I don't know if they took her to essentially treat her like a slave or what the reasoning was behind it, because it again, it's just very strange to steal a child when you already have children. As I said, like, if you're not stealing them for trafficking or any trafficking or anything like that, then you're stealing a child because you, like, are so

15:32 desperate to have a child, you've resorted to stealing one kind of thing. So it's it's just very strange. The whole fact that you said her her quote unquote adopted mother was mean to her, Like again, why would you do that? Yeah? Why why are you stealing a child? It's very strange. I don't understand. But when Rosso was final reunited with Lorena, Lorena said it was the happiest moment of her life. She said, quote, I couldn't believe it. When I opened the door, I stopped and she walked in that hug. After twenty seven years, she saw me and said, you are my mother. I replied yes, and you are my daughter. Rossio is now thirty years old, and although she never got to reunite with her father, she remembers him from when she was a little girl and holds onto those memories. Now she is just spending time getting to know her mother and siblings, and her two sons are getting to know their family as well.

16:33 Lorena said, quote, now I feel happy and blessed by God. Lost time with my daughter will never be recovered. But right now you have to live and enjoy the moment. Life is so short that we don't know what will happen tomorrow. We must live happily. Her mom sounds like an amazing woman that she's not angry, or it doesn't seem to be. I'm sure she probably is and rightfully so. They stole her daughter, so all of that time lost, and it's true, all of those memories that could have been now they have a chance to make new memories. But you know, I for her to be not screaming at the top of her lungs and having the people that stole her, you know, put in jail forever well.

17:23 Antonio Martinez and Patricia Blaska's were arrested in March of twenty twenty three and they are currently in custody awaiting trial for aggravated child's abduction. I did not see any sort of updates. It looks like they're still waiting for that trial to begin, but they were arrested pretty much they don't need a trial, just throw them in jail for a I so it was a short one today, but it is a mini episode for a reason, shorter than our usual content. As always, we appreciate you guys, We love you guys. I'm just asking very nicely if you don't mind going on either our website or Apple podcasts and living a store review if you're so inclined, because we got two not so nice reviews and I'm really bummed about it, but whatever, it's fine.

18:12 Well okay, well they didn't. It wasn't about you, It's about me. Yeah, and I'm upset about it. So anyway, just if you don't, if you wouldn't mind leaving a review, I would greatly appreciate it. I would appreciate just a kind review. Yeah, a kind review, if you know, kind review. You don't have to, you don't have to, you know, whatever you feel is fine, but I'm just asking you if you could please be kind. Well I'm assuming since youre are patrons that you like us, so you know, but just you know, that'd be nice. But anyway, she wants a nice review so that she could feel a little better, a little bit better about her mom being on the podcast with her, because I was really thinking about not doing it and so that she wouldn't get those kinds of views because I know it greatly upsets her.

19:11 But then I decided. I will say I did decide that just because somebody is not being nice, that I don't have to respond or I don't have to vow to their wishes. I hope you check out our Halloween series that we did with the podcast on our network. It's called We Get Intentions. It's all weekend long until Halloween, so every day are some different spoopy stories, hauntings, cryptids, true crime, which is it's a little bit of everything for everyone.

19:52 So we will see you guys in the next one and we hope you have a good Halloween. Yes, only treats, no tricks. Maybe nice tricks. I haven't found a nice trick unless it's a magicious trick. Bye, guys, Bye, Thank you so much for listening to this chapter of the Book of the Dead, and don't forget that you can always connect with us on Instagram, you can connect with us on Twitter, and you can absolutely connect with us on Patreon. We also have a merchore as well that we have frequent discount codes coming out for so that you guys can get March hand drawn by myself at a better cost.

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