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Wednesday, November 16, 2011

Starr County says whaaat?

You know, life out here in the country is pretty much droll.

Normally, we have nothing else to do other than wait for something interesting to happen, and when it does, we start swarming around like hungry bees.

I mean, it's pretty often that I am sitting at home, minding my own business, when all of a sudden, here comes a relative, friend, or neighbor to ask me if I have heard about what is going on, and my answer is usually, "No I haven't".

Following course, they usually proceed in telling me what just happened, and it never fails that the next person who comes along to tell me the recent exciting events that has the whole town buzzing with excitement, it never fails that they add more to the story than there is to it.

It is why my mom and I usually laugh when we jokingly share news.

"Hey mom!  Did you know there was a car accident down the road?"

"No mija!  Quando paso?"

"It must have been recent because the cops were just arriving.  You should have seen it!  There were 20 police cars, 15 ambulances and they had to bring in 5 helicopters!"

In reality, it normally is just some guy getting pulled over, and because the news is not exciting enough, we make it so.

Now, I admit, I rarely go out and I rarely watch TV, and as a result I often question if the stance that I have taken to protect the border from being demonized is an ignorant one.

I see my reality of life on the border, and pretty much assume that everyone around me lives pretty much the same life style.

I go town.  It's peaceful.  I come back.  It's peaceful.  What a peaceful day!

On the other hand, I wonder if I did myself a great disservice of subscribing to my local news sources.

It pretty much seems that there is something going on every day, and it just reminds me of what my best friend once told me.

She said, "Don't watch the news unless you want to get depressed."

Of course, she was referring to children being murdered or being abused by their parents.  Apparently, there's a story about that every day, and it saddens her that someone would want to hurt their children in such manner.

However, we don't live in fear that our next door neighbor might murder their child, so why do we live in fear that the border is anything like they make it sound on the news?

As an example, the other day I received a call from my husband who asked me to check out the news because apparently he heard that the cartel had crossed to this side and that a war had broke out between them and the local police.

"It's so bad that the local police has requested back up from other cities because they don't have the power to control them.  This has all gone to shit!" he said.

Now, I've always said that the day our borders actually turn into a war zone, I would tell you.

I'm not going to say that it won't suck having to admit that my home has turned into a disaster area, so when my husband told me this, my heart sank.

How could I face my blog and tell them that it has finally begun and that I can no longer defend the border from being maligned?

After such an event, there can be no denying that the borders are dangerous, so to me, it was as if my career had ended.

I checked the local news stations and nothing was on, so I went online to check my news sources on facebook and sure enough, the rumors had started.

"...there is a shooting with the cartel.  There is a bp dead!"

"15 individuals have crossed to this side!"

"I heard that 18 armed men crossed the river near Garceno..."

In the end, the reality turned out to be that there was no border patrol agent dead and it was never confirmed how many individuals really crossed, although one news source stated about 10-15 suspects.

And the shoot out?

There was no shoot out here unless the border patrol are covering up something.

The reason I say that is because the shoot out actually happened IN Mexico, which is why the suspects had to swim the river to get to safety on THIS side.

Where it gets fishy is the part where one of the suspects, who was supposedly shot, is taken to the hospital in Rio Grande City in critical condition.

It's fishy because it begs the question:  How can a critically injured man swim a river in his condition?

Could the border patrol have shot him and disguised it as a consequence of a battle gone wrong in Mexico?

But that's neither here nor there.

The moral of the story is that sometimes things are taken out of context and made to sound more extreme than they really are.

Having said that, I breathe a sigh of relief knowing that no war has broken out on our peaceful borders.

Then the next day, as I'm getting ready to go run an errand, my neighbor runs to me in a panic.

"Did you hear about the men that crossed the river yesterday?!!!  The ones that got away are holding the kids at the middle school hostage.  They've thrown road spikes to thwart the police and they are threatening to start shooting the students if the police don't let the other suspects go!  The school has gone into lock down!"

**SIGH**

Will it ever end?

So here I go to check out my sources, and guess what, it was all a lie.

No, my neighbor wasn't being intentionally mean.

That's just the way rumors get started and it makes for a great story to us socially deprived border folk.

Unfortunately, it hurts us just the same, and thus, my job gets harder to do, as I don't only have to tackle the exaggerated stories about our borders that are being created by those who don't live here, but I also have to wrestle with the locals who delight on such rumors.

For now, rest assured that our borders are just as safe as they have ever been, and the reality is, the news and rumor is making people panic, including myself I must admit.

Before I end, I want to share a video with you from our local news station that captures the kind of drama that exists here.



The reason I am sharing it is because I live around the area where these residents live and I know for a fact that the situation is not as extreme as they make it sound, but stories like theirs are convincing to others, who tell others, who tell others, until the rumor grows.

One of the posters on the facebook wall for this newstation questioned why the station was only reporting about the negative stories in Starr County, but when something positive happens, they are never there to report it.

I could not agree more with the person who posted that question, and thus, I will do my best to share the positive while I battle the negative.

As a final note, we would like to remind you that we have not given up on the Tiffany Hartley story.  We are still working to resolve some issues and we have not received any new information that we would like to share other than we are still in the process of taking the Sheriff to court for disregarding the attorney general's decision.

Also, we sent out some more complaint letters to the attorney general, which they have already responded to having received.

We also had sent an amended FOIA to customs and border protections, to which they have not responded and are already way past their deadline to respond, so we must now figure out to whom we should address our complaint to.


Until then, rest assured that I am still here and counting on you to stay tuned...

Thursday, October 13, 2011

Falcon Lake Murder: The OAG decides

Well, we have finally received the decision from the Attorney General as to whether the Sheriff is allowed to except information, and they've ruled against him because he took too long to respond.

However, because he was able to provide compelling reason to withhold certain information under the guise that the witnesses lives "were in danger" because he had "sources" telling him that the cartel were seeking to "eliminate" all the witnesses, the OAG allowed him to withhold identifying information, or so that's what I understand from their letter.  Here is what they sent us:

It's a little confusing because they are addressing Sigi, not us, but mainly what they are telling Sigi is that the only information he can withhold is identifying information, which is what should be done anyways.

On the other hand, I'm not completely positive on this.

The OAG keeps referencing items that they've highlighted, but until we get this information from Sigi, we won't know for certain what he was allowed to withhold.

According to the OAG, Sigi has 10 days from the receipt of their letter to provide the information to us.  We received this letter on September 20, 2011.

Holy crap!

Sigi is late again with providing this information to us!

More signs that something is up with this Falcon Lake murder story.

So what's our next step?

I believe our next step is to write a Writ of Mandamus.  This is sort of like Tiffany Hartley and Judicial Watch's lawsuits against the FBI, the DOJ, and the DOS.

In short, Sigi is being ordered to give us the information we are requesting.

According to the Texas Government Code § 552.353:

(e)  An offense under this section is a misdemeanor 
     punishable by:           
    (1)  a fine of not more than $1,000;                                          
    (2)  confinement in the county jail for not more 
         than six months;  or       
    (3)  both the fine and confinement.                                           
(f)  A violation under this section 
   constitutes official misconduct.         
We'll let you know how that works out.

In the meantime, we're working up another FOIA similar to the one that Tiffany Hartley sent the FBI, DOJ, and DOS.

I'm hoping the one we send them will make them interested in investigating Tiffany deeper, but my partners in this case believe that we'll get about as much from them as Tiffany has, meaning we are expecting to get nothing from them.

Personally, I think it's still worth a try.  I'm really interested in knowing if the FBI was involved in this case or not.

It may be the reason why the FBI was unable to provide Judicial Watch any information.  They may have never been involved.

Not that that leaves them off the hook, but if that's true, then why has Tiffany been deceiving us on that?

I've tried looking for articles that mention the FBI involvement in the case, but the only one I found was one claiming that they weren't involved.

ValleyCentral reports:
"Even though Hartley's interview was inside the FBI building, no FBI or American authorities were present during the questioning, something Hartley was okay with."
Of course she was okay with it.


Lord forbid the FBI might actually want to investigate her, right?


Which is why I suspect that these lawsuits she just tossed into the ring have her looking nervous.


One bad step, and the FBI might decide to do what they should have done a long time ago to her.


But I also suspect that she didn't squeal too much about NOT submitting a FOIA because
a.) she didn't know a FOIA could lead to a lawsuit, and;
b.) she knew they were not going to have any information on the case because they were never involved.
I also suspect that Judicial Watch was aware of b, but it was in their best interest to have them NOT provide any information so they could go forth and sue.

From what I have read, but don't take my word for it, it seems that these lawsuits really mean nothing.  If they don't want to provide this information, they don't have to, but they have to pay for the attorney fees, which might explain why Judicial Watch was all too ready to accept the case.

Like I said, don't take my word for it, and I will investigate that to see if I hit the nail on the head or not.

In any event, in the end, I'm really interested in seeing how this lawsuit is going to play out.

My bet is that it was all a publicity stunt to help boost Judicial Watch and, garner some support to scare whomever into giving Tiffany a death certificate for David, even though we don't really know if he's dead or not.


Well, that's all for now.

I will keep you informed soon as to what has been going on in this case as soon as we get more information from the PIA's and FOIA's (or complaints for such) that we sent out.

Until next time, please stay tuned for more....

Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Falcon Lake Murder: Update

I just want to let everyone know (because a lot of people have been asking) that there will be some updates pretty soon.

I understand that many of you are getting anxious to hear what is going on in the background, but rest assured that the delays on this case are only because information is being withheld from us and the appeal process is a pretty long one.

We found that out the hard way.

A complaint that many people have been giving me a lot of is that I am taking too long to post and that my posts are too long to follow.

A good blogger needs to do things the opposite, blog more and say less, lol.

I appreciate constructive criticism, thus, I will work on posting more often and making them shorter and easier to follow.

I just find it hard to make a long story short without excluding important details, and this story seems to be full of important details if you ask me.

Anyways, I decided I will also start working on other stories/cases during periods where we are awaiting information.

Now, this does not mean I have given up on this case.


All it means is that if I want to keep people interested, I need to blog more, and I'm not doing that during times when responses are taking too long to be received and thus there is no news to share in this case.
When I started this blog, I didn't do it with the intention of working solely on the Tiffany Hartley case.

My problem is that I cannot multitask, but I'm sure that if I try, I can work on another case or two that is related to the demonizing of our safe American borders.

In the meantime, back to the Tiffany Hartley case, let me tell you what has been going on so far:

Currently, we are reviewing the decision of the Attorney Generals office in regards to the 911 PIA complaint we sent out.

I will comment further sometime in the next few days as to what their decision was.

I'm not sure what exactly I have stated in the past, but one thing is for sure, we didn't have our stuff organized.

Now that we do, we realize that many of our complaints to the Attorney General were never sent out.

Here is a list of the complaints that we sent out this week to the OAG:
We did not submit a FOIA complaint for the CBP request for in information for several reason.


One, we cannot prove they have that photo in existence.


Two, the photo might be in existence, but after the Sheriff's reply stating that he received the CBP photo at his office "around noon", well, noon to me can be anywhere from 12 noon to 2pm.  Our request only covered from 2pm to 6pm, thus, we re-did the FOIA, amended the time to 9am to 6pm to cover every possiblity, and we included a picture this time so they know what picture we are talking about.  We also included references so they know we're not making this up.

And, three, we only had 60 days to appeal, and those 60 days are up.

We found out a little too late, so instead, what we are going to do is re-send them the amended FOIA, and if they insist they don't have it in their possession this time, then we'll take it a step further.

This is the new amended FOIA we sent them:
Now, this times, if they insist the photo is not in existence, we will make sure not to miss the 60 days deadline, and we will seek further action in order to verify that this photo does not exist.

In the meantime, I have been watching all the Tiffany Hartley updates on the news lately, and I have a couple of choice words I'd like to share, but, I'll leave that for my next blog because I want to accompany it with a video or something and right now all my trial software has expired, so...

Until next time, please don't forget to stay tuned for more...


















Tuesday, August 23, 2011

Falcon Lake Murder: Falcon Lake Phishing?

Ha! Ha! Ha!

Ok, so I thought that was a catching title, but I also thought it was appropriate as well.

Maybe I'm the only one that finds humor in that?

Whatever the case, I believe that we have all heard of people "phishing" for information on the internet.  Usually phishing is associated with some form of scam in which a person tries to obtain personal information from another by making them believe they are a legitimate website or a legitimate company.

In this case, I believe phishing is the appropriate term to use when referring to what the Sheriff of Zapata County is trying to do.

While he may not be trying to scam people to obtain their personal information, he is trying to scam them into believing something untrue, and very likely trying to scam legislators into giving him more "border security" monies.

Why do I say this?

It all goes back to our public information requests.

Here is what has been going on:

Back on May 13, 2011, we sent the Zapata County Sheriff a Public Information request for more information in regards to all the pirate related attacks he claims have occurred on Falcon Lake.

Personally, I have never bought into the claim that so many incidents have occurred.  While I believe but one of the incidents, there are some that I just don't buy.  I talked about this in my blog back in March.

But it is pretty hard to let go of the fact that it might be possible that these claims aren't coming from Sigi alone.  After all, the reports claim to come from the people who have been attacked, but I do believe in conspiracies, and so I sought out to find out more about these stories and try to see if there is more to it, if they actually happened, or if it might be possible these are just part of a bigger plan.

Yes, I am talking about a conspiracy!

I very much have every reason to believe that a conspiracy is at play.

I have lived on the border long enough to know fact from fiction, and obviously, or I wouldn't be writing about it, the stories coming out of Zapata County are not ringing like facts to me.

And like I said before, this wouldn't be the first time someone tries to make up a story for political reasons.

But the reason these stories work is because most people don't have the experience of living on the border like others.  They rely on the news to tell them how things are going here, and frankly, I've noticed, the news really likes to make things interesting, and the only way to make things interesting is to fabricate a little and make things sound outrageous.

In short, it is a publicity stunt.

They want to keep their viewers entertained, and they are not going to be actively watching the news if there is nothing on there to report about, or at least nothing interesting to report about.

So people fall for it, mainly because they don't have the time or the education to actively seek out information to get down to the facts.

And frankly, I think that is what the Sheriff of Zapata County wasn't expecting, that someone who has the time and the education to seek out information would do so.

He probably thought he'd wave his badge around and people would buy his bull shit.

Sadly for him, that is not the case and I strongly believe that that is why now he is cowering and trying to hide in the shadows and trying to wiggle around the hard questions we are asking him that the media should have been asking of him and Tiffany from day one.

So back to the nitty gritty of our May 13th PIA request.  Our May 13th PIA request was this:

However, we never got a response back from Sigi, even after the 10 days required for him to respond, so we called his office and tried to get information, but he was never there.

So we emailed him instead.  Here is our complete conversation via email:
First request:

Sigi's response:

Notice, here is where my phishing comment comes into play.  The Sheriff is basically using the, "I heard it from a friend of a friend of a friend" excuse.  He is trying to be sly and wiggle through undetected, and I admit, I almost fell for it if my coworkers on this case hadn't pointed out to me the obvious...

"How does he verify any of his claims?"

It took me a while to get what they meant, but finally, I got it.

So we wrote him back with the tough questions that he has never been asked before, and as expected, he never responded back.  Here was one of the last emails we sent him that he never responded to:


To date we have not heard a response from Sigi, but it's not like he's been busy.  He's obviously had time to respond to criticism of his claims on the Zapata Times.  In response to this interview, Renato Ramirez from Zapata Texas (President of IBC Bank) fires a fiery criticism of Sheriff Sigi.  Here is what he has to say:
Renato Ramirez's fiery response to Sheriff Sigi
http://issuu.com/lmtonline/docs/thezapatatimes070211


Miffed, the Sheriff responds back in a childish way.  Here is what he has to say back:


What ensues, is a battle of wits as Renato responds to his letter the following week:
Not wanting to stay behind, Sigi offers one final reply:

Renato never replies back, and I don't blame him.  Sigi never answered his questions about what has Sigi done for Zapata County.  The most Sigi does is take credit for our safe communities making it sound like he's the reason they are safe, but never admitting that they have always been safe, with or without him.

I decided to contact Renato Ramirez and was glad when he responded back.

What he had to say about Sigi's final response was appropriate and just what I was thinking.

This is the most important part, in my opinion, of what Mr. Ramirez had to say:

"Sigi claims he made Zapata safe--the reality is that the law enforcement officers in the Zapata County Sheriff's department amount to 10% of all law enforcement in Zapata County. FBI, CBP, ICE, DEA task force, TPW agents, TABC, ATF, etc.--more than twelve state and federal agencies are protecting Zapata. He stated in the Presencia News that these agents cover up crime. He is really not thinking very logically."
No, he is not.

Sigi refers to the 700 comments in this article instead.

I think Sigi didn't sort out the comments from newest to oldest, because for the first couple of pages, it is border residents speaking up and thanking USA Today for finally telling the truth about the borders, and not all that media hype.

But, our request for information for the CBP photo wasn't the last request we sent.  There was one more important request we made to which he has not responded to either.

That request was in regards to the blood stain evidence on Tiffany Hartley's life jacket.

This was the request:

We have not heard from Sheriff Sigi since he received this letter, and it was sent to him via email, pasted and as an attachment to ensure that he received it.

We are currently working on another complaint to send to the Attorney General.

In the mean time, we have already spoken with the person in charge of our case at the Attorney General's office, Mr. Sterner.

Mr. Sterner says that Sigi did file a request for ruling on July 6th, something that we never got.

However, he stated that the July 6 letter was Sigi complaining that the Pirate PIA had already been requested when we sent out the first PIA related to Tiffany Hartley. 

Remember in that PIA we requested all information related to the Tiffany Hartley case? 

Well, the Pirate PIA would have included the Tiffany Hartley case, so in short, we requested the same information twice, or so that's what Sigi was trying to tell the AOG, to which I explained to them that it was not the same thing, although we did admit that we did not know how to phrase it to where they could exclude the Tiffany Hartley case because we had already requested for that. 

But then, he (Sigi) tried using that as an excuse to not release information on our first PIA, which Sterner clearly said he did not see that happening unless he could provide a better reason. 

So, basically, what happened is that Sigi started off complaining about the Pirate PIA and tried using that as an excuse to not release the Full 911 call and the rest of the information related to the Hartley case. 

Isn't that something?

Mr. Sterner then said that they (OAG) have 45 business days from the day they request a ruling to issue a ruling so in this case the 45 business dead line is September 14th, so they will issue a formal attorney generals opinion on whether they have to release this information to us then. 

Then he asks me if I got a copy of a July 6th letter from Sigi's office, and I said no. 

So he noted it on the file that we didn't receive it. 

He also said that what happens when they missed their dead line (which Sigi was way past the 10 days to respond) is that they wave all discretionary exceptions so the only information that can be withheld from them is confidential. 

They can't claim litigary exception or anything like that, which is a good thing I believe.

I still need to call Mr. Sterner back and ask him a few more questions, like does the 45 business days deadline also include our May 13th request for information, or the 911 call PIA which had been our first complaint letter we sent, because in my opinion, those are long over due, and the 45 business days should only include the requests for information that were sent out in June.

I will keep you posted as to what is going on as soon as we receive more information.

Take care, and until next time....



Friday, July 1, 2011

Falcon Lake Murder: "If you ever touch me again, I will kill you!"

I have no idea how to start this blog off.
 
I mean, it's not that I don't have anything to say, but I just don't know how to go about saying it.

In the past few weeks we have received various information that seems to amount to nothing and everything at the same time.


Quite frankly, I'm very frustrated.


Frustrated because even though we have received some information, there is more still missing, but as usual, the Sheriff of Zapata County is stalling once again.

This time, he hasn't even responded to our PIA request and we are fixing to, once again, file a complaint with the Attorney General.

In my opinion, the only people who stall this information that should be readily available to the public are those who have something to hide, so...what are you hiding Sheriff Sigi?

Let me begin by letting you know what we have asked for so far.

We wrote the Texas Department of Public Safety to request the full video of David Hartley being stopped in Rio Grande City with a time stamp on it, all the stops made that day, the name of the officers involved in the stop, and other information.

While they told us they would be taking a while with the police stop video, they did submit to us some information that seemed to only confuse the matter more.

One paper had all of the stops made that day by the officers, but it did not include the stop of David Michael Hartley.  Here is that document:

Notice that the stop of David Michael Hartley is missing on this report, but now we have an explanation as to why there were three officers present for one stop:  One was in training.

Later we received more information.  This time, the stopping of David Hartley is shown, but there seems to be some inconsistencies with the report.

The report is several pages long, but here are the parts of the report that are of interest:
I was going to detail the call log for a better understanding of what it tells is going on, but I found it too tedious.

For one, it is evident that there is information redacted, naturally, as PIA allows for them to withhold information such as drivers license numbers and such.

Lastly, without those numbers, there is no telling exactly what vehicle it is they are checking, but it is obvious they are checking at one point a Colorado drivers license and a Mexican drivers license at the time when David Hartley was stopped.

The coordinates for the stop also coordinate with where David Hartley was last stopped in Rio Grande City, Texas.

Having said that, the information does not coordinate with what we see and hear in the video on YouTube.

Mind you, we are still waiting, past the required time allotted for a PIA request, for the full video of the stopping of David Michael Hartley.

Therefore, we cannot comment further with confidence that the information they have given us is contrary to what we see and hear on the YouTube video of the DPS stop.

What I can say, however, is that it is very odd that the Hartley's is the only stop made that day in which they had to communicate through a DEL (Direct Exchange Line or private line).

Also of interest is the fact that when we called to find out why the Hartley's were not listed in the first report, they claim it is because that report only includes those stops that resulted in a ticket, but the second report clearly shows that the stops that they DID list on the first report, from what I could tell, some of them did NOT result in a ticket.  I do not see what the significance in that could be other than it is very odd.

However, that information is secondary.

Our main point, even though we had other points to check, was that we just wanted to verify for ourselves that the Hartley's were stopped that day and at that time.

That point is confirmed with those reports.

On the other hand, there was also one more bit of information that DPS sent us, and that is an audio that they titled "Multiple recordings.wav", a name that was misleading as there was only one recording in that file that lasted a total of 52 seconds.  The audio is just the recording of the officer calling in to check Tiffany Hartley's jet ski, and that in itself, is odd.

Why only one jet ski?  Why only Tiffany's jet ski?  Why not David's jet ski as well?

Here is the audio recording they sent us, and I'd like to thank a friend who is working with me on this for making this audio into a small clip:


How do I know it's Tiffany's jet ski?

Well, with the help of my wonderful friends who are helping me with this case we were able to verify that the jet ski in which Tiffany came back in is hers.

Here is what we did:  We compared pictures and with a little back ground checking online, we were able to obtain information about the jet skis.  

Well, I shouldn't include myself in that "we" since my friends did the hard digging.  I just compared these pictures:

From the inquiry results on the jet skis, we were able to note that the Jet ski with the TX Number 3671AX has a serial number of ZZN48962E404, which is what the officer is running in the audio clip in the above video (in police talk that's : Zero Zero Nora 4 8 9 6 2 Edward 4 0 4).

In the YouTube video provided online, it is the only jet ski they run also, hence, it seems, they only run Tiffany Hartley's jet ski.



I will let this information simmer for a while as we await more information that has been requested.

We have also received a response from Customs and Border Protection in which, it seems, they are claiming that they do not have any records in regards to the following photograph:

Their response was odd as well because we were fixing to call them to find out what was taking them so long to respond when we received two letters from them on the same day.

One letter saying that they needed more time because they were contacting their field offices to gather the information we requested.  Here is the letter:

The very next letter stating they could not find anything that we requested.  Here is that letter:

Normally, you get one letter stating they need time to find the information, and then a few weeks later the other letter claiming they found nothing, but both on the same day?

It's almost like they didn't even look, if you ask me.

With that said, it begs the question: Who is lying?

I mean, if it's Sheriff Sigi, then why has CBP not stepped in to say that the Sheriff is lying?

Then again, the Sheriff has lied on other occasions and no one has stepped in to call him out on his lies.

What am I talking about?

Here's a read so that you may understand: http://www.senate.state.tx.us/75r/senate/commit/c640/wtpdf/1108-SigifredoGonzalez-1.pdf

On page 10, Sigi claims the following:
A single mother living in Starr County, Texas, has to hide under her bed, along with her young daughters, every time she hears gunshots in Mexico. Bullets from gun battles in Mexico have struck her home. Figure 7 below shows the bullet indentations to her home.
He follows it up with this picture:



And then pictures of the bullet indentations on the walls.

Being from Starr County myself, I found this story odd.

For one, there are few places in Starr County where this could be possible because the houses are just a block away or less from the border.  One of those places is Rio Grande City, which would be kind of ridiculous considering that most of the battles in Camargo, Mexico (Rio Grande City's Mexican border neighbor) take place in the city or away from it.  The city of Camargo is about 5 miles away from the houses on this side, so unless a bullet can travel 5 miles, wavering around trees and brush, then it is possible.  It would also be possible if they have a battle right by the river, an incident that is very rare except to U.S. law enforcement.

About a year or so ago there was one incident on the international bridge in Rio Grande City where residents on this side could hear a gun battle that took place ON THE MEXICAN side, but no buildings on this side were struck, and it was the last known event in Rio Grande City where one could actually say we heard the gunshots.  This was back when the drug wars were barely starting and things started to get serious in Mexico.  I was the one that called the news station to report on the incident, and it is not the first time that the news has misquoted what I said.  People were not rushing back into the store to "seek shelter from the gunfire".  It was the workers who work in the back of the H-E-B building and they rushed inside because the sounds of the gunfire could be heard and they had no idea where it was coming from until someone came in to tell them the gunshots were being fired at the customs facility in Mexico.  The customs facility in Camargo is about 3 blocks away from H-E-B, so the shots sounded very close.

The reason I called the news station was because this was around the time people were starting to panic, and I admit that with all the rumors going on, I started to panic as well.  When I heard the gunshots, someone who had just come back from where the incident took place came in claiming the Mexican cartel were shooting at OUR customs facility and that they were trying to gain access into the US because they were chasing another cartel.  While I defend the border from malicious rumors, I also love our border patrol and law enforcement officers and won't stand for any of them getting attacked by drug cartels, so I wanted the news to investigate and find out what happened.  Instead, they just reported on the news with the usual exaggeration.

Anyways, for the most part, the houses on this side are protected by miles of fields and/or woods on either side of the border.

Another place where this might be possible is Roma, Texas, but they'd have to either be shooting at buildings intentionally or they'd have to be lousy shooters, as Roma, Texas is at a much higher elevation than it's Mexican neighbor city, Miguel Aleman, Mexico.  To see what I mean, check out my diary entry titled "Violence on the Border?" and watch the video towards the end of the entry so you can see the difference in elevation between the two border cities.

Another place where this might be possible is Fronton, Texas, but also, highly unlikely because of the farm fields that separate the two neighboring border cities.

I set out to look for this house anyways.

I drove up and down the border covering miles and miles, through vacant and populated places, for almost two weeks, and all to no avail.

I became frustrated because I had covered almost every inch of the border where this could be possible, not only traveling the areas by car, but also looking for this house via google map through street view from home.

In the end, I decided to dig deeper.

I called the Starr County Sheriff's department and spoke to Chief Pena and asked him if he knew of any such incident in which a house was struck by stray bullets from Mexico in Starr County.

Immediately one could tell that he was not aware of any such incident occurring, and after our brief interview, he down right plainly stated that to his knowledge, no such incident ever occurred, but I should call the Roma Police Department and see if they knew anything about this incident.  He did state that every once in a while they get called out to Fronton, Texas to check up on calls where a citizen is worried because they can hear gunshots in Mexico, "but hitting houses [on this side]?  I had never heard of that."

Asked if he believed the story that houses were getting shot at on this side by stray bullets from Mexico, he states, "I honestly say...I don't believe that."

So I called Roma Police Department and spoke with Captain Francisco Garcia who also stated that he was not aware of such an incident ever occurring in his jurisdiction in Starr County.

"I think he was talking about some houses, but they were over there in Zapata County", Captain Garcia states.

Really?  But Sheriff Sigi is from Zapata County and I'm sure he'd be using his bragging rights if that were the case, not to mention that he not only wrote about it, but he also talked about it as well.

So I set out to talk to the Zapata County Sheriff to find out exactly where this house was at and where he got this information from, but unfortunately, and as always, Sigi was not in his office.

I was first told he wasn't going to be there until Thursday, but then I asked to speak to the second in command, or the person who is in charge during Sigi's absence.

That's when I was transferred over to Captain Sanchez who now told me that Sigi was going to be in and out of the office because his mother-in-law was ill and she "had taken a turn for the worse".

He was not able to help me, so I let him know to tell Sigi I was sending him an email and if he could respond to it.  If not, I'd be calling back on Thursday.

I called Thursday only to be told that Sigi was now out of town, "but he was here yesterday" said the lady!

Naturally, I was upset.  I don't like being put through the run around, and I told them so too, so after giving them a piece of my mind, I told them what they needed to do, which was take down my questions, get some answers, and when I call back on Tuesday, there should be NO EXCUSE for me not receive those answers.

I checked my email to see if Sigi had responded, and have been checking it ever since, but no response from him.  I'm positive he has already seen my email, and you know what?

While I understand that Sheriff's are politicians and sometimes can be busy, the questions are not too complicated and don't require a lengthy amount of time to research.  All I wanted to know was the location of that white house in Starr County (what city?), the date and time if possible that the house was shot at, where was our "All pirate attack related incident" PIA, and who gave him that CBP photo of the "suspects" on the boat?  He should have information readily available if he is telling the truth.  The fact that he doesn't is very suspicious that he is lying because only liars buy time.

I honestly hope that Tuesday will bring us some answer, and if not, then it is time to take stricter action.

Yet, this scenario is very reminiscent of our last one when we couldn't seem to catch Sigi in his office.

We suspected then that he was trying to come up with something to distract from the facts we were finding, and sure enough, he came up with the picture of the "suspects" on a boat.

Now I have to wonder what he's planning.  What "new evidence" will he produce for us this time?


Or worse, what travesty will befall our peaceful borders to "prove" his point?

It's not like the Sheriff is a patient man, or an honorable one at that.

What do I mean? 

During our research, we came across this lawsuit in which Sheriff Sigi viciously attacks not only a helpless patient that is restrained to a stretcher, but a firefighter who tried to stop him from hurting the patient that was restrained!

Here is the details to that lawsuit:  http://www.courthousenews.com/2011/03/23/TexasLaw.pdf


E. FACTS
6. On or about March 20, 2009, BUTTERFIELD suffered personal injury resulting from a blow to the face. Mr. Butterfield was pushed and was struck in the mouth by Defendant GONZALEZ’ closed fist.
7. The SHERIFF of Zapata County, Texas, in uniform, during working hours, and most importantly while acting as the Sheriff of Zapata County struck Mr. Butterfield. Additionally, the SHERIFF proceeded to immediately threaten Mr. Butterfield by stating that “if you ever touch me again I WILL KILL YOU!
8. The incident arose when Mr. Butterfield along with another firefighter, Miguel Sosa, were assisting with an aggressive patient. The patient was handcuffed to a stretcher. The SHERIFF appeared and started striking the helpless man in the stretcher.
9. Mr. Butterfield witnessed the incident and intervened by putting himself in between the patient and the SHERIFF, which was for the protection of the patient who was defenseless. The SHERIFF then pushed and struck Mr. Butterfield in the mouth and threatened Mr. Butterfield with imminent bodily injury. Several people witnessed the incident.
Wohow!!!

The report goes on to say that Mr. Butterfield later approaches Sigi when he believes Sigi has already been calmed down, only for Sigi to continue with his threat that if Mr. Butterfield ever touches him again, he will kill him!

Oh, the agony of this report that it leaves out so many questions in need of answers.

Who was this patient that Sigi unleashed his anger on, and why?  What business did this man have with Sigi that he would provoke such anger on a Sheriff?  Where did this incident occur?  Was it at the Sheriff's department, on the street, or at the fire department?  Was the patient a jailbird, a mental patient, or someone who got hurt committing a violent act?

We tried to contact Mr. Butterfield, but it was no surprise to us when he refused to answer our letter.  With Sheriff Sigi on the loose, I would fear for my safety too.  I just hope that me digging up this information does not put him in harms way, but then again, this was public information.  It was just hidden away in the spider web of the Internet, which makes me wonder:

Why hasn't the media reported on this incident either?

What powers are being wielded in Zapata County that are stonewalling our efforts to find answers?

It's not like we are asking Sigi to bring down the moon and the stars for us.  The information we are requesting should be readily available.

So why isn't it?

The only comfort we have right now is that the Attorney General has already responded to our appeal.

The problem is waiting to find out if Sigi will snub his nose at the Attorney General as well.

Here is the letter the AG sent us:

Let's just hope that from here until then we can find the answers we are looking for before Sigi's temper gets the best of him and he takes it upon himself to respond to our "touching" for information.

Surely if he has no respect for a fire fighter colleague, then what respect will he have for a regular citizen?

In the mean time, he'll continue to prance around like a banshee claiming that our borders are not secure, and he'll be right this time.

Our borders are not secure because he is the corruption that disgraces us all.

In the meantime, stay tuned for more information we are gathering.

Until next time...

Friday, May 27, 2011

Falcon Lake Murder: An acceptance of guilt or a failed plan?

Thank you everyone for waiting for the information I have had pending.  I apologize for the wait, and believe me, what I am about to share with you is not everything that we have so far, but it is really quite astounding!

First of all, let me begin by letting you know what has happened so far:

In March 2011, we sent out a FOIA request for a full and complete copy of the original call made by Tiffany Hartley to 911 operator.  Among other things, we also requested any and all information related to the case (to sum things up) which included witness interviews, field notes, memoranda, etc. 

You would have thought we'd get more than what we got!

Instead, we got two audio cds, and 3 paper documents.  That was it!

Here is the letter that was sent by the Sheriff of Zapata that summarizes more or less what we got:

Worse still is that the audio cd for the 911 call was sent split into 16 wave files!  Here's a picture of what that looked like:
Fortunately, we were able to tape it together.  This is what it sounds like all taped up together:


The content of the audio is still being reviewed, but we have found something that sounds very damning!  Listen to audio 5 of the 911 call:


Now, let me explain something about audio 5 of the 911 call.  When you edit it in programs like Audacity or Wavepad, it tends to change the frequencies of voices.

In other words, where you have someone saying, "Let me have that hat", editing the frequencies can change that sentence to sound like, "Bet we grab a snack". 

Many of the people working with me have had that difficulty because the more they mess with those programs, the more they change the sound of words, making it sound like Tiffany Hartley was saying something else.

However, the reason why I'm confident I'm as close to what Tiffany said as possible is because I used a program that I have been used for heavy editing in the past. 

That program is Adobe Soundbooth CS5.

What I like about Adobe Soundbooth CS5 is that you can select the frequencies you want to change, as opposed to changing ALL the frequencies.  The reason Soundbooth can do that is because it gives you a thermal image of the audio. 

In this case, I highlighted around Tiffany's voice and removed the sound around it, being as careful as possible not to change the voice frequencies.  Doing that changes the tone of the voice, but pretty much keeps the words in tact. 

What happens when you remove the sound around the voice is that you take the higher frequencies out of it, along with the noise, and so you keep the words, but they sound more flutey as opposed to Tiffany's regular voice.

Having said that, I'm shocked!

I'm shocked that this was actually caught on tape!  It is no wonder the Sheriff of Zapata County went to such extreme lengths as to take it upon himself to withhold information!

Unfortunately for him, he's not smart enough, as he left in not only audio 5 of the 911 call, but the address of the Good Samaritan!!

Let me just say this, I'm under the strong impression that Tiffany NEVER left the public boat ramp, and if she did, she probably just circled around it to get to the Good Samaritan's house! 

Take a look at this map:

The blue dot is the Good Samaritan's house.  The yellow star is the public boat ramp.

Why in the world would Tiffany end up at that exact house, in that exact location?

But the audio, man.  The audio! 

To hear Tiffany say, "Why'd they make me shoot somebody where I could never look for David"!

Is it just me?  Am I the only one that hears that?  What do you hear?

And assuming that what I am hearing is correct, who is this "somebody" that they shot out there?

Or was this failed planning?  Maybe Tiffany thought that she could go with the excuse that they, the pirates, made her shoot David, but later figured out that that would never fly.

But what if they shot someone with the idea that maybe in time they would find a body and claim it was David, but Tiffany, smartly, thinks about the fact that the body is in an area where they will never find "David"?

Then again, listen to the beginning of the 911 call.  A few seconds into the call, Tiffany states, "by the Church". 

In other words, assuming David was shot, she was saying that he was shot "by the Church". 

The good Samaritan later relays the same message to the operator. 

So why does Tiffany go on later to claim that they were "half way" to the US?  And assuming that is true, then where does the good Samaritan get that he saw a boat chasing her?

Not to mention, remember this picture?

Well, listen to this interview Tiffany had in which she estimates there were two to three people in each of the 3 boats:

http://www.1310kfka.com/audio/Hartley02231102.mp3

Amy:  And, how many people do you think are in these boats?
Tiffany:  Um, if I had to guess, which I don't even have a clue how many were in there, but uh, three let's say
Amy:  In each one of the boats..ok
Tiffany: Yea, two to three in each boat.

So yeah, maybe she's guessing, but it still defies logic as to why the Sheriff of Zapata County would use the above picture to point them out as "suspects", when even he's been saying all along that they were looking at about 6 or seven suspects.  I remember 9 somewhere, but I'm not up to researching, but even at 9!  How would that work with 3 boats, when the above picture shows 6 people in one?!!!

Did these merry pirates decide to take a jolly ride by hopping altogether into one boat?  Geez!

Even more bothersome is the fact that the report we received claims that the good ol' Sheruf of Zapata didn't gather ANY evidence at the scene!!!

Here's a snapshot of that document:

WOW!!!!

Yes, there are all sorts of crazy stuff going on here.  Soooo, the jet ski doesn't count as evidence?  The life vest doesn't count as evidence? 

"No evidence gathers".....hmmmmm.

This isn't over yet.  There is still more information pending, and hopefully evidence we'll receive in a week or two that we can look over and I will later share with you once we are done reviewing.

In the meantime, please share this far and wide.

I have no idea what to do with what I have found, and those who are helping me have found that in order for us to do any more we'd have to hire a lawyer and a court approved forensic specialist to analyze the audio if we want to take this to court, which so far no one is doing.

Since we have no money, we'll use what we have:  our voices!

Tell everyone you know.  Share this with all your friends.  Share it with the media, anyone who is willing to listen, and hopefully take this up.

Again, if what I am hearing is correct, then someone was killed out there on Falcon Lake, and Tiffany basically states that someone made her do it (shyeah right). 

Justice needs to be done, and if the Sheriff of Zapata County will not fulfill his duties as a law enforcement officer, then someone needs to step in and take away his badge.

Please stay tuned for more.

Until next time.....


P.S.  Here's the incident report narrative for anyone who wants to view it:
Is it just me, or when you read it do you hear Tiffany's rehearsed voice in your head?

Anyways, let me know what YOU hear in that audio 5 of the 911 call.  Take care!

Friday, April 22, 2011

Falcon Lake Murder: Reenactment of the Falcon Lake Murder story

I apologize for not getting this up sooner, but here it is:


I know it's a little blah, but I look forward to getting some feedback and hopefully some other ideas as to what other kind of videos I can produce.

This video is a little off as I had meant to make it word for word based on what Tiffany said, but I couldn't resist and add, slyly, my own opinion in there.  Towards the end, I went a little off track and reenacted the story based on what she said in other interviews, not this one.

Anyways, it's practice, but I've been wanting to post something like this for quite a while now, and so here it is.

Enjoy!

Sunday, March 27, 2011

Falcon Lake Murder: Pirates, Psychics and Sheriff Sigi

You know, this story would almost be funny if it weren't really happening.

It would make for a good movie too.

But the truth is, it's not funny because evidence is pointing to a very big and scary cover up.

Some day, I hope to be able to share the information that is being gathered on this case, but until then, we'll be looking at the very obvious.

Take for example the fact that Falcon Lake had previously never experienced any "pirate" attacks until 2010.

The first attack coming in April 30, 2010, but that news didn't make a big splash, and to me, it was like Sheriff Sigi was upset it didn't cause the effects he wanted, so he tried again TWICE in May, and when that didn't work, he tried again April, with his final attempt, the Hartley's, finally hitting the mark.

Here are those stories according to Texas Monthly (which got it's news from the Monitor):

April 30:  Five people in two boats were fishing on the lake and visited Old Guerrero, a Mexican city abandoned when the reservoir was created in the 1950s. The group was taking pictures of the church and other submerged buildings at the site when four heavily tattooed men appeared in boats and climbed aboard the fishermen’s vessels. The intruders claimed they were “Federales” — Mexican federal police — but had no uniforms, troopers said.  (Note the importance of pointing out they were heavily tattooed men.  The scarier the better, even though the last thing these drug cartel members want is to be identified through their tattoo's.  A very reliable informant tells me that it is very rare for Zeta's to be tattooed because then it is harder for them to deny any involvement if they are caught.  The only one's that are more than likely to be heavily tattooed are the MS13 and other gang members that operate for the Zeta's.  However, it is very unlikely that MS13 or gang members will be found on boats.  Who knows though?  If there can be pirates on speed boats on a lake, there can be gangsters too.)

May 6:  Three fishermen were about a quarter of a mile from Marker 14 on the north side of Salado Island, above some submerged ruins, troopers said. As they were fishing, two men in a boat quickly approached and pointed AR-15 assault rifles toward the anglers. One of the gunmen boarded the boat, looking for cash, drugs and firearms.  One of the attackers chambered a round in his assault rifle and said he would shoot the men if they did not give him money.  (Why would they be looking for drugs?  Mexico supplies the drugs, not the US.  Again, drugs = criminals, so I classify this as another attempt to make the enemy look scarier)


May 16:  Law enforcement officers received a report that a vessel carrying five armed men had approached some boaters. Investigators have not found the boaters to obtain details about the incident, which apparently occurred on the U.S. side of the lake.  (Naturally, since no one knows who the boaters were, you just have to suck it up as fact, right?)

And six weeks before May 16 or 19, Zapata County Sheriff Sigifredo “Sigi” Gonzalez said the first suspected cartel pirate hijacking he heard of occurred when a group of fishermen had their boat stolen and were left naked on the Mexican side with only a cell phone to call for help. (Well I'll be damned!  I thought the first incident happened on April 30th and they were able to make it back, albeit a little short on cash.  Fabricating much Sheriff Sigi?)
But that's not all.  Sheriff Sigi said the following back in May of 2010:

"It makes me nervous that these things are happening. It irritates me because we can try and do more if the federal government would provide more funding," said Gonzalez. "I dread having to even think of having a fisherman resist, shot in the head, and we can't even go retrieve the body."  
Amazingly enough, exactly just that happened on September 30, 2010 when Tiffany and David Hartley were chased by "pirates" and David Hartley was supposedly shot in the head and his body to this day has not been retrieved because "we can't even go" over there.

If that's not surprising, later that same day, Sheriff Sigi goes into details about what more than likely happened to the body.  This is what he predicted:
"I don't think we're ever going to find him," Gonzalez said late Thursday. "We can't go over there, obviously, and I'm thinking that if the Mexican authorities have not gone to look for him, the people that did this would - if I were them - have cut the vest and let him sink, or I would have pulled the body out of the water so there'd be no evidence ... before the Mexican military gets there."
While, personally I don't believe that David was ever shot to begin with, assuming he was, then it is no coincidence that Sheriff Sigi was once again correct in his predictions.  No body was ever found!

Then, that weekend, a private investigator, Raul G. Reyna Jr., from Edinburg, Texas tries stealing some of the spotlight and Sheriff Sigi doesn't like it.  He warns the private investigator:

Reyna needs to be careful about nosing around too much in this case "because he’s going to come up missing a head."

In his comments, he also adds:

"If we know there’s no body to be found, why should we risk more people searching? Why should we risk having people out there searching and getting beheaded when we can’t find a body?
Now, the article that published the above quotes from Sigi is dated Sunday, October 17, but in there it says "this past Saturday", which I'm sure they didn't mean "yesterday" because more than likely the paper was written on Saturday, October 16 or around that time.  Which means, the Saturday they are referring to is Saturday, October 9, 2010.

The reason I believe this also, asides from the above mentioned reasons, is because I've done a search and every post that has this news story has no comments in regards to the beheading of Rolando Armando Flores Villegas on October 13, 2010.  Neither in the news article or in the comment section, and you know those anti-immigrants, racist, xenophobic, and/or Tiffany supporters would not have let that one go.  And because it is a news article, I find it odd that they would not mention his beheading when it very clearly relates to what Sheriff Sigi is warning about.

Which brings us to Sheriff Sigi's other predictions:  The beheading of Rolando Armando Flores Villegas.
It may be possible that Rolando Armando Flores Villegas was set up to be beheaded, and I'm not going to beat around the bush with this one:

I strongly believe Sheriff Sigi had something to do with it!

Rolando Armando Flores Villegas was very adamant that nothing in Tiffany's story was adding up.  There was no body.  No jet ski.  No witnesses (besides an unreliable good Samaritan.  My words, not his.).  So it's very possible that he was on to something and Sheriff Sigi didn't like it.

In short, he wasn't being "careful about nosing around too much in this case", and like Sheriff Sigi predicted, he ended up "missing a head".

Let us see what other predictions the Sheriff has in store for us:
3/31/2009 - "Gonzalez, who heads the Southwestern Border Sheriff’s Coalition, said it’s only a matter of time before a shootout breaks out between cartel members and federal, state, and local law enforcement.
...We are looking for help in catching the bad guys who are coming in, sir, and also protecting the citizens and residents who are already living in our counties so that they not get kidnapped and not get extorted, not have their homes invaded, that they not get tortured and things like this."

And no wonder he makes it sound so dangerous here on the border.  Look at what he's asking for for his local agencies:  "$500 million a year for 5 years was the figure that we looked at as being actually something meaningful that would provide the resources"

Is Sheriff Sigi crying wolf?  Why shouldn't he?

According to the Boston Review: At War In Texas by Tom Barry, " Sheriff Gonzalez has so much border-security funding from DHS and DOJ that each of his deputies is assigned two vehicles, a patrol car for regular duty and a new SUV for overtime border-security operations."  Later on, Mr. Barry goes on to say that "Border sheriffs enjoy virtually unlimited overtime-pay accounts, new fleets of vehicles, and the latest security technology."

Of course, Sheruff Sigi doesn't want to use that "latest security technology or new fleets of vehicles cuz the boogy men pirates might put a dent in 'em.

Most importantly, Mr. Barry notes that, "in Zapata County, Sheriff Gonzalez has so much border-security funding from DHS and DOJ that each of his deputies is assigned two vehicles, a patrol car for regular duty and a new SUV for overtime border-security operations."

Holy crapoly!  No wonder Sheriff Sigi is making all these predictions that mysteriously are coming true!

But back to his predictions, and sorry these are not coming out in order, iammetx is too lazy to place them in order, but don't worry, they all happened in 2010.

Apparently there was an incident back in March 2010 with an "armed" Mexican helicopter flying over U.S. airspace and hovering over homes.

According to the Sigster, this was a Mexican Marine helicopter because it hovered over the homes of CBP agents and surely they know what they were looking at.

Oddly enough, the only people who could confirm this actually happened were, according to the Sigi, a deputy, a local news reporter, and a federal officer who, the sheriff said, "has since been muzzled by higher-ups".

Uh-huh.

Asides from that, they had pictures!  Albeit a bit blurry, but they claim you can actually see where it says Marina on it.  Here's one that they provided, although you can't really tell where it actually is.  It could have been taken in Mexico for all we know:

Which oddly enough looks exactly like this helicopter photo taken in 2009:
Too bad we can't see a chopper number in that back tail for the first photo.  Sneaky little punks!


Here's another one compared to that one:
Yowzers!  Now that's a chopper!  Where it is at or if it is even Mexican remains to be a mystery, and I'm sure Sigi is loving every minute of it.  

Especially with his prediction of "it's not the first time and it won't be the last."  

Surely enough, he was right, again. Too bad the link to that article will never be found complete, as it was scrubbed from the Internet like most news articles involving the Sigster.  

However, I was able to find a forum where you can see a little bit more of that article where it clearly states:
"Border Patrol spokesman Jason Darling says the Mexican military is conducting operations near Zapata along the Rio Grande."

Chucks!  

It is little wonder that Sheruff Sigi didn't go into detail about the fact that a long-standing agreement between the United States, Mexico and Canada allows for temporary incursions for medical or law enforcement purposes.

But what can you expect from someone who's stomping his foot down in order to pocket $500 million every year for 5 years under the guise of border security, right?  

Well, here are some of his predictions that are yet to come true, so let's keep an eye out for this guy:

"Osama Bin Laden can come across border and not get caught" 

"Be careful of the lull before the storm"
And come to think of it, there has been a lull in Sheriff Sigi's diatribe.  

I wonder what he's planning next?  Blaming Osama bin Laden for another 9/11 on the border?

All I know is that before 2010, we didn't have so much commotion here on the border, and all of it coming just from one county and one Sheriff, the Sigster.  

Let's just hope he keeps it at 2010 and shuts it at 2011, but we'll find out pretty soon as we continue to investigate this case.


Until next time...

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