(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)