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Kristen Deyell
Who killed Kristen? Let me guess, Mexicans ?
Anne Hainsworth, W-FIVE, CTV News
Guadalajara is Mexico's Silicon Valley. Where there's big money to be made -- thanks to high-tech giants that have put down roots here and the pricey technical colleges that feed them.
Like the one Kristen Deyell of Calgary signed up at last year. For Kristen -- much more than a three-month student exchange -- it was a chance to immerse herself in a language and a culture she loved.
Deyell was staying with Marcela Castillo Estrada, a child psychologist who had decided to take in exchange students. Estrada was a little hesitant at first because Deyell was her first foreign exchange student. How would Kristen and Mexico mix?
"
;She was so beautiful," recalls Estrada, "I thought I maybe will have problem with all the men
in my house, but when the days passed I learned to love her because she was very mature in some things and she knew what was important in life."
And the letters to her mother Cher Ewing in Calgary confirmed it. Deyell was having the time of her life.
"She really didn't want to come home, she wanted to stay," remembers Ewing.
And on April 20, 2004, Ewing arrived in Guadalajara to visit her daughter. They spent the first two days catching up and touring around the city. As it turned out, these days would be the last two that Deyell and her mother would spend together.
That evening, Deyell informed her mother and Estrada that she was going out to a birthday party at a local student hang out called the Bali Bar. It was a popular nightclub with patrons that included local Mexicans and international students.
Later that night, Ewing received the p
hone
cal
l that every parent dreads.
"The telephone rang and this was not usual," Estrada says with a sigh. "I could hear a voice saying Come to the hospital.'
"And I repeat, 'But please tell me how is Kristen?' Then he told me: 'Kristen is okay, but please come on'."
The two women rushed to the hospital and spent the next two hours being told nothing. It was excruciating for both women but especially for Kristen's mother, Ewing. She finally demanded to know whether her daughter was dead or alive.
"We were led through the swinging doors and the doctor there told me she had been shot and the bullet had entered the back of her neck and gone through her spinal cord and she was dead."
So exactly what did happen that night?
Here's what W-FIVE, based on eyewitness accounts, has managed to piece together. It started as these tragedies often do. A fight in the early morning hours. Words fly, then
fists,
then tab
les and broken glass. Two of the young men involved in the brawl were thrown out, but didn't go far. In a red BMW parked just outside, they waited.
But little did Kristen Deyell know that the man they wer
e waiting for was the same person who'd just offered her a ride home in his truck.
As the truck pulled out of the parking lot, with Deyell in the passenger seat, shots rang out ' as many as 20 shots ' fired from the red BMW. One of those shots hit Kristen Deyell.
But for these grieving parents there was no moving on until they found out what had happened to their daughter.
And for nine months the investigation got nowhere. And then, in a completely unrelated incident, there was a big break. It happened on a dusty back road outside Guadalajara, when police gave chase to a suspicious SUV.
After a high-speed chase the vehicle overturned and the five people in it were arrested, along with three others a short time later. They were held o
n suspicion
of kidnappi
ng and attempted murder.
When their mugshots are broadcast on the Mexican evening news, at least two are immediately recognized as being at the Bali Bar the night Kristen was killed. But it wasn't until a coupl
e of days later the police realized, much to their shock, just who it was they had in custody.
The police had the son and the nephew of two of Mexico's most notorious drug lords -- Ivan Guzman and a sidekick known as El Anima.
Guzman is the son of the man known as El Chapo ' one of the richest and most dangerous drug kingpins in Mexico. The U.S. government has a $5-million dollar bounty on his head.
El Anima is believed to be the nephew of El Chapo's right hand man. The key suspects in Kristen's murder were from families who are feared for their ruthlessness ' the kidnappings, the brutal murders. Men with a history of making witnesses disappear.
continued at link
Kristen Deyell
Who killed Kristen? Let me guess, Mexicans ?
Anne Hainsworth, W-FIVE, CTV News
Guadalajara is Mexico's Silicon Valley. Where there's big money to be made -- thanks to high-tech giants that have put down roots here and the pricey technical colleges that feed them.
Like the one Kristen Deyell of Calgary signed up at last year. For Kristen -- much more than a three-month student exchange -- it was a chance to immerse herself in a language and a culture she loved.
Deyell was staying with Marcela Castillo Estrada, a child psychologist who had decided to take in exchange students. Estrada was a little hesitant at first because Deyell was her first foreign exchange student. How would Kristen and Mexico mix?
"
;She was so beautiful," recalls Estrada, "I thought I maybe will have problem with all the men
in my house, but when the days passed I learned to love her because she was very mature in some things and she knew what was important in life."
And the letters to her mother Cher Ewing in Calgary confirmed it. Deyell was having the time of her life.
"She really didn't want to come home, she wanted to stay," remembers Ewing.
And on April 20, 2004, Ewing arrived in Guadalajara to visit her daughter. They spent the first two days catching up and touring around the city. As it turned out, these days would be the last two that Deyell and her mother would spend together.
That evening, Deyell informed her mother and Estrada that she was going out to a birthday party at a local student hang out called the Bali Bar. It was a popular nightclub with patrons that included local Mexicans and international students.
Later that night, Ewing received the p
hone
cal
l that every parent dreads.
"The telephone rang and this was not usual," Estrada says with a sigh. "I could hear a voice saying Come to the hospital.'
"And I repeat, 'But please tell me how is Kristen?' Then he told me: 'Kristen is okay, but please come on'."
The two women rushed to the hospital and spent the next two hours being told nothing. It was excruciating for both women but especially for Kristen's mother, Ewing. She finally demanded to know whether her daughter was dead or alive.
"We were led through the swinging doors and the doctor there told me she had been shot and the bullet had entered the back of her neck and gone through her spinal cord and she was dead."
So exactly what did happen that night?
Here's what W-FIVE, based on eyewitness accounts, has managed to piece together. It started as these tragedies often do. A fight in the early morning hours. Words fly, then
fists,
then tab
les and broken glass. Two of the young men involved in the brawl were thrown out, but didn't go far. In a red BMW parked just outside, they waited.
But little did Kristen Deyell know that the man they wer
e waiting for was the same person who'd just offered her a ride home in his truck.
As the truck pulled out of the parking lot, with Deyell in the passenger seat, shots rang out ' as many as 20 shots ' fired from the red BMW. One of those shots hit Kristen Deyell.
But for these grieving parents there was no moving on until they found out what had happened to their daughter.
And for nine months the investigation got nowhere. And then, in a completely unrelated incident, there was a big break. It happened on a dusty back road outside Guadalajara, when police gave chase to a suspicious SUV.
After a high-speed chase the vehicle overturned and the five people in it were arrested, along with three others a short time later. They were held o
n suspicion
of kidnappi
ng and attempted murder.
When their mugshots are broadcast on the Mexican evening news, at least two are immediately recognized as being at the Bali Bar the night Kristen was killed. But it wasn't until a coupl
e of days later the police realized, much to their shock, just who it was they had in custody.
The police had the son and the nephew of two of Mexico's most notorious drug lords -- Ivan Guzman and a sidekick known as El Anima.
Guzman is the son of the man known as El Chapo ' one of the richest and most dangerous drug kingpins in Mexico. The U.S. government has a $5-million dollar bounty on his head.
El Anima is believed to be the nephew of El Chapo's right hand man. The key suspects in Kristen's murder were from families who are feared for their ruthlessness ' the kidnappings, the brutal murders. Men with a history of making witnesses disappear.
continued at link