The Find
Roberto Alejandro Vázquez Hernández closed his gas station on López Mateos Avenue.
His daughter Valentina had been missing for six years when she disappeared during her 11th birthday party. Every night when he locked up, he remembered how she had arrived home once again, on April 15, 2017.
That afternoon, the custodian, Rodrigo Pérez Villanueva, was cleaning the service area when he noticed that one of the floor tiles in the back storage room had come loose.
When he took it up to fix it, he spotted a plastic bag under it.
“Mr. Vázquez, you need to see this!” Esteban yelled from the back lot.
Roberto ran over. Esteban had a clear bag with a pink cell phone with butterfly stickers on it, some documents, and a silver bracelet with the name Valentina written on it.
“Where did this thing come from?” Roberto asked, his legs wobbling.
“It was buried under the tile here.” “It looks like someone hid it years ago,” Esteban added.
Roberto recognized the phone immediately away. He had given it to Valentina for her 11th birthday, which was only two months before she disappeared. She also had the bracelet, which she wore to her friend Sofía Beatriz Mendoza Jiménez’s quinceañera. There was a handwritten note in the bag that said Valentina’s school ID, a pharmacy receipt from April 14, 2017, and a letter.
“Everything is ready for tomorrow.” No one will find out. —D.C.R.”
A New Lead
Roberto quickly got in touch with Inspector Joaquín Gabriel Torres Salta María. He was in charge of the first investigation.
Torres and a forensic team showed up there thirty minutes later.
Torres glanced at the evidence and said, “Don Roberto, this is the first real lead we’ve had in six years.”
“Do you know why it could have been buried here?”
Roberto added that the gas station was always open and that a lot of people, including personnel, suppliers, and customers, could go to the back.
He stated, “But I do remember that Valentina lost her phone the night she went missing.”
On April 14, 2017, at 6:00 p.m., Valentina paid for sleeping pills and bandages with cash at the pharmacy. This was the day before she went missing.
“Do you know what the letters ‘D.C.R.’ mean?” Torres wanted to find out.
Roberto shook his head, but Esteban continued, “I remember that night.” A young man came to the meeting and inquired if we had found anything. He was about 18 years old, tall, and had black complexion. He told her that he was Valentina’s buddy.
“Do you know what his name is?”
“No, but Mrs. Carmen thought it was strange that he was watching me so closely,” Esteban said.
At that time, Valentina’s mother, Carmen Esperanza Morales de Vázquez, came. When she saw the proof, she fell to the ground and cried.
“I got her that phone for her birthday, and she was so happy!” How did it get here? We searched all night!
Torres urged the cops to undertake a full forensic search.
They sent the phone to the lab to get the data returned, gathered fingerprints from everything, and looked at the note’s handwriting.
Torres said to Don Roberto, “I need a list of everyone who has worked here since 2017, as well as all of Valentina’s friends, especially those who were at Sofía’s party.”
The probe is back on.
He did what he was told. The list had 12 former employees, six regular suppliers, and 20 friends and classmates who went to Sofía’s quinceañera.
Carmen remembered that Valentina had been upset that night.
Sofía’s mom reported Valentina left around 11:00 p.m., but Sofía thought she had merely gone to the bathroom.
“Did Valentina have a boyfriend?” Torres wanted to find out.
“Not at all.” Carmen remarked, “She was very focused on school.” “Boys liked her, but she always said she wanted to finish school first.”
The police talked about all the guests, looked at surveillance footage, and searched an area of 50 kilometers in 2017, but they never found any evidence of Valentina.
Torres said, “The problem is that we didn’t have this proof at the time.” We may now reopen the case the appropriate way.
Putting everything together
Torres took the receipt to the pharmacy. There were no surveillance recordings left, but the pharmacist remembered that a young man paid cash for something around 6:30 p.m. on April 14.
Torres went over the guest list and observed that one name started with the letters “D.C.R.”
Sofia’s boyfriend in 2017 was Diego Armando Castillo Ríz.
Little by little, things that didn’t make sense came up. Diego stated he didn’t know Valentina very well, but those who were there observed him talking to her.
Valentina’s phone showed that she sent her last message at 10:43 p.m.
“I’m leaving now.” “Where do we meet?” was sent as a text to Diego’s phone.
This evidence destroyed Diego’s first alibi.
When they looked through his apartment, they found covert images of Valentina, notes that kept track of what she was doing, and messages with two well-known crooks, Mauricio Guzmán and Fernando Moreno.
The Truth Comes Out
Later, someone found a hidden SUV on Mauricio’s property. There were fibers inside that matched Valentina’s clothes and blood in the trunk.
Mauricio broke down when they asked him questions:
“Inspector, I merely helped her relocate. I didn’t kill anyone!
Sofía also said it soon after:
Diego told me he liked Valentina and wanted to know when she was free. I thought he only wanted to see her… I didn’t know he was going to hurt her. He said he would hurt me after she went gone.
In the end, Diego confessed to everything when he saw all the evidence.
“I didn’t want her to die.” “I just wanted her to be with me,” he told Torres.
He alleged that Fernando Moreno killed Valentina by strangling her in June 2017 after keeping her captive for 45 days in a secret house in Tlajomulco.
Then, as a cruel joke, Moreno made Diego and Mauricio bury Valentina’s body and hide her things under the tiles of the gas station floor.
What Happened Next and Justice
Six years later, forensic teams found human bones at the Tlajomulco home.
DNA showed that it was Valentina.
The autopsy showed symptoms of being locked up, abused, and tortured.
People all around the country were very interested in the case.
Torres discovered a human trafficking operation in Guadalajara that lasted from 2015 until 2020. Businessman Javier Mendoza Salinas, who was also Sofía’s uncle, ran it, and former police chief Ricardo Emilio Salinas Medina defended it.
They had kidnapped at least 32 young ladies, killed eight of them, and sold the others as sex slaves all over Mexico.
They hurt Valentina the worst because she was the youngest.
The arrests rocked up Jalisco. There were politicians, judges, police, and businesspeople engaged. A lot of people were arrested.
Torres’s part broke up the whole ring, which showed a lot of corruption.
Roberto and Carmen Vázquez had a hard time accepting the truth, but it offered them serenity.
At a public homage, Roberto said, “My daughter won’t come back, but her case will help other families find theirs.”
The past
By 2023, Mexico has made a lot of changes:
A group of people was put together to work on combating trafficking.
Checking processes to stop sabotage,
Money for the relatives of the victims,
Making witnesses safer is also a top objective.
On April 15, 2024, seven years after Valentina went missing, Inspector Torres visited the memorial Roberto had made at the gas station.
There were pictures of all the victims around the memorial.
“Inspector, have you found the girls who were sold to other states?” Roberto asked.
“Yes, twelve have been saved,” Torres answered with a nod. “Eight came back home.” Four folks choose to start over. And for the rest, we’re still searching.
The case of Valentina was a big turning point in Mexican criminal investigations.
It prompted others all around the country to use new ways of looking into things.
Roberto Vázquez, who had been very sad, had become a symbol of justice, reform, and the battle against human trafficking.
