On New Year's Day 1994, Nancy, an 18-year-old Colombian girl, was shot to death, and the whereabouts of the murderer's boyfriend are unknown.
For 30 years, his father Martin taught himself reconnaissance and hacking skills in order to chase the murderer, and tracked down the murderer who had absconded overseas, changed his identity, married a wife and had children.
Unfortunately, in 2023, the case is about to exceed the prosecution period, which means that the real culprit cannot be extradited in time, and the case cannot be tried.
Martin went to court every week to apply for an extension of the prosecution period, and in the end, the Supreme Court made a historic decision to agree to extend the prosecution period and return him to China.
On April 11, the killer Jaime was extradited back to China, and he was greeted not only by the law, but also by a father who was 30 years late for trial.
(Father Martin)
If it hadn't been for the accident 30 years ago, Martin would have spent his old age in the countryside like everyone else.
Mr. and Mrs. Martin have four children. The eldest daughter died young, the eldest son grew up healthy, the third daughter Nancy was the victim of this case, and the youngest son died of illness 15 days after birth.
In 1993, at the age of 18, Nancy was about to go to the United States to continue her education after New Year's Day.
On the night of December 31, after the family had a reunion dinner, Nancy told her parents that she was going out on a date with her boyfriend, Jaime.
Before leaving, Martin tells Jaime to take care of Nancy and send her back on time.
However, at 6 a.m. the next morning, Martin found that Nancy had not returned all night, and the night light left for her in the hallway was still on.
He immediately searched all the bars in town, but saw no two. He went to Jaime's house again to inquire, only to find his mother scrambling the floor, and his father said that Nancy had attempted suicide and had just been taken to the hospital.
At the hospital, Martin saw his daughter, covered in wounds. She was completely naked, wrapped in a household sheet, with visible signs of sexual assault, a bullet fired into her temple from the right front, and bruises on her arms, thighs and chest from the beating.
Nine days later, Nancy died, and an autopsy report revealed that she had been raped by Jaime before her death, who shot her in the head and moved her body several times before being taken to the hospital. However, with Nancy's death, Jaime's whereabouts are unknown.
In 1996, based on Nancy's autopsy report and traces from the scene, a Colombian court convicted Jaime of rape and intentional homicide in his absence, for a total of 27 years in prison. Interpol also officially issued a search warrant for Jaime.
Although the police have laid a wide net, Jaime disappears into the vast sea of people as if he had evaporated from the world. Unwilling to wait passively for news, Martin enrolled in an intelligence-gathering course and taught himself about Internet hacking.
With the help of a police officer, he also created multiple accounts on forums and later on social media, keeping an eye on Jaime's family and collecting every useful clue.
More than 20 years have passed, and Martin is almost eighty years old. He has been campaigning for his daughter for so long and has never found anything.
It wasn't until 2019 that he discovered that Jaime's family, while chatting, often made a vague reference to a tourist destination in Brazil where a mysterious person they cared about but didn't dare to name directly. And one of Jaime's younger brothers lives there, and the mystery man has frequent contact with Jammy's younger brother.
Martin suspects that Jaime is hiding there. He presented these leads to the international police.
Interpol followed up and found that there was indeed a person in the area who was close to James's physical features. So they sent out an undercover agent to get a bottle of wine from the mysterious man in the bar. According to the fingerprint comparison above, it was confirmed that the mysterious man was Jaime, who had disappeared for 26 years.
Jaime, who had changed his name and surname, was in his fifties at the time. After marrying a local woman, he also had two children.
With Jaime's exact whereabouts, Martin thinks that this time he can finally get justice for his daughter, but time has opened a loophole for Jaime to get away with it for the second time.
In 2020, Jaime was arrested by Interpol. Martin thought that the next step would be to follow the process and carry out the righteous trial, and he brought the good news back to the crowd.
After Nancy's tragic murder, Martin divorced his ex-wife, who married in Spain. The eldest son, the only surviving son of 4 children, also moved to the United States. A once happy family was torn apart and scattered to the end of the world.
Hearing the news of Jaime's arrest brings tears to the eyes of the family who have not been in touch for years, but reality does not go as smoothly as they expected.
It turned out that 26 years have passed since Nancy's case, and the legal prosecution period has passed. Even if Jaime were arrested in Brazil, he would not be extradited back to Colombia, let alone put on trial.
And in the Brazilian prison, Jaime insists that Nancy committed suicide while he was not in the room. When he heard gunshots in the living room and rushed over, the other party had already killed himself.
Jaime's lawyer also argued that he would not take Nancy to the hospital if he wanted to kill someone.
But in fact, the autopsy report clearly states that the bullet went through Nancy's right temple, but she is left-handed and would not logically do this. Moreover, the scars on Nancy's arms and thighs are clearly the result of acts of resistance when she was violated.
All the evidence points to the fact that Jaime is the real murderer.
In the tug-of-war in which the two sides prove each other, time passes little by little.
What is even more fatal is that there are less than four months left before the end of the final prosecution period in this case. This means that if Jaime is not approved for extradition by June 30, 2023, he will be able to get his seized passport back and once again escape and disappear.
In order to prevent Jaime from disappearing again, Martin insisted on the trial, appearing in court every week, hoping to extend the trial period and constantly postpone the prosecution period.
He told reporters:
"I go to the court every week to ask if the arrest warrant is still valid, hoping that they don't forget about the case.
I thought they would think of me as a nasty and verbose old man, but no, they sympathized with me, an old father who had lost his daughter, and they wanted to see the day when justice would be served. ”
Regrettably, after Martin's lawyer submitted an extradition request to the Brazilian courts, two judges agreed, but the other two judges objected because they considered that the prosecution period had passed, and the result of the draw made the extradition still unenforceable.
Upon hearing the news, Martin was not discouraged. He constantly tells Nancy's story on the Internet, and he also talks to the staff on the bench in front of the courthouse every day.
"I'm like Forrest Gump sitting at the bus stop, telling his story to anyone who wants to listen, and I've always tried to bring Nancy's story to life, and maybe one of the detectives and police officers who come and go will come and help. ”
(Stills from "Forrest Gump")
Finally, Martin waited for someone who was willing to help him.
Margaret Sanchez, a female lawyer at a law firm in Washington, D.C., heard Martin's story and decided to help. Her U.S. law firm is also willing to provide pro bono legal aid to represent Martin in the game against Brazil's Supreme Court.
The female lawyer made two points to the Brazilian High Court:
First, Jaime was killed in Colombia, and the prosecution period in Colombia is 30 years, so he should not be tried according to Brazil's 20-year prosecution period.
Second, if an extradition application is filed across borders in a criminal case, it can be considered invalid if the judge votes for a tie. However, the reason given by the Colombian side for Jaime's extradition application is that "he is needed to cooperate with international legal cooperation", which falls within the normal scope of extradition between the two countries, so it should not be rejected.
Finally, on March 30, 2023, the female lawyer took advantage of the gaps in the extradition regulations of the two countries and won the lawsuit. Brazil's Supreme Court issued a historic ruling to extradite Jaime to Colombia for trial, and also supported the theory of "there is no statute of limitations for intentional homicide" put forward by female lawyers.
In May 2023, James, who had previously been acquitted, was arrested again.
On January 11, 2024, Brazil approved Jaime's application for extradition back to Colombia.
On April 11, Jaime was brought back to Brazil, where he would be judged by the law and a father.
The Colombian side will conduct a number of trials against Jaime who was extradited to China, including an investigation into intentional homicide and whether there were other accomplices.
Martin, who has been chasing his daughter for many years, seemed calm after hearing the news of James's extradition on the phone.
When asked if he wanted to confront Jaime in person, he said, "No need, I know he's the murderer." I never wanted to take revenge on him, I just waited for justice to come and let parents who had the same experience know that your efforts will definitely pay off. ”
Martin said that he suddenly felt old for the past two days, and he described himself as like a long-distance champion who was reluctant to go on the field but had to race against the wheels of justice, and this time he won, but he was also in a race against death.
"I'm 81 years old and I don't have much time to wait. But I will always remember what happened the night before New Year's Day in 1994, and even the smile on her face when she talked to me when she left that night. ”
May the belated justice come soon, to comfort Nancy's dead and comfort her living relatives.