Sylvia Garcia
Appearances
Murder In America
EP. 189: TEXAS - The Murder of Vanessa Guillén: A Complete Failure At Ft. Hood
To answer your question, I'd like to see a congressional investigation here. I think there was a few agencies that were involved here, including the CID. I think somebody dropped the ball and there was a breach of protocol. We're talking about security, no cameras, using a cell phone to put in a serial number of a federal information of a military property. The check-ins,
Murder In America
EP. 189: TEXAS - The Murder of Vanessa Guillén: A Complete Failure At Ft. Hood
Where's the safety precautions? How did this happen? And why wasn't the family informed immediately? There's so many gaps and holes in what we learned today that I am going to demand a congressional investigation for this family. We want to know what happened and who is covering up for who and why are they covering up. You know, this can't happen to one of our soldiers.
Murder In America
EP. 189: TEXAS - The Murder of Vanessa Guillén: A Complete Failure At Ft. Hood
It should never have happened. And if we have to do that, we have to ask Congress to have a congressional investigation to subpoena everything, to have everybody be testified before Congress. That's going to be necessary. It's going to be necessary because unfortunately, I don't feel like at the local level it's happening. I really feel like we're not going to resolve this down here.
Murder In America
EP. 189: TEXAS - The Murder of Vanessa Guillén: A Complete Failure At Ft. Hood
We need we need the higher ups now.
Murder In America
EP. 189: TEXAS - The Murder of Vanessa Guillén: A Complete Failure At Ft. Hood
President Trump, first of all, thank you very much for hosting this family. It's a beautiful family that I represent. I'm attorney Natalie Kawong. I'm doing this case pro bono because I believe in it, and I believe in our military, and I believe in justice. And like you, you love the military, you love our veterans, and you've proven that today by just bringing us into your home to begin with.
Murder In America
EP. 189: TEXAS - The Murder of Vanessa Guillén: A Complete Failure At Ft. Hood
Secondly, we have formed together to figure out what happened and how it happened. And just to give background, Vanessa was having issues internally with some of the surgeons and such hitting on her, sexually harassing her. We don't know how far it went because a lot of women don't always speak up. They just are afraid.
Murder In America
EP. 189: TEXAS - The Murder of Vanessa Guillén: A Complete Failure At Ft. Hood
So it's a systemic problem there. You have young kids, boys, girls, 18, 20, 21. But there isn't enough protections in place because they get nervous about retaliation. And I learned, I knew about the problem, but I didn't know how severe it was. Like I said, I thought I was picking a scab, and here I saw it was septic. It's terrible. The hashtag, I am Vanessa Guillen.
Murder In America
EP. 189: TEXAS - The Murder of Vanessa Guillén: A Complete Failure At Ft. Hood
If you go to that, you will read all these stories of these young women that serve our country, how broken they are. Like when they report it, what happens in a chain of command, and then they get retaliated against, and they got clean toilets and stuff like that. So I understand why Vanessa wouldn't want to go report it, formally report it. So she did tell her family. She told her friends.
Murder In America
EP. 189: TEXAS - The Murder of Vanessa Guillén: A Complete Failure At Ft. Hood
She told some of the soldiers with her. how they were, this guy, especially this guy, Aaron.
Murder In America
EP. 189: TEXAS - The Murder of Vanessa Guillén: A Complete Failure At Ft. Hood
Others also? That's correct. So I understand that she was in a locker room, the girls locker room, taking a shower and he walked in and sat there and stared at her showering, like just creepy. And unfortunately, I believe that she was going to report him because he was with her in the room that day, her day off. They asked her to come in. Makes no sense, right?
Murder In America
EP. 189: TEXAS - The Murder of Vanessa Guillén: A Complete Failure At Ft. Hood
We're not getting all the answers, by the way. And he supposedly took a hammer and killed her in the room, bludgeoned her to death. If you go into this room, the room is probably like a quarter the size of this room. And it's open, so people can hear and see things. So how no one heard her screaming, how no one saw the blood, Those are like questions we still have.
Murder In America
EP. 189: TEXAS - The Murder of Vanessa Guillén: A Complete Failure At Ft. Hood
But when he did that to her, he carried her body out and he buried it in the river nearby. He used a machete. Nobody saw this, right? And he used a machete to cut her up with his girlfriend. And he tried to burn her body. It wouldn't burn. I mean, this is a horribleness. I said it reminded me of like ISIS, what they do to our soldiers.
Murder In America
EP. 189: TEXAS - The Murder of Vanessa Guillén: A Complete Failure At Ft. Hood
And when I heard about this story, you know, they contacted me and said, can you help us? And I said, absolutely, can I help you? You know, these are immigrants. You know, my family's immigrants. You know, you come to this country, you want to serve it, you want to do the best you can. And I didn't want them getting railroaded. I knew that it's hard to navigate through the military.
Murder In America
EP. 189: TEXAS - The Murder of Vanessa Guillén: A Complete Failure At Ft. Hood
I knew it's hard to navigate through Congress. And I knew that we needed to do something. We needed a congressional investigation because there's so many, how does that happen? How did this happen? A lot of cover-ups. When I tried to work with the CID, I said, what subpoenas have you issued? Because I'll issue some subpoenas with you to help you out.
Murder In America
EP. 189: TEXAS - The Murder of Vanessa Guillén: A Complete Failure At Ft. Hood
They said, you know, they wouldn't tell me what subpoenas they issued. They wouldn't tell me anything. So I found that it was very difficult to communicate. There was no transparency. So what we could do collectively to get justice for Vanessa is we need reform. We need a bill. You know, I drafted a bill that hashtag I'm Vanessa Guillen. Mark Wayne Mullen from Oklahoma. Good guy.
Murder In America
EP. 189: TEXAS - The Murder of Vanessa Guillén: A Complete Failure At Ft. Hood
Great guy, love him.
Murder In America
EP. 189: TEXAS - The Murder of Vanessa Guillén: A Complete Failure At Ft. Hood
He, well, it's right now in ledge council, but what it does is it says, the way we have the EEOC, which is the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, how if someone can report something, you go to the EEOC, we're looking for something that's gonna allow our military, our soldiers, to have the same rights and protections, so that way they're not going to their chain of command or internally.
Murder In America
EP. 189: TEXAS - The Murder of Vanessa Guillén: A Complete Failure At Ft. Hood
What they're doing is they're going outside the command and reporting something. So suppose this kind of situation would have been in place if we had this kind of bill in place. Vanessa could have reported this, and they would have said, wait a second, this guy, Aaron Robinson, has a few of these problems. Like, look at this guy.
Murder In America
EP. 189: TEXAS - The Murder of Vanessa Guillén: A Complete Failure At Ft. Hood
She reported it to her family and friends and some of the soldiers. She didn't do a formal report.
Murder In America
EP. 189: TEXAS - The Murder of Vanessa Guillén: A Complete Failure At Ft. Hood
Right, not to the command, her bosses. who are also above her, she's saying that we're sexually harassing her. So it's hard to go to the boss that's giving you problems to report him. You know, it's like the fox over the hen house.