[ambient street noise]
[tense music playing]
A Wall Street banker who took regular jogs through Central Park lies hospitalized.
Police said she was left for dead.
In April of '89, we had the infamous Central Park jogger case.
It was a huge case 'cause it was Central Park
and because of the horrendousness of the crime.
The victim in that crime, Trisha Meili, was sexually assaulted.
She was left for dead.
She was beaten so badly that she ended up in a coma.
It really created this sense of abject horror.
Police believe the gang confronted her here,
then dragged her 200 feet into the woods.
What is wrong with people?
Definitely won't jog here at night, ever.
It seemed like the NYPD had lost control.
[Parrino] In 1989, the drugs and the violence was something
I hadn't even seen in my career up at that point.
I remember sleeping in this apartment being so afraid.
I was by myself.
I used to sleep with a gun under my pillow.
And I've been robbed eight times. I've been jumped three times.
[journalist] People wanted some kind of remedy
to what seemed like an unsolvable crisis of crime
and were just out for blood.
So there was a big push to solve this fast.
[Rivera] Five young males were brought in.
Those boys were arrested and charged with rape.
[journalist] These boys were known as "the Central Park Five."
And the contrast between an affluent, young, blonde white woman
and the young men of color, Black and Latino,
who were in the park and immediately blamed for the crime,
just pressed a giant nerve of race and prejudice.
And, ultimately, these five men were convicted
of sexually assaulting Trisha Meili.
But there were people who had doubts as to whether justice was done.
[man] The physical evidence was nonexistent as to any of these boys.
And there may be a rapist out there
who has struck or may be ready to strike again.
But the Central Park jogger case, it didn't begin with Trisha Meili.
There are other victims who never became known at all
whose stories deserve to be told.
[producer] Okay, speeding all around.
[sighs heavily]
[sigh echoing]
[suspenseful music playing]
[Mooney] Our job is to make sure you can go home and sleep at night.
[Rivera] It's so important for a family to know who murdered their relative.
[Reznick] Compassion for the victims, that's the most important thing.
[Parrino] I've always liked the peek behind the curtain.
What really happened?
[McNeely] You want to find out the truth.
That's what detectives do.
[officer] Your instinct is to help people.
[Titus] In New York City, the NYPD…
this is it.
[suspenseful music trails off]
[foreboding music playing]
[man] I was seven years old.
Mom ordered Chinese food for us.
-[knocking] -We hear a knock on the door.
And I assumed that it was the Chinese food.
We opened the door, and there was a guy there.
He was asking for the super. And we said the super wasn't there.
[Serrano Jr.] Then he let himself in.
Shoved me to the side. Closed the door.
[Vega] Then he started asking for money.
And my moms offered jewelry and money that she had.
And she was holding my baby sister Amanda at the time, and…
He got aggressive, and I could tell my moms was scared.
And then we started crying and stuff.
We were confused of what was going on.
He grabbed her,
and he asked,
"Your eyes or your kids?"
He made her choose.
She made the decision. And that was the last time I saw her.
I'm a retired captain, NYPD.
Did 31 years.
I wanted to go to West Point.
But since I got a 40 in high school chemistry,
I ended up being a policeman.
[chuckles] That was my second choice.
Summer of '89, I was the commanding officer
of the 5th Detective Division, Manhattan North.
I was on my way to dinner when I got the call on my pager.
The dispatch said, "Captain, we have a homicide on East 97th Street."
So much for dinner.
I responded to the location.
The victim had been raped and stabbed.
She had been taken to St. Luke's Hospital.
Doctors worked on her, but she was pronounced dead on arrival.
We were able to identify her as Lourdes Gonzalez,
mother of three children and 24 years of age.
There was blood on the walls, on the floor,
and on the bed in one of the bedrooms.
We looked for any knife with blood on it, and we couldn't find anything.
Searched the apartment, the bedroom, the hallway, the courtyard,
with negative results.
When she was attacked, Lourdes was alone in the apartment
with two boys and a baby.
Her significant other, who was the super of the building,
had gone to the Bronx.
When he returned home, we inform of what happened.
He was shocked.
You could see he was visibly shaking.
But with multiple stab wounds, it's a crime of passion.
So you would look for the significant other.
Did they have a fight? Did they have an argument?
Detectives interrogate him.
They determine that he can establish where he was
and account for his time, so it rules him out.
[Vega] Tony told me that she's not coming back.
I didn't understand.
[muttering]
"What do you mean she's not coming back?"
[Serrano Jr.] I remember Carlos crying.
He was just hyperventilating and in pain.
My mom, she was a loving woman.
She was very young when she had me.
She was about 18.
I remember her smile.
I remember her… her laugh.
And I loved being with her.
She brought joy to me.
[Serrano Jr.] I feel like she was an angel put in my dad's life
to be able to get us straight and together.
I started living with her when I was six years old. It was seamless.
Carlos was my roommate. That was my brother.
[Vega] During the times we lived together,
we did everything together.
And she treated Tony like her son.
[Serrano Jr.] I remember when she became pregnant with Amanda.
Carlos and I were excited.
We showed her so much love.
She was always by one of our sides.
And that was just the dynamic of our family.
And, sadly, it was taken away as quickly as it happened.
[dark, foreboding music playing]
Detective Irma Rivera was one of my top Special Victims detectives.
To the children, she signifies a mother,
which helps in eliciting information from them.
I got a call in my office to respond to the 23rd Precinct
'cause they had two children they wanted me to interview.
I come into the room.
I see the two cute little boys, dark hair, Spanish.
They looked a little bit scared.
When you interview young children who had an experience like this,
my main concern is trying to see how much information I can get from them,
but doing it in a really slow pace, no rush.
So I left the precinct
and took them to the bodega on 102nd Street off of 3rd Avenue.
Got them some candy and drinks, and I brought them back to the precinct.
And I just hung out with them. I interviewed them each individually.
In the police station, I reiterated exactly what happened.
He gave her an ultimatum.
He said, "Your eyes or your kids?"
[Rivera] "Your eyes or your kids"
is something that I've never heard any other perpetrator say before.
[Vega] She told him,
"Not my kids."
[Serrano Jr.] So my mom told me and Carlos
to take Amanda and go to the room.
Amanda was in the closet with a pillow.
And me and Tony were on the ground and looking at the door.
They went into her room, and we hear everything.
We were holding each other.
And we was either waiting for my moms to come get us…
or we was anticipating him coming in.
I remember the footsteps
of him traveling,
and then leaving.
[Serrano Jr.] When she yelled our name, I remember opening the door
and seeing her in that long corridor of our apartment
in a pool of blood,
asking us to go get help.
[Vega] Looking back at it now,
she volunteered herself…
to be sacrificed.
She didn't think twice.
[suspenseful music playing]
[Rivera] These kids just saw the worst thing that anybody can see.
It shattered their innocence in… in a second.
The boys also gave a description
to the New York City Police Department sketch artist.
It gives the detectives an idea of what the perpetrator may have looked like.
I remember distinctively his complexion.
He was a darker person.
And his hair was flat.
They describe a male Hispanic, approximately 5'10", dark-skinned.
He has a blue striped shirt and a flattop hair.
What he did to these kids…
I mean, they're children, and it's your mother. Horrible.
This guy was a real piece of crap.
[ominous music playing]
Tonight, there is outrage over a murder and a manhunt to find a dangerous killer.
She's a beautiful person. I can't even believe that she died.
[Rivera] The medical examiner's report said
that Lourdes Gonzalez had been stabbed nine times, raped,
and she was six weeks pregnant.
Hearing that she was pregnant makes me feel even worse,
knowing that there would've been another child involved.
[reporter] Mayor Koch is offering a $10,000 reward
to try to capture the man who killed a pregnant woman.
This is a pathological killer.
So we're putting every member of the police force
out there looking for him as well as this reward.
Yesterday's incident, he asks for the super.
He's attired in a blue and white striped shirt.
We do the press conferences
to let the public know what he looks like and to be on your guard.
And, secondly, hopefully a witness.
The child overheard a statement to the effect of, uh,
"Your eyes or your children?"
[woman] When I saw the news report about Lourdes,
and I heard what he said to her, and the circumstances,
and it sounded so familiar,
and I heard some version of "your eyes or your life,"
it clicked for me.
I said, "My God! Son of a bitch! It's the same guy."
In the Sex Crimes Unit, we found a case on June 11th
that had matched the same MO as Lourdes Gonzalez,
and spoke to the victim.
[Melissa] Suddenly, new policemen came to talk to me,
and they had me retell the whole story again
in excruciating detail.
I was a girl from Brooklyn,
and I was living in the city and working after college.
It was a beautiful June day, and I was happy.
I walked in Central Park.
The attack on the Central Park jogger was something that I saw on the news.
I read about in the newspaper. It was everywhere.
It terrified people.
And the day of, I just remember
I was being jumpy and antsy and just trying to be safe.
[tense music pulsing]
I didn't know somebody was watching me,
followed me home…
rang the bell,
told me he was the super's son coming to do the repairs.
I was so naive and I just opened the door.
He came in.
And he locked the door behind himself, and I was like, "Uh-oh."
[foreboding music playing]
I resisted.
He punched me in the face and broke my nose,
and I just completely stopped resisting.
I was being very careful
because I could recognize that he was crazy.
I did this separation thing where you rise above your body
and you separate and look down.
At some point after the sexual assault,
he says, "Your eyes or your life?"
And I said, "Well, no, I need my eyes."
And he tried to stab me around my face.
Lucky for me, the knife was not very big,
so I had some puncture marks on my face that I needed stitches for.
I think he was just all about the violence.
It was fun for him.
I was on the floor of the bathroom, kind of curled up in a fetal position.
And then he took all my money, all my jewelry,
and closed the door.
And then I just said to myself, "Right now, you feel numb."
"This is going to devastate you tomorrow."
"This is going to destroy you."
And it did.
[reporter] The manhunt is in full swing.
Police say they have a good description
of the man believed to be Lourdes Gonzalez's killer.
They say he could be the same man
who stabbed a woman last Sunday in her apartment on East 116th Street.
She survived.
Among the similarities in the two cases, police say, is
the suspect's fixation with his victims' eyes.
I knew I had a rapist with the same modus operandi, if you will.
The same weapon. He says the same thing, procures his victim in the same manner.
They were young females in their twenties.
But the second victim had been raped then killed.
[reporter] Friends and family of 24-year-old Lourdes Gonzalez
gathered to mourn her death today.
[Serrano Jr.] I remember her funeral.
I remember most vividly the church being full, full, full of people.
I really do not remember talking much to Carlos after that.
We were already separated at that point.
I think, you know, the easy fix
was for Carlos to go with Mom's side of the family,
and then me stay with my dad.
They didn't know who… who was gonna take care of me,
and I guess nobody wanted to take responsibility of taking care of me.
And I felt that.
And jumping from house to house, it was difficult for me.
[Serrano Jr.] I didn't really understand the decision
of having my sister go to Puerto Rico with my grandma.
[Serrano] I don't think that my dad was in the right state
to have me, an infant.
Carlos was like my best friend. We did everything together.
Had we been able to communicate and talk, even though we were young,
um, it would have gave us a support system.
[Vega] All this stuff that happened,
I don't feel protected no more.
The one person I did feel protected with was my moms.
[Petrak] On July 19th in the afternoon, in the sex crimes squad,
we received a call from the 19th Precinct that there had been another rape.
This rape occurred at 95th and Madison, close to Central Park.
We responded to the hospital and spoke to the victim.
She was seriously assaulted.
She had cuts on her face, cuts on her legs.
So you don't push.
I went to the sex crimes squad because it was one of the few places
that you could really make a difference in somebody's life.
I wanted to be there, helping the victims.
[woman] I pretty much grew up in New York City,
and I heard about violence a lot.
It's sort of a regular thing in New York, I mean…
When… When it's not you.
I had just turned 20, and I was taking art classes,
and I made my way home.
-[elevator dings] -So I took the elevator up.
And…
I'm standing in front of the front door to the apartment
with a key in my hand.
And I hear somebody coming…
[inhales deeply, exhales]
…with this strange kind of breathing.
It was loud and it was rapid.
This person walks past me,
and goes one flight up, and then comes down.
I said, "Where are you trying to go?"
And at that point, he lunges at me with a knife
and says, "I just want to talk to you."
He has this knife to the back of my neck.
So I let him in.
And he says, "Take your clothes off."
And I felt this reaction in me.
I… I knew I had to be calm
and take a soft approach,
just to get through.
And when it was over,
he ripped the phone out of the socket.
He ties me up.
That's when he said, "Your eyes or your life?"
And then he went and got a blade thing,
and started cutting under and above
my eyes, and…
[chilling music building]
I had hit my limit.
And, luckily, he stood up,
and he walked out of the room.
I want to forget that I never fought back.
That natural reaction,
to have to subdue that,
was a sacrifice that…
I… I never quite repaired that.
It's been an ongoing… thing.
[mysterious music playing]
[Petrak] You can never be sure it's the same,
but the more information that I received from the complainant,
the more I realized that we probably had the pattern.
You have the MO, the same thing over and over.
The perpetrator pushed into the apartment, raped, sodomized, robbed.
And he said, "Your eyes or your life?"
And he has stayed in the same area.
Criminals find something that works for them.
It worked once, it'll work again.
I knew I had a pattern rapist.
I tried not to bring my work home,
but there's a serial rapist out there.
You worry about your family, about your children.
You're drilling them constantly to be careful.
Your wife, you tell her all the time,
"Don't open the door till you know who it is."
Overabundance of caution, you know?
Our biggest worry at the time
was that this perpetrator would strike again,
and we'd have another murder, another rape.
[Rivera] It was put on the news.
Sketches were hung up over the neighborhood.
We knocked on doors and informed people in buildings what happened,
to see if anybody witnessed anything, if anybody recognized a sketch.
Police have set up a hotline for any information concerning these cases.
We'd established a tips hotline. They're gonna make phone calls.
"There's a guy that lives two doors down that fits that description."
"I never trusted him. He's kind of hinky."
Or, "I saw him with a pocketknife the other day cutting an orange."
You have to track down each one of these leads.
Unfortunately, in this case, none of them work out.
I knew women were raped in New York and all over the country.
I knew this happened.
[unsettling music playing]
But I didn't dwell on it.
You just try to live carefully.
You think it's gonna happen at night,
or a neighborhood that maybe is not so safe or whatever,
but it was just a beautiful afternoon.
You just don't think it will happen then.
I came up to New York to go to a small fashion school.
It was Saturday afternoon, and I heard a knock on the door.
I opened the door, and he put his hand on my face,
and I think kind of pushed me back.
You could feel the anger. You knew he was just a ball of rage.
He raped me, I think, twice, and I'm…
Part of the memory is something that sort of gets muddled,
or lost, or locked away.
He wanted to take my bank card and get money.
Then he said, "I don't trust you."
"I'm gonna have to tie you up or kill you."
I said, "I'll get you scarves."
So I had to walk by the door to go get the scarves.
It was a tiny studio apartment, but he let me have that much distance,
which was rare, 'cause he was on me.
Something said to me, "Get out, get out, get out."
"You've got one chance. Take it."
I ran out screaming.
He was inches behind me.
And I ran into the super. I don't know what I said.
"I was raped. He's right behind me." Or something like that.
Super caught him, and someone else caught him,
and then held him for the police.
[sirens wailing]
We had a call that a uniform had a perpetrator under arrest.
[man] He gives his name, Matias Reyes.
And without being asked or prompted,
he says, "I did it."
[Blando] He was an 18-year-old, quiet, 5'10", dark complexion.
Once the detectives were interviewing him,
they kind of realized
that this could be the perpetrator from the previous rapes and the homicide.
So we have a DA come down.
[man] They're beginning to see that the pattern is coming together
and he may be involved in the homicide.
All of them involved young women.
All of them involved either a ruse or a push-in.
All of them occurred within a 20-block area.
All of them involved the use of a knife, robbery, and rape.
They wanted me to come down to the station immediately to identify…
Just to take a look at a lineup. That's all they said.
Just one glimpse, and I knew who it was.
I was shaking with fear.
It was a visceral reaction.
There was no doubt that this was the guy.
No doubt.
[Amanda] I remember hearing that he was arrested,
and I had to go meet the detective.
Seeing him was shocking.
He was wearing the same shirt that he wore,
and it was very concrete.
Like, I… I knew that was him.
[Blando] He told detectives that he made love to these girls.
He's a sick individual.
[Girgenti] He says that he committed multiple rapes,
but Reyes denies any involvement with the Lourdes Gonzalez homicide.
And at that point, Reyes is shown a sketch
that had been put together from the children of Lourdes Gonzalez.
Matias looks at it, and the detective says,
"Look familiar?"
And Matias says, "Yeah, it looks like me."
And looked at the detectives and said, "I'm fucked."
Matias Reyes begins to give a confession
to the murder of Lourdes Gonzalez.
We get it on video.
At times, he would rant and rave, really angry.
And at other times, he was remorseful.
He'd say, "Mommy," screaming.
And she was, like, tossed in the air screaming.
He says that Lourdes Gonzalez, she grabbed the knife,
but she was shaking, she was scared.
He says that he took the knife off her,
and that's how he eventually killed her.
When this occurred, I had a nine-year-old and a one-year-old.
So I could relate to the need to protect your children.
You have to feel for her.
The idea that someone could be so brutalized,
to be stabbed nine times, it made me sick.
Matias Reyes, he's someone who has impulsive rage.
He's a ticking time bomb.
[Blando] He was formally charged with four counts of rape, first degree,
sodomy, burglary,
and assault with a deadly weapon,
and one count of homicide.
Locally, 18-year-old Matias Reyes is charged with a series of brutal rapes
on Manhattan's East Side, one of which ended in murder.
When I saw he murdered Lourdes,
that's what hurt the most, was that I was alive and she was not.
[Serrano Jr.] I remember receiving the news
and feeling a… a sense of relief.
[Vega] I remember seeing it in the papers that he got caught.
When I seen the picture…
I remember him.
So I already knew that that was him.
[Rivera] I get a phone call from my sergeant. She says,
"Irma, does Matias Reyes ring a bell to you?"
I go, "Yeah."
On April 17th, 1989, I had his name as a possible suspect
on a case that I had involving a rape
that occurred in Central Park on 106th Street on the East Side.
My case in Central Park was two days prior to the Central Park jogger case.
[suspenseful music playing]
We interviewed the victim, and one thing she noticed
was that he had fresh stitches under his chin.
Back then in 1989,
a lot of the hospitals used to have a log in the emergency room,
who came in and what they came in for.
So what we did was we went to every hospital.
We checked the log.
There was one guy who has fresh stitches on his chin,
and the name on that particular entry was "Matias Reyes."
I did background checks. He had no criminal record at all.
There was no photo on file for him. There was nothing.
And then my boss pulls me off the case and puts me into the child abuse team.
I had no choice, so I was kind of a little pissed off.
So it's like the case just… just died.
[Parrino] It's unfortunate that the leadership of the Special Victims Unit
pulled Irma off this case and put her on another case.
But you have to remember, this is 1989,
and we're seeing tremendous, big crime waves
that are pushing our resources to the edge.
[Rivera] The name Matias, you know, it always stuck in my head.
When Sergeant McLaughlin called me that day and told me that
that was the person who killed…
When she told me it was the person
that killed that mother in front of the kids,
it made me feel so horrible.
And it made me feel horrible for years and years.
I've always thought about them.
If I had caught him on that case,
I know that things would have been completely different.
All these other victims would have not been victimized.
Those kids wouldn't have lost their mother.
And that's the part that bothered me the most.
You know…
[exhales]
[Petrak] Cases where children are involved,
it's tough on detectives.
Irma, as far as I'm concerned,
one of the best detectives I ever worked with.
She really cared about what she was doing.
[reporter] You are looking at a man police believe is
a rapist and a cold-blooded killer,
18-year-old Matias Reyes.
[Rivera] So I went into work that day, and when I got into the office,
I was shown a picture of him.
When I see his picture, I go, "That's Matias Reyes? I know him!"
I knew him since he was a little boy. Like, I knew him.
He worked around the corner from the 23 Precinct.
[reporter] In this bodega,
Reyes served coffee to cops from the nearby precinct.
For me, he's a good guy. One of the best.
I was in the 23 from 1982 to 1987.
So I… I saw him all the time.
I never knew his name, I just knew him as the kid that worked in the store.
Then I started thinking, "Wait."
"I definitely brought Carlos and Tony to that store to buy them candy."
I know he wasn't there then, but still…
Ugh.
That bothers me.
[Girgenti] We did learn from talking to Irma Rivera
that they had identified a person by the name of Matias Reyes
as the possible perpetrator in another case.
But, unfortunately, the victim left the State of New York,
and any attempt to find the victim was unsuccessful.
'89, it was kind of the frontier for the use of DNA.
We submitted DNA evidence samples from the three rapes
and the fourth rape and homicide of Lourdes Gonzalez to the FBI.
All of the cases matched the DNA of Matias Reyes.
And so Matias Reyes decided to plead guilty.
[journalist] This sentencing hearing doesn't pass without incident.
Reyes ends up turning his rage on his defense lawyer,
and assaults him in open court.
[Melissa] Who would do that?
How could you sabotage yourself in that way?
But he couldn't control his violence.
[Girgenti] He was sentenced to 33 and a third years.
Eventually, he became eligible for parole.
He has the option of coming out. He has the option of coming out.
So how am I supposed to live a life knowing he could potentially come out?
Why?
[Parrino] At this point, we think this is the end
of the criminal reign of Matias Reyes.
But we were to learn later
that there were other crimes that he committed
that we did not know that he did.
[foreboding music playing]
[Rivera] 2002, Matias Reyes called the district attorney's office
and wanted to speak to someone
regarding information he wanted to give them.
[reporter] A man has come forward by the name of Matias Reyes.
He claims that he alone attacked and raped
the woman in Central Park back in 1989.
I just rolled up behind her,
and I attacked her with a stick and hit her head.
And I dragged her into the bushes.
Then I raped her there.
Matias Reyes claims that he's involved in the 1989 Central Park jogger case.
It's not shocking and unusual for somebody to interject themselves
in a media case, whether they're involved or not.
The unusual piece of this was his claim to act alone.
[faint clamoring]
[Weinman] By the time Matias Reyes came forward
and said that he alone was responsible for the rape of Trisha Meili,
known as the Central Park jogger,
five other young men had been convicted
and served long prison sentences for this crime.
They always said that they were innocent
and always proclaimed it whenever possible.
And in fact, one of them, Korey Wise, actually encountered Reyes in prison
and had some kind of altercation.
And that may have contributed to why Reyes came forward.
[Parrino] Eventually, the NYPD decides to form
an investigative task force that I led
to look into Matias Reyes's role
in the Central Park jogger case.
We know that there was a John Doe's DNA
in that case that was never identified.
So they got DNA samples from Matias Reyes and matched them up.
Matias Reyes absolutely did rape the Central Park jogger, Patricia Meili,
because it was his DNA that was recovered
on the morning she was brought to the hospital.
I wish we had had a DNA data bank back in '89, '90, and '91,
because that would have allowed us to connect all of these cases.
It's not just about convicting defendants.
It's also about exonerating the innocent.
[Parrino] So with the new information that Matias Reyes is the unknown DNA,
and that he says he acted alone,
the five defendants' cases were vacated,
and rightfully so.
It's a people's victory. That's what we have to draw from it.
[crowd cheering]
[Parrino] Unfortunately, this will be a black mark
on NYPD's relations with the Black community
for years to come.
[Serrano Jr.] I was happy for the five men that were falsely accused,
but it really did nothing for me
other than rehash some emotions, and feelings, and memories.
[tense music playing]
-[reporter] Did you attack the jogger? -Yes.
He was on 20/20, and I'm like, "What?"
You know like, "What the fuck?"
Having the past resurface is like life telling you, "You know what?"
"This is always gonna be there,
and there's no such thing as a fresh start."
I just got angry all over again.
[Weinman] The injustice that was done to the Central Park Five needed to be undone,
but a parallel injustice happened to all of Matias Reyes's other victims.
And so in 2019, I wrote a piece for The Cut
called "Before, and After, the Jogger."
I ended up speaking not only to Lourdes's children,
but I also spoke with the three women
whose sexual assaults Reyes was convicted of.
These were the people who were written out of the story
of what we now put under the umbrella of "the Central Park jogger case."
[Serrano] She deserved her story to be told.
And what better way to tell it than with her kids?
I just…
I thank her for everything she did for me.
I always feel bad that she never got to meet
what an amazing woman her mom was.
[Serrano] Just the stories that I get from my brothers…
She was an amazing person.
Regardless of whether she's here physically,
I feel like she's guided me.
[Serrano Jr.] This happened in 1989.
So any sports I played, that was my jersey number.
Just paying homage to my mom.
I feel like
she was just somebody put in my path
to lead me to something bigger.
She told me to value education and make sure that I set a good example.
And I did.
And I kind of help instill those things in my own kids now.
[Vega] I felt guilty.
I went through those stages of just being angry, and…
blaming myself and blaming others.
It's done a lot of damage to me because…
it was just destroying me mentally.
[Rivera] Everybody talks about the case that haunts you.
The case of Lourdes Gonzalez haunted me for years and years and years.
[Rivera] Hi, Carlos.
So nice to see you.
So sorry.
So it was important for me to meet Carlos.
This case bothered me so much.
I had his name on another case.
I want to apologize to you,
because I feel like if I had gotten him, this wouldn't have happened.
[Vega] I was never mad at her.
I would never want her to live life like that.
The only person I'm angry at is Reyes.
-[Rivera] Right. -Reyes deserves…
He deserves misery.
Don't give your power away to him at all.
My life has been a mess.
I've been incarcerated, in and out.
How many felonies do you have?
-I got… I got three gun possessions. -Okay.
A homicide.
I became a product of the streets.
And there's always a beef. And there's always retribution.
And I grew up wanting to destroy anything that destroys me and my family.
And that's a never-ending cycle.
Your life is not over. You can still do a lot with yourself.
Your mother wanted to give you such a good childhood.
Now is your time to honor your mother and have a good manhood.
Yeah.
I'm still striving for better.
I'm still a work in progress.
I'm on the path of… of doing better, and…
my mom deserves it.
[Melissa] I was aware that there were two other women victims, survivors.
But we didn't get to meet, didn't get to talk.
So I wrote a letter, and I said,
"We all went through the same thing, and it's absolutely horrible,
but it would be nice if we could be there for each other,
because only we know and understand what each of us has been through."
[somber music playing]
-[Melissa] Hey! -[Amanda] Hi!
[Melissa] And we all decided to meet.
We get together multiple times over the years.
Every year, the date would come,
and I'd say, "Forget what the date is. Forget what happened."
"Just go about your life. Forget."
And last year, I thought, "Why?"
So I invited my friends for dinner,
and I had a "Fuck You, I'm Still Here" party.
-I did! -[Amanda] Awesome.
Melissa, Meg, and I have this friendship.
We all are connected by this horrific story,
but we're also connected by love.
I thought to myself, "These other girls went through the same thing I did."
-Yeah. -"We have to become friends."
-It was, like, revolutionary to meet you. -[Melissa] Yeah.
Having them, I feel very lucky.
I don't know what I would've done without them.
[Melissa] Lourdes is one of us.
She is a fighter.
I've thought about her a lot.
I really felt for her, and I really felt for her family.
[Meg] Lourdes isn't here to speak.
So we wanted to kind of honor her and her family,
and to say that we never forgot Lourdes.
I want people to know her, and be like,
"She was more than just this little footnote."
"Lourdes was important."
I don't think the NYPD or the City of New York ever saw this coming.
[dark, menacing music playing]
-[man] Go, go, go! -[crowd clamoring]
[officer 1] We're heading down towards One World Trade Center.
[MacLeod] My aunt JoAnn worked in the North Tower.
"How the fuck am I getting up there to get her out?"
[officer 2] The second building's on fire!
78th floor of a building is on fire, and I don't know how to get out of here.
[officer 3] Holy crap!
The tower's coming down!
My lieutenant says, "Fucking run!"
[man] Get out of here!
I see a bunch of EMS. He goes, "We're gonna go back into the building."
"People in there need to be removed."
I was like, "Okay, I'm not gonna have a fireman embarrass me. I'm gonna stay."
One thing about 9/11, it helped me get used to the smell of death.
You find out what you're really made of.
You find out what it is to be a team player.
You're not dead. Get to work.
[dramatic outro music pulsing] team player.