Vanished: "I'm Gonna Find You"

This is Deborah Roberts.

You're about to hear the first episode of our newest podcast series from 2020 on ABC Audio, Banished, What Happened to Vanessa.

It investigates the mysterious disappearance of Vanessa Guillen, a soldier who was stationed at Fort Hood in Texas.

The search for Vanessa and the shocking details that were discovered would eventually lead to a reckoning in the military.

We'll be releasing the series right here on the 2020 feed over the next few weeks.

Or, if you can't wait, you can get new episodes early by following Vanished What Happened to Vanessa on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Now, here's episode one.

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April 22nd, 2020.

Just before 6 a.m., U.S.

Army soldier Vanessa Guillen is in her barracks at Fort Hood.

It's a huge military base in the middle of Texas.

She gets a call on her cell phone, answers, and is marked present for duty in that morning's roll call.

Vanessa is 20 years old.

She's a private first class.

Her life as a soldier is highly regimented.

Every day, there are multiple check-ins to account for her whereabouts.

It's the early weeks of COVID.

but Vanessa is still working in person as a small arms mechanic.

She's been given a work assignment and doesn't expect it to take long.

Higher-ups have been more lax about uniforms because of the pandemic.

So today she wears civilian clothes, a black t-shirt, purple leggings, and Nikes.

At around 8 a.m., she texts a friend, a fellow soldier.

They're supposed to meet up for a hike that afternoon.

Then, just after 9 a.m., she texts her boyfriend back in Houston, Juan Cruz.

They'd recently gotten engaged.

The last message she told me,

I have to work in a few minutes.

And that was the last message she'd send me.

At 10.03 in the morning, Vanessa arrives at work.

She sets down her bank card, her ID, and her keys.

Vanessa gets to work on one of the tasks she's been assigned.

And at 10.23, she sends a text confirming the serial number of a machine gun.

It's the last text she sends that day.

After that, Vanessa Guillen goes dark.

She never comes back for her bank card or her keys.

Vanessa and her boyfriend Juan usually texted and talked on the phone throughout the day.

But when Juan sends Vanessa a text around lunchtime, she doesn't respond.

And then he notices his texts are not being delivered, which means Vanessa isn't reading them.

That seems strange.

She's always so responsive.

Even when her phone battery was low, she'd let him know.

See, I knew something was wrong because I'll check her social media.

I was checking everything.

I was like, man, hopefully she tweeted something or liked something.

I was just checking, checking, but nothing.

Juan reaches out to Vanessa's older sister, Myra, asking if she's heard from Vanessa.

And I'm like, well, I haven't tried today.

I've been really busy at work, but let me try.

So I was like, let me call her, check up on her.

And I called, and it went short to voicemail.

So I was like, well, let me message her.

Maybe the message just goes through.

And nothing.

And I know she doesn't turn off her phone.

Vanessa's parents haven't noticed that she stopped communicating.

They don't have any reason to be worried about Vanessa just yet.

But around this time, her father, Rogelio gets a sharp pain in his chest.

Rogelio says he feels like he's running out of air, like he's about to stop breathing.

Later, he'll look back at this moment as a bad omen, the moment when he had an intuition, something was really wrong.

Myra has been waiting hours for her sister sister to get back to her.

She decides she can't just sit around and wait any longer.

So she grabs her purse, keys, and an extra set of clothes and sets out for Fort Hood with one of her sisters and Juan to look for Vanessa.

It's about a three-hour drive from Houston.

All night long, Myra keeps texting her sister.

Her messages are short and they get more and more desperate.

8.35 p.m.

Hello.

11 p.m.

Vanessa.

1.04 a.m.

Bro.

And more than 24 hours after her first text, I'm going to find you, I promise.

Vanessa is one of six kids from a very tight-knit family.

While Myra, the oldest, sets off in the night to look for her, Vanessa's 16-year-old sister, Lupe, is sleeping.

But when Lupe wakes up the next morning, it's like a storm has blown through their small home.

I mean, I was like, what's going on?

Like, why didn't my mom and my dad sleep in the couch?

Why is my little brother sleeping in the other room?

Why didn't my sister leave at almost midnight?

What's wrong?

Then I texted my other sister.

She was like, don't tell them that I told you, but we think Vanessa is missing.

And I was like, how can she go missing on a military military base?

That's ridiculous.

Go find her and better find her.

Vanessa's family fears something is terribly wrong.

Maybe she's been in some sort of accident.

Their heads are spinning with questions.

Where is Vanessa?

Why aren't they hearing from her?

Soon, their worries go to a darker place.

Had someone done something to Vanessa?

Who would want to hurt her?

And why couldn't the U.S.

military find one of its own?

From ABC Audio and 2020, this is Vanished: What happened to Vanessa?

I'm ABC News correspondent John Kinones.

Episode 1: I'm Gonna Find You.

A few days after Vanessa's disappearance, I was talking to my nephew in my hometown of San Antonio, and he asked me if I'd seen the local news reports about this young soldier who had gone missing.

She was Texan, Tejana, Mexican-American, like my own family.

She looked familiar.

Vanessa was 5'3 with a heart-shaped face and long dark hair.

She often wore it pulled back in a ponytail.

She had tattoos on her left arm, including one of a cross with a flower in honor of her Catholic faith.

I started doing some research and quickly realized Vanessa's story had a lot of layers.

It happened on a military base, and those are difficult places to get inside and report on.

Her story gnawed at me.

Why couldn't the military find a soldier on one of its own bases?

It was just bizarre.

So I started reporting on Vanessa's disappearance for 2020.

And I discovered that as much as this is a story about Vanessa, it's also a story about her family's quest to find her.

Her youngest sister, Lupe, was only 16 at the time, but...

She became a forceful voice pushing for her sister to be found.

I believe she's still in there and she's suffering, but she's still alive.

And I want her back like that.

I want her alive.

And eventually, the nation and even the world would take notice.

People joined protests, demanding more be done to find Vanessa.

Artists painted murals with her face in cities all across Texas and in other places, too: Wichita, Kansas, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C.

Where do we want Vanessa?

Where do we want her?

Now, Emma saw Vanessa!

Vanessa's story went viral on social media.

How did one missing soldier become a movement?

Well, it all starts with Vanessa's family.

In the summer of 2020, a few months after her disappearance, I drove to Houston to visit them.

The Guyanne family lives in a working-class neighborhood in East Houston that reminds me of the barrio where I grew up on the west side of San Antonio.

My father's side of the family has been in Texas for seven generations.

Like Vanessa, I was drawn to the military.

I joined ROTC in high school and college.

I thought the military would be my way out of poverty.

My dad was a janitor at my high school with a third grade education.

My mom cleaned houses in Alamo Heights, the rich part of town.

In Houston, as I pull up to the Guillenn's driveway, it's packed with cars.

People are bringing them food and cookies.

Vanessa's mother, Gloria, meets me at the front door holding a rosary.

I walk in and smell fresh tortillas, again reminding me of home.

They immediately invite me to stay for lunch.

Gloria and Rogelio are originally from a farming village in central Mexico.

They came to Houston in 1997, a couple of years before Vanessa was born.

And this is the city where they've been raising their four daughters and two sons.

Rogelio works as a machine operator while Gloria stays at home with the kids.

She considered Vanessa her second daughter, her miracle child.

Gloria tells me that when Vanessa was 15 days old, she almost died of meningitis.

A nurse told her to give up, but Vanessa lived.

Gloria believes the Virgin of Guadalupe saved Vanessa's life.

She's the patron saint of Mexico.

The Guillennes are deeply Catholic.

An altar honoring the Virgin of Guadalupe is one of the first things you see when you walk into their home.

We had the same kind of altar in my home.

The Guiennes altar has candles, handwritten notes, and a Mexican flag.

But it also includes so much of Vanessa, her graduation sash and cap, and sunflowers, one of her favorite flowers.

On the wall above the altar, you can see paintings and photographs of Vanessa.

Does this make you feel good?

Los escentirien esto, Christe.

Yes, she says, it makes me feel good because this is where she was raised, and I feel she's here with me.

Santa Maria Madre de Simadren esto reda senoro pruno Vanessa.

When Vanessa went missing, Gloria would pray the rosary at this altar, pleading for her daughter's safe return.

A mother praying for the return of her strong and athletic daughter.

On another day, I meet up with Gloria at a place that meant a lot to Vanessa.

So, this is where she ran track, aquí and avocrianda.

You ran with her?

Uste corrella cone?

Las dos juntas simpleces no exercisio.

Perora que no estálla.

We're at the running track at Vanessa's old high school.

It's a rainy, overcast day, and Gloria tells me that she and Vanessa went running here together a couple of times.

Vanessa, it seems, was always exercising.

What kind of student was she?

Vanessa was an excellent student, Gloria tells me, especially in math and writing.

She studied a lot and was a varsity athlete.

She hoped athletics could be her path to college.

She played on no less than three soccer teams and ran cross-country.

She even ran marathons.

Gloria remembers on school nights, Vanessa would run laps on this track, sometimes until 7 or 7:30 at night.

Running and soccer were her life.

Ela sovida.

Ela sobida, ela sovida.

Eya é muyjuerte.

Siemplo comu juerte.

Solo deo sa porque.

Vanessa was always so strong, Gloria says.

She loved going to the gym and lifting heavy weights.

Squats and deadlifts were her favorite.

On social media, Vanessa described herself as a gemaholic.

Vanessa's father, Rogelio, would tell his daughter that she focused too much on exercise.

He wanted her to take time for other things, too.

Rogelio remembers how he and Vanessa would sometimes play-fight, and she would beat him.

Vanessa was strong.

She knew how to defend herself, Rogelio says.

Gloria tells me Vanessa had a dream of playing professional soccer someday.

But from the time she was around 10 years old, Vanessa had another dream.

She wanted to join the U.S.

military.

Her mother was completely against it.

The military, that's not for women, she said.

It's for men.

But Vanessa persisted, and when she turned 18, she told her mother, I'm going to enlist.

You didn't want her to go.

Gloria says she begged her daughter not to sign those enlistment papers, but Vanessa pushed back.

She loved her country and wanted to defend it.

Gloria spent the rest of the day in tears.

Gloria's reaction didn't exactly surprise me.

In my experience, Latino families are proud to have their sons serve in the military.

But daughters, that's a newer thing.

Vanessa's younger sister Lupe remembers when Vanessa told her the news.

And we're like, why did you sign?

And then she just said, I want better opportunities not only for me, but for my family.

I want to be someone in life.

I want to get a career because not only do I want to protect the nation, I I want to protect y'all because y'all are family.

Family.

It meant everything to Vanessa.

She was especially close to her mother.

So the fact that she enlisted despite Gloria's resistance, it makes me think Vanessa was her own woman, that she was strong mentally as well as physically.

If she wanted to do something, she was going to do it.

Gloria says Vanessa told her, I have been given a mission and I'm going to fulfill it.

Vanessa signed her papers and was placed in the Army's delayed entry program for most of her senior year.

When she enlisted, the Army gave her a symbolic scholarship check for future college expenses, the amount $114,000.

Vanessa's sister Lupe told me this check was a really big deal to Vanessa.

When they gave her her check, she put it on the room with every other medal for her marathon medals, her honorable medals, her cross-country, everything.

She just sticked it there.

So every time she used to go to sleep in our house, she used to see the check.

She was that proud of herself.

She finished high school on a high note.

Her family says she graduated near the top of her class.

She went to her senior prom in a green sequin gown with her best friend.

Emerald green was one of her favorite colors.

In her graduation picture, she looks happy and relaxed.

Her long dark hair falls down to her waist.

She wears a white sash with an emblem of Texas over her graduation robe.

In blue letters it says class of 2018.

Two days after graduation, she says goodbye to her family and leaves for basic training in South Carolina.

She doesn't know it yet, but her military dreams are about to take a dark turn.

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Vanessa heads to basic training.

The 11-week training is intense and physically demanding.

There's one video where it's pitch dark outside and you see Vanessa squatting and flipping over this huge tire.

Vanessa's older sister Myra remembers how Vanessa loved her early time in the military.

Her very first training, she didn't even want to come back.

She was that happy.

Even when she got home, she was like a new person.

She was like her skin was literally glowing.

She was a bit chubbier than usual.

She's always been skinny and she was just happy.

Vanessa finished basic training in August of 2018.

Myra flew to South Carolina for the ceremony.

She remembers searching for Vanessa in the crowd.

Eventually, she saw me.

I just heard her yell out my name, and she just started running towards me.

And I felt like a mama was like, I have a baby running towards me.

And she just started crying.

And it was just like, it was a really beautiful moment that I'll never forget.

To mark the occasion, Vanessa posted a picture of herself on social media.

It reminds me of one of those class photos you'd get in high school.

Vanessa in front of an American flag.

She's wearing green military fatigues.

Her last name, Guillen, is embroidered in capital letters on her lapel.

The caption she wrote with her post says, Gracias adios por este logro.

Thank you, God, for this achievement.

No one could ever imagine that less than two years later, her family and the Army would use this very photo of Vanessa in her missing persons alert.

And it's this portrait of Vanessa that I saw framed on the altar her family kept in their home.

The one where Gloria prayed every night for her daughter's safe return.

In December 2018, Vanessa gets her first official assignment.

She's heading to Fort Hood in her home state of Texas.

Her job is to repair and maintain small arms equipment.

Now, Fort Hood is one of the largest military bases in the United States.

It's roughly the size of New York City, including all five boroughs.

It's the kind of place where the whole town basically exists to support the military community.

Fort Hood has lots of amenities.

There's a bowling alley and a golf course, seven elementary schools and two middle schools.

But Fort Hood also has a troubled reputation.

Its motto is The Great Place, but it's been the site of controversy as well as tragedy.

In 2009, a U.S.

Army major stationed at Fort Hood killed 13 people and injured dozens of bystanders.

I remember being in Austin when the news of the mass shooting broke, and I immediately rented a car and headed to Fort Hood to cover the story for ABC News.

I'm here at 3 Corps headquarters, very close to the processing center where yesterday's massacre took place.

Today, 2020 was given exclusive access to secure areas of this sprawling base where we visited some of the wounded and their families.

As it turns out, Fort Hood has faced multiple scandals around allegations of sexual harassment and sexual misconduct.

In 2015, a Fort Hood sergeant who also served as a sexual harassment and assault advocate was convicted of running a prostitution ring.

He pled guilty to multiple charges, including conspiracy to solicit prostitution.

There have also been questions about the alarming number of soldier deaths at Fort Hood, including death by suicide.

In 2020, the year Vanessa went missing, 13 Fort Hood soldiers reportedly died by suicide.

This included the case of Sergeant Elder Fernandez, who killed himself after reporting sexual abuse to his command.

The Army later said it couldn't substantiate his allegations.

In the four years before Vanessa's disappearance, More Fort Hood soldiers died in homicides than in battle.

And in 2020, there were at least 28 Fort Hood soldiers who died, vanished, or in one case, turned up dead after going missing.

At the time, the Secretary of the Army, Ryan McCarthy, held a press conference.

He acknowledged how Fort Hood had a concerning record compared to other bases.

The numbers are high here.

They are the highest in most cases for sexual assault and harassment and murders for our entire formation, the U.S.

Army.

Secretary McCarthy said the Army was committed to investigating the root causes.

Still, when Vanessa learned she'd be continuing her military service at Fort Hood, she was happy.

It meant that she'd be stationed close to her family.

Here again, her sister, Myra.

And sure enough, she was even happier that she was going to be stationed in Texas, close to home.

And we all were.

We were, you know, just three hours away.

It's nothing.

And the fact that she was going to be able to come over in the weekends and everything, everyone was like, okay, everything's good.

Vanessa quickly made friends with a few soldiers in her unit, including a guy named C.J.

Landy.

She was a very energetic person.

Like, she didn't talk to too many people, but said we worked on the same team.

And I guess apparently I'm like kind of funny at some times.

And like she'd crack up all the time.

Like her laugh was very, very contagious.

Most weekends, Vanessa drove the three hours southeast from the base to see her family and boyfriend back in Houston.

But within about a month of starting at Fort Hood, Myra and the rest of the family noticed a change in Vanessa.

She looked tired with bags under her eyes.

She didn't want to eat.

She was losing weight.

Sometimes I would just catch her

and I would ask her, like, are you okay?

And she would be like, yeah, it's nothing.

I recall going back and there was times where she would try to tell me that

she didn't want to be at Forehead.

And I remember this one time she said,

I don't like it here.

And I hope one day you understand.

And that really took me off.

And I started asking myself,

what's the problem?

And as I would ask her, I would try to pressure her but she would just retract and say it's nothing forget it never mind I just hope one day you understand

Vanessa's younger sister Lupe gets emotional when she tells me about this one time when Vanessa came home and she was really upset

one time she just laid down and she just started crying And I couldn't ask her, what's wrong?

What's happening?

Something was wrong.

Her personality changed.

She was not the same.

You could see her because she was always happy.

Yet she just came into forth and everything just went wrong.

Looking back, Lupe says she feels regret.

She wishes she had asked Vanessa more questions.

But at the time, Vanessa told her, you're too little.

You wouldn't understand.

Lupe was four years younger than Vanessa.

In February, a few months before her disappearance, Vanessa does confide in one person,

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Vanessa and her mother had always been close.

So one day, a few months before Vanessa disappeared, Gloria approached her asking for the truth.

Why was she so unhappy?

Vanessa agreed to talk, but said her mother needed to be strong.

that the news was going to be hard for her to hear.

And that's when Vanessa told her she was being sexually harassed by a sergeant at Fort Hood.

Gloria was devastated and also furious.

She told Vanessa to report what was happening.

Why didn't she tell the authorities?

They wouldn't believe them.

Gloria told her daughter, give me the name of that miserable person and I will go to Fort Hood to report him.

I will fight.

But Vanessa told her mother, look, it's a military base.

You can't just go inside.

So let's get a lawyer, Gloria said.

I can't, Vanessa told her.

Military laws are different.

Also, I made an oath to defend my country.

I'm brave, she said.

I will fix it

for For Vanessa to file a sexual harassment complaint would have meant reporting it up the chain of command.

And it would have been up to the unit commander to decide whether someone was prosecuted or not.

And a person Vanessa claimed was abusing her was further up that chain of command than she was.

Vanessa's family says she feared retaliation.

So, Gloria held what Vanessa told her close to her chest.

Gloria would later learn from an Army Command report that Vanessa had informally reported her sexual harassment.

The Army determined Vanessa had been sexually harassed on two separate occasions and that her supervisor and other leaders failed to take appropriate action.

In March 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic put the U.S.

in lockdown.

As an Army soldier, Vanessa was classified as an essential worker, so she continued to report for duty at Fort Hood.

On weekends, she kept her routine of driving the three hours back to Houston to see her family and also her boyfriend, Juan Cruz.

He recalls Vanessa being frustrated around this time.

All the gyms were closed.

Remember, Vanessa was a gymaholic.

She loved working out.

It was her stress release.

So she came up with a creative way of getting her reps in.

One time we were outside, you know, I'm skinny.

And she would be like, let me carry you so I can do squats.

And I was like, okay.

And she will carry me on her shoulders.

She will make like squats.

And that would be really funny.

About a month before she disappeared, Juan proposes to Vanessa.

By this time, they'd been dating for about six years.

Juan remembers going to Vanessa's parents' house and telling Gloria and Rogelio, I want to ask for your daughter's hand in marriage, if you allow me to.

They said yes, and everyone celebrated.

She was just smiling.

She was holding my hand like this.

She was beside me.

She was just smiling, looking at her parents.

We were all happy.

Gloria told me she noticed Vanessa seemed calmer after she got engaged.

In so many ways, Vanessa's life was just beginning.

She wanted to start a family, to go to college.

Her contract with the Army was set to end in June of 2021.

She and Juan planned to get married a few months later, in November of that same year.

But all of that was still more than a year away.

So in the meantime, she kept her routine.

Her last visit home was in April.

It was a Sunday night, April 19, 2020, and she and Juan ordered takeout.

They brought food over to Vanessa's parents' house.

As Vanessa was leaving, Gloria remembers standing in front of the altar to the Virgin of Guadalupe, telling Vanessa how much she loved her and kissing her.

Gloria didn't know it, but it would be the last time she would see Vanessa, the last time she embraced her.

She remembers the exact moment.

It was 10:40 p.m.

Three days later, Juan and Myra would notice Vanessa had stopped responding to their texts.

They'd rush to the base to try to find her.

Gloria, too, began frantically texting her daughter.

Where are you, honey?

I'm dying of fear.

Are you alright?

Tell me.

Answer.

Where are you, my sweetheart?

Please tell me.

I don't care if you did something, my sweetheart.

The only thing I want is to see you and to know that you're okay.

I'm going crazy out of desperation as I don't know where you are.

For the next two months, Vanessa's family would pressure the military to find her.

They felt very much in the dark.

They marched in the street with posters and they drew others to their cause.

Vanessa's friends, volunteer investigators, actors, athletes, politicians.

The roar of their protests grew bigger and louder.

Vanessa had gone silent, but soon other people started speaking up in her name.

What started out as a story about a single soldier who had mysteriously vanished turned into something

much bigger.

I am Vanessa Guyan.

You'll soi Vanessa Guyen.

I am Vanessa Guyan.

And at the center of it all, one family search for a beloved sister and daughter.

They weren't getting answers and they weren't the only ones.

That's next time.

Vanished, What Happened to Vanessa is a production of ABC Audio in 2020, hosted by me, John Quignones.

Produced by Nancy Rosenbaum, Sabrina Fang, Shane McKeon, and Nora Ritchie.

Fact-checking and production help from Audrey Most Tech and Annalisa Linder.

Our story editor is Tracy Samuelson.

Our supervising producer is Sasha Aslanian.

Music and Mixing by Evan Viola.

Special thanks to Katie Dendos, Janice Johnston, Denise Martinez-Raymundo, Natalie Cardenas, Rachel Walker, Brian Mazurski, and Michelle Margulis.

Josh Cohen is our Director of Podcast programming.

Laura Mayer is our executive producer.

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