Honduras awaits verdict in disappearance case that exposed sex trafficking ring

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Relatives, lawyers and women's rights groups in Honduras demanded justice Monday as they awaited a verdict in a sex-trafficking case surrounding the 2022 disappearance of Angie Peña, which they say exposed the impunity and corruption that allow widespread gender violence in the Central American country.

Four men are on trial for crimes related to Peña’s disappearance. A Honduran court is expected to announce a verdict Monday.

Two U.S. citizens, Harold Green and William James Murdock, face human trafficking charges, while another U.S. citizen, Gary Lee Johnston, and Honduran Gustavo Trejo are accused of criminal association.

The case has implicated public officials and exposed a criminal ring known as “Delta Teams” that has drawn comparison to the Jeffrey Epstein network in a country with high rates of gender violence and low conviction rates for related crimes.

Lawyers representing the family have questioned the lack of transparency of the investigation and trial, which was not open to the press or general public. Peña's family said it has received death threats, and the August killing of Dereck McNeil, a key protected witness, further exposed the dangers of seeking justice in Honduras.

“There are many more women and girls who have been victims of trafficking networks, and those cases are silenced, they go unpunished,” said Kenia Paz, a lawyer for the Legal Team for Human Rights who represents Peña's family.

She said the case has exposed a criminal network “beyond what we can even imagine” and called for the state to provide answers on what happened to Peña.

Peña, 22, disappeared on Jan. 1, 2022, after taking a Jet Ski ride while on vacation with her family in Roatan, an island off the coast of Honduras. Initially, authorities investigated her disappearance as a possible accident, but the case expanded into a trafficking investigation after the Jet Ski she used was found in Belize, some 90 nautical miles (170 kilometers) away.

In August 2022, authorities searching Johnston’s house in Roatan in connection with Peña's disappearance found a minor there. Johnston was accused of commercial sex trafficking and child pornography and sentenced to 32 years in a case separate from the proceeding involving Peña.

In April 2024, authorities ordered arrest warrants for four more people, including Green, Murdock and Trejo. Honduran authorities have sought an Interpol notice for the fourth, U.S. citizen Antony Frank Grayson.

The Honduran public prosecutor’s office has said the suspects are all part of a sex trafficking network that included minors and that the group also carried out other crimes, including drug trafficking. It alleges police and at least one judge helped facilitate the criminal network, without naming the officials.

Defense lawyers for the accused have denied involvement and requested an acquittal. McNeil, the protected witness who was killed, alleged further corruption within a special unit of the public prosecutor’s office known as the ATIC. In videos made public after his death, he accused the unit of leaking information about the case and being linked to drug trafficking networks. The ATIC director has denied any corruption and said that the unit has not been involved in investigating Peña’s disappearance.

Julissa Villanueva, a former vice minister of security who was involved in the investigation, said that prosecutors have mishandled the case from the start. They have tried to push a “tunnel vision” explanation of what happened, she said, that hides the larger criminal structure around it, which she compared to Epstein’s sex trafficking network.

An analysis by Honduran media found that the country was mentioned more than 100 times in the Epstein files, including multiple references to Roatan.

Villanueva called for justice in the case.

“There are connections with other larger networks, and only by making them public will this family be able to get justice,” she said. “It’s not just Angie. It’s all those women around Angie. There are many.”

A verdict is scheduled for 1:30 p.m. local time in Honduras (19:30 GMT).

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