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Understanding 9/11tv The Desperate Hours MSNBC December 12, 2015 12:00am-1:01am PST
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has the jury reached a verdict? we, the jury, find the defendant -- i was totally swept off my feet. >> they had a lovely, lucky life. once an actress, she had met the man of her dreams, a charismatic son from a legendary family. three children in an enchanted country home. >> it is kind of like one of these fairy tale stories. >> and then it was gone. splendor turned to terror. >> immediately we're hit from behind. he just points the gun at my forehead. >> ambushed by men in masks, her husband kidnapped and it would
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be up to her to save him. >> i told him how much i loved him and that i would do anything to get him back. >> who were these men, what did they want? an awful cat and mouse game begins, cryptic messages, haunting questions. >> where was my husband? how was he being treated? was he even alive? >> tonight she relives a dramatic race against the clock, in a way you've never seen before. >> the hardest thing i've ever had to do. >> an actress in the role of her life. could she bring him back from the shadows? >> i don't think anything could have prepared me for what i saw. >> "the desperate hours." thanks for joining us. i'm ann curry. it happens to thousands of families every year, but we rarely hear about it. most victims are too afraid to speak about the deadly and growing criminal enterprise of kidnap for ransom. but the woman you're about to meet not only found the courage to speak up, she fought back
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after someone kidnapped her husband. and now she reveals what happens, step by step, in dramatic detail. here's keith morrison. honestly, i was living my dreams and then some. >> it was a perfect morning, a brilliant sunny day in june in a place that felt like paradise. >> i would be packing the lunches, the kids getting dressed. >> they'd pile into the jeep for the short drive to school. fernando, the eldest, would ride the 4-wheeler ahead of them. in the car they would sing with the little ones, just like always. no idea what was waiting, what was about to happen here in paradise. she, the woman who went through it, the one you're about to meet is jayne, j-a-y-n-e, a detail
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that will matter later and she must have been a beautiful baby. >> here i am. >> this baby, in fact, this is her first tv commercial at 7 months, for the red cross. >> it is a happy day at mcdonald's. >> and there she is in a mcdonald's restaurant when she was a high school student in silver spring, maryland. >> my whole life i worked as an actress and did a lot of television commercials, bit roles in movies and soap operas. i don't care if i get wrinkles. >> i always put on sunscreen. >> what is that, spf 20? >> that's jayne on the big screen, beside bette midler in the movie "stella." >> she had pat robins real interested for a while. >> acting skills, they would become, as you shall see, life or death crucial. but then you can't know the future, can we? not when life seems perfect and safe and strong. >> well, it's kind of like one of these fairy tale stories. >> or at least it was then.
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it was 1992, she was 25 and it was unexpected, unanticipated like some bizarre lottery of life. jayne was at a pay phone, in a washington, d.c., suburb. she just happened to lock eyes with a divorced art dealer named eduardo valseca. eduardo, who she would find out, was one of the nine children of jose garcia valseca, mexican newspaper baron who 50 years ago ruled a publishing empire. would be the equivalent in the united states of who? >> william randolph hearst. an article published in "newsweek" in 1950 said that he actually had a larger readership at that point in time than hearst did. >> that's when garcia valseca ran his papers from a luxury pullman train car, the one which decades later eduardo owned. though when he invited this beautiful woman he just met to mexico for a train ride, she had no idea that the train was his. >> we were walking toward it,
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and then this man comes out with a white jacket, white gloves, black bow tie with a silver tray. i mean i was just completely speechless. >> she soon discovered the train car was about all eduardo had of family fortune. the rest, along with the newspaper empire, had long since withered away. but jayne fell for a man, not money. and what eduardo lacked in fortune, he replaced with laughter and passion and a huge enveloping personality. jayne was in love. and soon married and swept off to mexico to a fresh place for a new life, new roots, new family, and that famous name, valseca. one thing the legacy did afford them was the chance to live pretty much anywhere they wanted to. and eduardo suggested a town in north central mexico called san miguel de allende, 450 years old. rich obviously in history, but also in culture and art, a place
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so desirable and so lovely that almost 10% of the population is composed of people who moved here from some other country. she rubbed shoulders here with other expatriate americans and canadians and europeans and fell hard for mexico. here, far away from the notorious crime of mexico city >> we didn't feel threatened. i would say san miguel de allende, perhaps even now, is probably statistically is as safe or safer than many of our u.s. towns and small cities. >> and here they built a business in real estate, buying up old places, tidying them up, selling them again, and, of course, having children. >> it had been a big dream of mine to live in the country. and to have a big organic garden and fruit trees and horses and lots of animals for the kids to play with. >> it was luck when this place came up or what felt like luck before that terrible morning.
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it was a rundown 1,000 acre ranch and it was in foreclosure. they bought it, for, well, it was embarrassingly cheap. >> it was a great deal. but at the time, it was a pile of rocks literally. there was no road going out here. it was a dirt road that was almost impassable unless you had a jeep. >> right. >> and we started building little by little. every little bit of money that we made, everything that we could manage to save, we started putting into the ranch. we started with the structure. we fenced it in. we started putting if the roads. and then we started saving money for a house for ourselves. >> they even found and restored a magnificent old fountain that once sat in the long lost value seek ca estate, and no surprise, part of their building plan involved that stately old railroad car. >> one of the marvelous parts about ending up with this piece of property is it just happened that the railroad track went right through it. >> jayne was behind their home movie camera as the car was
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towed to its new home on the ranch. [ inaudible ] and happy here, they built a real ranch house among the mesquite trees and surrounded it with fine big gates and outbuildings. a garden for her, a riding ring and fine spanish horses for him. and for three growing children, a magic place, happy and secure. fernando, emiliano, and baby nayah. the children were the heart of it, really. they would do anything for the children. so jayne told eduardo about an education system called waldorf schools, not then available in san miguel. >> he said, well, let's bring the school to mexico. so we formed a parent group, and got moving on founding a school. >> they donated land, part of the ranch, recruited other families, built the school. >> we started with a couple of classrooms, actually they were originally going to be stables for the horses and we converted them into classrooms.
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>> and now every morning the quarter mile commute down their own quiet country lane to school had become a family ritual. >> we would go out the door, get in the jeep and the morning routine was singing all the way to school, which was really the only routine we had. >> fernando had a pet donkey then, rode it to school, that or a 4-wheeler, always out ahead. >> we would follow along and the kids loved to sing the same songs. they never tired of singing the same ones every morning. ♪ >> so now, it was that perfect morning, june 2007, they bumped and sang, noisy and happy down the dusty road. and, of course, they did not understand how could they, that this was the last moment of pure innocence any of them would ever know. coming up -- >> we immediately were hit from behind. >> a violent awakening. >> he points the gun at my forehead.
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you know, life was so good for so long for us, that it was almost like living in a fantasy. it was almost like on a daily basis, pinch me, is this real. >> it was june 2007, a bright sunny morning, two weeks before summer vacation. minutes before the terror. eduardo and jayne valseca and their three children arrived at the country school not far from their ranch house outside san miguel de allende in mexico. >> as we pulled into the parking lot, i noticed there was a small compact car in the far corner of the parking lot. and there was a man at the wheel, who had a fisherman's cap, khaki color, on and glasses. a prospective parent perhaps for next year's class? jayne walked the children to
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their classrooms. she stopped at the school office. >> and asked the administrator if she knew who the gentleman was or if he needed help. she looked over and looked across the parking lot and said, i don't know who he is. he must be waiting for someone. >> eduardo was behind the wheel of the jeep listening to the radio. the stranger's car was beyond it at the back of the lot. >> as i walked to the jeep, where my husband was, i looked across and made eye contact with him and actually smiled. and he smiled back. >> eduardo put the jeep in gear, pulled away, the strange car fell in behind them. >> a pickup truck comes out of nowhere. it catches up to us and the man driving turns and looks at us. and the look was really scary. >> you saw him? >> we both got a really creepy feeling, just the way the man looked at us. >> now that strange car and the pickup truck raced to positions beside and in front of the jeep. >> eduardo said, something is
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definitely not right. what is this guy doing? >> and then in moments it was obvious. jayne and eduardo were being chased, herded like cattle into a chute with no escape. >> in the distance we see the compact car that has raced up our interior road, cut in front. >> here she relived it, the horrified moment as the car in front of them suddenly stopped and eduardo slammed on his brakes. >> we immediately were hit from behind. at that point, a split of a second and there was a man coming out of the passenger side of the car, coming at eduardo and he's got a hammer in one hand and a handgun in the next. >> the masked man shattered the window, landed a hard blow to eduardo's head that sent blood gushing down his face. >> the first thing i started thinking of was my children. are my children going to lose their parents right now? >> a second attacker ran at jayne, yanked open her door, pulled her from the jeep, she screamed, kicked at him, grabbed the fence beside her. the barbed wire sliced through her finger. her attacker forced her down. >> while laying on the ground, he just points the gun at my
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forehead and tells me in spanish to get up. the first thing i said to him was, please don't kill me, i have three children. >> then they hustled jayne and eduardo into a waiting suv. unseen accomplices snapped pillow cases over their heads and tightly bound their hands and feet. >> eduardo was hysterical. i don't think he was completely hearing me. he probably had a concussion. >> the suv sped away. jayne tried to comfort eduardo. one of the abductors threatened more pain. >> he kept saying shut up you [ bleep ]. or i'll give you another one. you could tell he was trying to disguise his voice. >> within minutes, word of the attack got back to the school bp something was wrong. the teacher rushed to the now abandoned jeep. >> i went with my partner and the left window was all broken and blood was in the ground. and i had that feeling there was a kidnapping. >> in the suv under the gagging pillow case, jayne struggled to breathe. she reached out for eduardo. >> i felt blood all down his arm.
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>> then she felt the blood pouring from her own slashed finger. she tried to memorize each bump and turn as the suv veered on the highway toward san miguel. then minutes later, pulled over, stopped. someone yanked eduardo from the suv. he screamed. >> i hear the doors of that vehicle open. and after i hear them shut, i can no longer hear my husband's muffled screams. then i hear what sounds like the engine of that car revving as if it is pulling away. >> jayne managed to lift the pillow case hood just in time to see eduardo vanish. >> i am able to make out the type of car that it is, more or less, and i memorized the license plates. >> just as quickly, she realized she was alone. they had all left. >> i was bound, so i threw myself over the seat, ended up on the floor, pulled myself up, opened the door, and literally hopped as if i was in a sack race to the highway in flip-flops. >> an elderly man stopped to help.
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he had a machete but no cell phone to call police. frantically jayne tried to flag down passing cars. all hit the accelerator, not the brake. >> i'm begging them to please stop and help me. but i imagine i looked pretty scary to see a woman bleeding, desperate, bound in duct tape next to a guy with a machete. >> then in sheer desperation, jayne stepped in front of an oncoming bus -- >> he was coming this way. i jumped in front. and i just put my hands up like this. and i hoped he stopped. >> but no cell phone on the bus either. now the bus driver flagged down a taxi and the taxi driver called the police. >> all of this information is going from me to the taxi driver, the taxi driver to the dispatcher, the dispatcher to the police and the police to the dispatcher and the whole way around. it was like playing telephone. >> was there still time for the police to seal off the town, save her husband? >> i thought because i had this description and the plates, i thought for sure that they would just -- the police would run out in every direction, seal off san miguel and we would have him,
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end of story. but it didn't go that way. >> no, it didn't. jayne says the police tried one escape highway, no other. and no eduardo. he had been kidnapped. >> these people carried this whole operation out with such precision and such surprising professionalism, which seems a strange word to even use. >> how long did it take? >> seconds. they were cool as cucumbers. >> but that was just the first clue. on the ground beside the suv in which the kidnappers abandoned jayne was another. inside an envelope, addressed to jayne. >> the first thing that went through my mind was well, i realized they spelled my name correctly. my name is jayne, spelled with a "y," so it was really scary to see on the envelope they had actually spelled my name right. >> nobody spells your name right? >> no. >> and inside the envelope? >> the ransom note says -- senora, go home, open this e-mail, with this password and
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we have eduardo, eduardo is with us. wait for our message to arrive. >> it was then she understood. the kidnappers had been watching them, stalking them, researching every small detail. >> it immediately made me realize i needed to be very careful and very smart about the choices i was about to make. my husband's life was on the line. >> coming up, what would she tell her children? >> the hardest thing i've ever had to do. >> and to whom would she turn for help? >> i thought this is what you're sending me to deal with this? >> when "the desperate hours" continues.
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jayne valseca sat in the dirt by the highway, on the outskirts of san miguel de allende. a cop helped her strip away the duct tape around her hands and feet as he told her that her husband's kidnappers had escaped. she tried to staunch the blood from her injured finger gashed on the barbed wire fence and tap down the terror that grabbed at her throat because she knew what had happened to others. >> my husband was kidnapped on 2001. >> this woman had already told her horrifying story. >> and every time that we tell them that we don't have the money, so they cut a finger and they send us the finger. >> but that was mexico city, one of the kidnapping capitals of
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the world, where jayne had heard that thousands are snatched every year, wealthy and poor, from mansions, the backs of taxis, taco stands. >> the kidnapping situation in mexico is outrageous. >> this woman, anna maria salazar, had been reporting for years on tv, the breakdown of law and order, the mess in police forces. >> you don't have a criminal justice system that has the ability to go after all these people. but the other problem is corruption. there is corrupt cops at the federal level. there is corrupt cops at the state level. and there is corrupt cops at the municipal level. people just don't trust their cops. >> which is why, she says, so many kidnappings go unreported, making it impossible to know just how many thousands take place in mexico. but this was safe little san miguel, where eduardo had always said -- >> do you think anybody's going to come out here in the country? that's not going to happen. >> but it had happened, and all
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she could think of was finding help fast. >> i'm sitting there in the dirt, in need of stitches and i at that point i have two cell phones going. >> but why wouldn't the police just take over? well, no, not in mexico. jayne herself, in this supremely vulnerable moment, would have to decide which police, if any, she could trust to get her husband back. >> you can allow the local or state police to handle the situation. you can go to the mexican equivalent of the fbi, which is the afi or afi as they're called here and let them handle it on a federal level, or you can go to a private consultant that you have to pay out of your own pocket and they will negotiate it privately. >> you don't know what to do when someone is saying, hey, i'm selling you back your daughter. >> jayne had heard about other kidnappings like the one seven years earlier when kidnappers snatched this man's 25-year-old
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daughter and in minutes, he had to make the impossible decision. >> i knew i should go with the police. the problem was which police. one of the gangs was headed by the police who was in charge of the anti-kidnapping group. so with that in mind, i knew i couldn't go with the state police. >> he chose the federal police, who negotiated with the kidnappers, arranged a ransom payment and still in the transfer could not prevent the murder of his daughter. what was jayne to do? she had heard all the stories. sometimes police themselves were involved in kidnappings. >> i knew there was a possibility that, yes, there were people that were perhaps right there with me that i could not trust. >> right. and you know that the experience of well heeled people had been go to this private organization, it will take care of you. >> right. >> so as cars whizzed by and the dirt-caked blood dried on her
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skin, jayne placed calls all around the world to private companies that specialize in kidnap negotiations. >> they knew all the questions to ask. they said, how many vehicles were involved? what did the note say? can you describe the people? what did their guns look like? >> must be a sophisticated operation, they told jayne. negotiating would be difficult and expensive, at least 2,500 u.s. dollars a day, plus expenses, far more than she could afford. she wondered could the state police help her? she asked them how successful they had been solving kidnappings. >> they said, oh, yeah, we have resolved 100%. and i said really? so does that mean you got 100% of the victims back and you caught the bad guys? and they said yes, eventually we've gotten all of them. it really made me feel very uneasy and untrusting because i know that 100% of the parking violations don't get resolved. >> there was only one choice left.
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the mexican version of the fbi, the afi or afi, the elite unit of the federal police. which might, at least, get eduardo back alive. so she made the call, went back to the ranch, cleaned up her wounds and braced herself to tell the children. the two youngest would be satisfied temporarily with a story about eduardo being on a business trip. but not fernando, then 12. he had to be told and, anyway, she needed him now. >> it was very, very tough. try explaining to a child that his father just has been stolen for money. the hardest thing i've ever had to do. >> i had never seen my mom like that. she was just -- she looked like if the worst thing happened to her. >> he's grown fast, since his father was kidnapped. even so, for his own safety, we're hiding his face.
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>> i asked her was it by criminals or what do you mean taken? and she said he was kidnapped. and that's all she said. and i just stood quiet. i couldn't believe it. >> how did he take it? >> he was devastated. i just said to him, you know, you have to know that i will do everything humanly possible to get your father back, if it takes everything we have, everything i can humanly do. >> fernando was just a boy, but not for much longer. he fled to a special spot, his private place, away from the house. >> i got on my motorcycle, and went up to this rock. it's a pretty big rock and it overlooks our ranch. i just started crying. >> it was later when he learned this was likely the place the kidnappers used to spy on his family.
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he never went back. now it was evening. >> i'm hoping i'll get home, like they told me, i'll open the e-mail, there will be a message, and whatever i have access to they can have it all. just give him back. so i'm at that point hoping this is going to be an open and shut deal in less than 24 hours. >> jayne got ready for the arrival of the federal afi agent. the federal police had promised he would move in right away and live on the ranch until he got eduardo back. she felt like she was waiting for the cavalry to arrive. she let hope grow. >> i expected him to roll in in some kind of bulletproof suburban, be big and burly and hopefully a little mature and having done this quite a while. >> and then finally at 3:00 a.m., the afi agent called. could someone come and pick him up in town, he asked. he had come from mexico city, by bus.
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>> he looked like a high school or maybe freshman in college student with a backpack, a baseball cap, glasses, tiny. and i thought, what is going on? you mean this is what you're sending me to deal with this? and so the first thing i asked him after shaking his hand was, are you armed? and he said, no. i said, why not, for god sake? >> seasoned criminals had engineered a seamless plan to steal her husband. and all she had on her side was a short, skinny kid with no apparent backup, no car, and no gun. coming up, the kidnappers send a message from the shadows. they have a demand, impossible to meet. >> now i'm thinking they're just going to kill him. when "the desperate hours" continues.
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jayne stared at the kid from afi with what could only be described as dismay. her husband eduardo had been kidnapped. she had gone through the whole horrifying ordeal herself, had scoured the country in a desperate search for someone to help her. she was frantic. it was 3:00 in the morning and now the federal police had sent her an unarmed boy. the young man took one look at jayne, saw her disappointment and then spoke. >> had a very confident smile on his face. takes off his glasses and hat and says, look, would you really want me arriving in a bulletproof suburban and coming out with a machine gun? how would that look if you're being watched? we could be putting your husband at risk. >> the agent, jayne learned, was older than he looked, was an experienced hostage negotiator. he brought his weapon into jayne's house. it was a laptop computer.
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>> he actually selected a place here in the dining room where he would be the only one to see his computer screen. he was in a spot where he could see all the goings-on in the house. >> his name is a federal secret, his face a blank, our interview request went to the highest level, we were denied. we do know he was constantly online, with a team of agents in mexico city, analyzing what clues they had, advising jayne's agent on strategy. not just jayne's agent, of course. >> we have as many as 25 kidnappings at a time. >> still, she might have been reassured by this, a state-of-the-art lab on standby to identify the voices of any kidnappers who might call >> translator: we have 2,374 her. voices related with kidnapping and extortion. >> here in a giant room that looks like nasa, more agents track hundreds of surveillance sites around the country. but on day one, all that expertise coughed up only this one piece of very bad news.
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the people who grabbed eduardo, they were almost certainly, said police, part of a fringe marxism political group. one detail was striking from the beginning, left on eduardo's car seat was a brand new hammer. was it the weapon used in the attack or something else? >> i found out it was actually a calling card. and that's not unusual and this group always leaves behind a hammer, which really gave me the creeps. >> jayne's agent considered the evidence and offered a dismal prediction. >> you need to brace yourself and pace yourself because this is not going to be over in 24 hours like you would like. as a matter of fact, this is not a matter of days or weeks. based on previous experience with this particular group, this is going to be months if you're lucky. >> what was it like to hear that? >> i thought i was going to go crazy. i thought for sure i would have a nervous breakdown right then and there.
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>> jayne's 12-year-old fernando looked on, helpless. >> she just had this face. i can't describe it. it was terrible. it looked like a dead person. i was just so scared and i put my bed and my brother's bed together and i slept with him. >> what was it like going to bed that first night? >> there was no going to bed. there was no laying down. sleeping, eating, i could drink. that was basically it. i couldn't even eat. how could i sit down and eat when i didn't know where my husband was, if he was eating, if he had had his head cared for. i just couldn't. it was horrible. >> do you remember lying there in bed at night? >> yeah, of course. >> trying to make your mind calm down? >> of course. i just laid there and tossed and turned and i even felt guilty about laying on a bed. i started feeling guilty that i wasn't the one taken, that he was and i wasn't. and guilty that i had a roof
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over my head. guilty that i could eat and drink. guilty that i could use a bathroom. guilty that i was laying on clean sheets. you know, where was my husband? what kind of conditions was he in? how was he being treated? was he even alive? how do you sleep? there was no way. >> in historic san miguel, though eduardo was a prominent local citizen, life went on as if nothing had happened. even though he had been a known anti-poverty activist, a panelist on a local tv show. in fact, this is a recording of the very broadcast aired the night before he was taken. this is the host of the show, and the co-owner of the tv station, lucy nunez. today she's the mayor of san miguel. but what was she able to do to free eduardo or find his kidnapper?
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how often was it reported on the television or radio? >> no, we never said anything. >> a request, she said, from the federal police. >> they said no comments in the radio station, no comments in the channel because we don't want these people to be afraid or whatever and they could do something to eduardo. so it was like, mouth closed, like everybody was acting that as if nothing was happening. >> everybody perhaps, but jayne, whose need for information was making her crazy. remember, the kidnapper said go home, you'll get an e-mail with our demands. but on day one, there was no e-mail, nor on day two, nor three, nor day four. and then, after five full days and nights of sleepless torture, jayne turned on her computer and read the news. >> we hope that senora has arrived well to her house. for the liberation of eduardo,
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we are demanding the amount of $8 million. >> $8 million. send the money, said the e-mail, in u.s. currency, $100 bills. >> i was very upset and really concerned because i thought, how am i ever going to get him back. now i'm thinking that they're just going to kill him because i didn't have that kind of cash. >> but remember what happened to that other woman's husband when she told kidnappers she couldn't meet demands? >> they cut the finger and they send us the finger. >> wealth is relative, of course, and can often be an illusion. anybody familiar with the idyllic ranch here outside san miguel, anybody who heard about eduardo, scion of the famous publishing empire, might quite reasonably have assumed he was among mexico's super rich, but that would be a mistake. it was the mistake the kidnappers made, a mistake that was about to become jayne's very serious practical problem. >> i didn't have access to
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anything, really, beyond our -- what was in our checking account. >> the fact of the matter was the valsecas were house poor. they had put everything they had into the ranch and at recession prices, even if she could sell it, she would get a small fraction of $8 million. there in the dining room, jayne showed the e-mail to her afi agent and realized he was not surprised. >> you know, jayne, you have to realize that this is the way this works. you're going to be learning the ropes here. they're always going to demand a lot more than even they know they will get in the end. they hope to get that amount. but this is where we start negotiating. >> the kidnappers set the rules. jayne must respond to their e-mails in the want ad section of a specific newspaper, her first ad they demanded, would go in the animals and pet section and read, buy a chow chow dog, austin, vaccinated with complete pedigree, 8,000 pesos, meaning, of course, $8 million to buy back eduardo.
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they started out at $8 million. >> mm-hmm. >> what do you respond? >> it basically went out saying we're very concerned for the puppy's well-being, we don't want any harm to come to him, mixed into the words, and your request is beyond our economic possibilities. >> just that? >> mm-hmm. >> and then what do you do? >> and i waited. >> coming up, at last, word from her husband, harrowing photos and a heart breaking phone call. >> and i told him how much i loved him and that i would do anything to get him back. and that the money didn't matter. >> what were they doing to the man she loved? when "the desperate hours" continues.
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life at jayne and eduardo's ranch was divided now, into the joyous before and the somber after. the kidnapping of eduardo valseca brought with it an unrelieved trauma, soon all the children understood it was no business trip their father had taken. within hours, the word spread, was whispered around the school, around the neighborhood, around the town. jayne, still in shock, tried to keep life normal. even helping her children's teachers at school, as if everything was just the same. >> she was very bad inside because we know her, and she was suffering. but she was trying to be okay with -- in front of the children.
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>> jayne and her federal police adviser dutifully placed those bizarre want ads saying they didn't have the $8 million u.s. ransom. and the response in a few weeks into the ordeal, eduardo's kidnappers turned up the pressure. they began including in their untraceable e-mails letters from eduardo himself, and what he wrote in those letters was awful. i'm suffering more than i can manage. they beat me. they tie me up. i'm naked. i haven't eaten. i'm going crazy. i can't handle this torture anymore. >> it was horrible. there was something about seeing his handwriting and the way he described it, it just destroyed me, broke my heart. that was the first time i had to take a tranquilizer. >> but there was more. and it was worse. the letter took an accusing turn. our children are going to know that by not paying money you left me to die. you left me to die in a frightening way and our children will know that you did that.
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>> right. >> i would have gotten you out already if it had been you. >> right. even in the worst possible situation, i knew that some of those things did not come from him, that he was writing what he was told to write. that was very clear to me. >> she was desperate. all she had was a household checking account, they put the cars, the ranch, the savings accounts in eduardo's name. try as she might, she couldn't touch it. >> i felt so helpless. i wanted to do something. i wanted to take him out of that hole and -- >> so she began selling things. first to go, the spanish horses eduardo loved so much, sold for a fraction of their value. >> we had lots of rabbits so i started selling rabbits. i sold sheep. i sold machinery. everything i could sell, i sold. >> all the fire sale prices? >> mm-hmm. >> all of it made hardly a dent. they wanted $8 million, she raised $20,000. in her ad she begged the kidnappers to understand she
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would never have the millions they wanted. they retaliated. >> they started saying in their e-mails to me if i didn't come up with the money on a certain date, they were going to start cutting off his fingers. >> when jayne didn't, couldn't pay, the answer was swift. >> it said that i had been fooling around enough, and that eduardo had sent me a package. >> she was horrified. was it his finger? the federal agent, afraid for jayne's safety, sent someone else to follow the kidnappers' directions to the buried package wrapped in plastic and it was not severed fingers. it was a sheath of ious signed by eduardo. with these, wrote the kidnappers, jayne could get a loan for the ransom. >> i was supposed to now use to go to people to hopefully be more successful in raising funds that way. >> oh, she tried. but local business men dismissed
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the ious as likely forgeries. summer passed. and then october, four months into his captivity, another e-mail with a letter from eduardo. they had injected him with aids tainted blood, he wrote. and then his words turned ugly, like a man she didn't know. who are you really, he wrote. i never thought you could be this cruel and stubborn and such a [ bleep ]. when the hell are you going to pay? the words, she felt sure, were daily horrors, she could only imagine. thanksgiving approached, the children pulled out old home videos and huddled in their mother's bed. >> for a long time the kids watched it every single day after school. and sometimes when they weren't
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around i would go in and just watch the part where he blew me the kiss and said i love you, again and again. >> i love you. >> and then the next e-mail arrived and a photo was attached. eduardo, crumpled in a corner, dotted with dried blood. it was november, five months into the ordeal, when the kidnappers seemed to tire of the game. the e-mail, eduardo was going to receive his first gunshot, in his left leg, unless there is a change in the total amount offer to seven figures. it wasn't a bluff. a photo followed, bloody proof. >> i snapped that day. i -- i couldn't cry. i didn't react. >> did you see the photographs of eduardo? >> i told my agent that he needed to start being my filter, that i would not be reading any more letters and i would not look at any photographs if he wanted me to get through this and get through it sane, so that was the deal. >> two weeks later they shot eduardo again, this time in an arm. to make matters worse, the newspaper, her only way of communicating with her husband's tormenters had become suspicious and refused to take more ads.
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>> i had to communicate what was happening to the kidnappers because if they didn't let me place at least one last ad, it would look like i had lost interest and i was no longer communicating. i had to now beg the woman on the phone to, please, allow me to place one more and i would never do it again. >> the negotiation switched to another paper. but then the phone calls began. >> i thought it would be someone disguising their voice and that's what i had been trained for. >> the agent had warned her it might happen, even prepared dialogue for her to memorize and kept this erase board handy so he could prompt her. but it wasn't the kidnappers who got on the phone. >> i was shaking. i didn't know what to do. >> it was eduardo, but the things he said, this could not be the man she loved. but it was. >> and then he started calling me names. you're such a -- how could you do this? it's my money. it was more of the same i had been getting in the letters they had forced him to write. >> she turned to the young
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federal agent. and he told me, jayne, you've been preparing for this. you can do this, just relax. >> it is like the man you're desperate to have home and who you miss horribly is on the phone with you, you're listening to his voice and you find you're kind of arguing with this voice. >> it was absolutely bizarre. it was -- we were both playing a role. after i answered the immediate questions and got the information that i wanted to make sure that they heard, which was very important to save his life, then i said i changed my tone and in came me. and i told him how much i loved him. and how much his kids missed him. and that i would do anything to get him back and that the money
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didn't matter. that i'd give everything i could. and then i could hear his tone change completely. and it was the real him. he told me he loved me too and then they hung up on him. >> the phone calls were untraceable. the kidnappers' demands unrelenting, the psychological pressure excruciating. a joyless christmas arrived, new year's. how long before they killed him? coming up, a new demand, a new sign of hope. >> he was instructed to go down a dark alley at a specific spot. >> it was finally time to spring into action. when "the desperate hours" continues.
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gossipers in the neighborhoods of lovely san miguel de allende chewed warily on the story that made the rounds. eduardo valseca kidnapped. surely mexico's kidnapping epidemic hadn't spread to this famously safe retreat. no, it must have been some vicious payback, something to do with eduardo himself and even friends like the soon to be mayor, lucy nunez, assumed eduardo was dead. >> oh, yes, i think everybody thought that. >> yeah? >> you're watching the television the people that has been kidnapped in three or four days or maybe in a month or two, but this was two, three, four, five, seven. >> yes, seven months. for most of that time the kidnappers refused to budge from their demand for a ransom of close to $8 million.
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and when jayne went into town to beg their friends for loans, money to secure his release, she watched their eyes glaze over. >> friends would say things to me like, oh, jayne, i'm so sorry about eduardo, we liked him so much and speak about him in the past tense as if he were dead. >> even on the playground, classmates told jayne's children to give up hope. >> little kids would go up to my children and say things like, oh, i heard your daddy is dead, they found him in a plastic bag in the park juarez. >> and jayne would turn on her computer to find messages from a man barely hanging on. i need you like never before. help me, be compassionate toward me. i can't take it anymore. but now, more than half a year in, suddenly something new. the kidnappers' demands dropped into the mid-six figures. that was money she might be able to borrow from some well heeled friend. so i started asking people and some people would tell me, yeah, sure, call me on such and such a date but then i wouldn't get a
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-- they wouldn't answer my calls or return my messages. >> lots of people, she discovered, didn't want to get involved. why? >> well, that -- they somehow, by helping me, they would expose themselves to this sort of a thing somehow. >> at the ranch, eduardo's grown children from an earlier marriage, desperate also, did everything they could to help but they didn't have that kind of money. and so they felt very alone in their little family circle as they tried to keep hope going at the ranch. >> i want you to look at the camera and give a message to your daddy because he's going to see this when he gets back. >> that i love him so much and he's the best dad in the whole wide world and i know he's coming back soon. >> and then quite literally in the depths of their despair, something completely unexpected. two individuals who jayne had not approached for loans went to her separately and wrote big checks.
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both declined jayne's offers of guarantees or collateral. both had a single condition, that their identities be kept secret. which is how a new flurry of negotiations began with the kidnappers and jayne finally received the e-mail she worked so hard to get. we have a deal, it read. be ready to deliver the money. the final amount, at the request of the family and police, was withheld. a fraction of the original demand, but it had to be in u.s. 100 dollar bills. and it had to be done in secret. in the bank, only the manager knew what jayne was doing. >> i had to go in and count it in a back room, and make sure that everything was all in order. >> then she called on her acting skills, stuffed down her anxiety and walked out of
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