The Whistleblower Who Had 48 Hours to Live: True Crime Case

[0:00] Hi, it's Steve. Yeah. I got an episode for you today all about the fight between good and evil. [0:07] But first, I want to give you a little taste of the new show theme. It's kind of catchy. You'll hear the full theme at the end of the podcast. Photos full of federal files. Court documents stacked for miles. Ain't no famous names in here. Just the truth that disappears. Saturday afternoon, August 19th, 2017, Garden City, Georgia. A mother rushes to the crime scene on Dean Forest Road. Police tape, emergency vehicles, and her son's work truck. Engine still running. She doesn't need anyone to tell her what happened. She already knows. When the detective asks if she has any idea who might have done this, Avelina Alvarez doesn't hesitate. His boss killed him. [1:07] Two days earlier, her son had filed a federal complaint exposing a $3.5 million criminal conspiracy. 48 hours later, he was dead. I couldn't find any prior podcast coverage of this case. None. Despite a murder, a multi-million dollar labor trafficking scheme, a life sentence, and a civil verdict that held a major corporation 90% responsible for a man's death. You're about to hear one of the most extreme, and certainly the fastest, whistleblower retaliation case I've ever documented. If you want the case files and court documents behind this story, you need to have already subscribed at truecrimeunheard.com. That's truecrimeunheard.com. So don't miss out on future episodes if you want to get the secret link to all the court documents. Go and subscribe now. And stick around to the end because I told you I got that new theme song. I think you're going to really dig it. It's funky. I like it. And I hope you do too. [2:32] I'm Steve Rode, and for 30 long years, I've investigated financial crimes and documented cases of corporate exploitation. And what I'm about to share with you comes directly from federal court records, Department of Justice press releases, trial transcripts, thousands of pages of court documents, and sworn testimony filed in the United States District Court, for the Southern District of Georgia. [3:04] This is the story of iliad montoya a 41 year old tree service worker and a naturalized american citizen a man his co-workers called the general a nickname he earned first in the mexican army, where he allegedly rose to that rank and then on american work crews where he continued to be a leader, and who paid for that courage with his life. According to federal prosecutors, Iliad Montoya was murdered for doing the right thing. Those are their exact words, murdered for doing the right thing. The scheme he exposed has been running for nearly a decade, three and a half million dollars stolen from approximately 100 undocumented workers. [4:00] And when Iliad threatened to bring it all crashing down, the men running that scheme decided he had to be eliminated. [4:15] According to the getaway driver's confession, 141 pages of transcript. That word meant exactly what you think it means. [4:29] Before we go further, let me give you the four people at the center of this case. You have Iliad Montoya. He's the victim, a naturalized citizen, a tree service worker, and the man his crew called the general. He's the whistleblower. Then you have Pablo Rangel Rubio, Iliad's supervisor at Wolf Tree. According to prosecutors, the mastermind of the decade-long labor trafficking scheme. He gave the order. Juan Rangel Rubio, Pablo's brother. According to the federal indictment, he pulled the trigger. And then we have Higuano Perez Bravo. He's the getaway driver. He dropped Juan off at the travel center about 500 feet down Old Dean Forest Road and then picked him up at a freeway on-ramp about 1,000 feet from the crime scene. When Juan climbed back in, his shoes were wet, and he was very scared. Perez Bravo was paid $26,000 for his role. One victim, three conspirators, and a corporation that ignored the warnings. Now, let me tell you who Iliad Montoya was. [5:58] Savannah, Georgia, summer 2017. The heat starts early and it doesn't quit. By 7 a.m., the humidity is already clinging to your skin. And the tree crews are already on the road. To understand what happened on that August Saturday, you first need to understand who Eliud Montoya was. He was born in Mexico. and like millions of others, he came to America seeking opportunity. But unlike many who take shortcuts or live in the shadows, Iliad did it the right way. He filed the paperwork, he waited in the lines, he studied for the civics test, and in 2009, Iliad Montoya raised his right hand and became a naturalized United States citizen. [6:57] I mean, think about what that means. The applications, the fees, the years of waiting, the interview where they test your English and your knowledge of American history. He earned that citizenship the way you're supposed to earn it, through patience, through persistence, and through playing by the rules. By 2017, he had been an American citizen for eight years. Eight years of building a life, eight years of working, eight years of doing things the right way. He worked for a company called Wolf Tree, a subsidiary of Davey Tree Expert Company, one of the largest employee-owned tree care companies in North America. You might have seen their trucks on the road. His job was trimming trees around utility lines in the Savannah area. And as I said before, his co-workers called him the General. [8:01] According to his wife Maria's testimony at trial, the nickname wasn't just a figure of speech. Before coming to America, she said Iliad had served in the Mexican army and rose to the rank of General. And when the undocumented workers on his crew were being exploited, cheated out of wages forced to work under fake names trapped in a system they couldn't escape the general was the one who stepped. [8:31] According to the prosecutor's opening statement at trial, Iliad Montoya helped those who, because of their immigration status, could not speak for themselves. He was a leader. He was a protector. And those workers needed a voice, and Iliad became that voice. He didn't just file his own complaint. According to court records, he gathered notarized statements from three other workers who were being exploited. He organized the evidence. He built the case. He put his name on it when others couldn't risk putting theirs. That's how you earn a nickname like The General. Not by barking orders, but by taking responsibility for the people you care about when no one else will. According to court records, Iliad worked seven days a week, every day, no exceptions. He was always the first one at the truck in the morning, coffee in hand, checking equipment before anyone else arrived. He was the sole financial provider for his extended family. His mother, Avelina, had stopped working because Iliad could support her. And his wife, Maria, was working a bit, but he was supporting the family as well. [9:57] They lived at Savannah Pines Mobile Home Park. It's the kind of place you've driven past a hundred times without really seeing it. It sits along Dean Forest Road in Garden City, Georgia, a few miles from downtown Savannah, tucked behind a wall of pine trees that block it from casual view. [10:19] Inside the mobile home park may be a hundred trailers arranged in neat rows along narrow internal roads. Single wides and some double wides in white and tan and cream, each sitting on a small lot with just enough room for a driveway and a patch of grass. Some residents have added wooden porches or decks, and window AC units hum against the Georgia heat. There's a community pool where kids splash in the summer and speed bumps that force you to slow down as you drive through. From the air, the white and tan roofs look like dominoes arranged on a green felt table. It's not glamorous. The water goes out sometimes. The rent is higher than you'd expect. But for families like the Montoyas, immigrants working hard and building something, Savannah Pines was home. A place to come back to after long shifts. a place to raise kids and barbecue on weekends, and a place to dream about what comes next. [11:32] His mother would say it best in an interview given the same day he died. In an interview with WJCL Television recorded the day of his murder. He was the only supporter of the family. He sustained all of us. He supported all of us. I didn't work because I was able to stop working, and so did his wife. 567 people would eventually light memorial candles for him online. Strangers who had never met him described him the same way. They heard that he was a very kind man. [12:13] The Department of Justice would later call him a brave man murdered by criminals. But in the summer of 2017, Iliad Montoya was just a tree trimmer who had noticed something very wrong at his job. [12:29] And unlike most people who notice wrongdoing, He decided to do something about it On August 17th He walked into a federal office and hit submit on his complaint, That would wind up getting him killed And within hours The phones started lighting up, But first you need to understand and the world he was trying to change, and the cage his boss had built around a hundred workers. [13:13] The work site, mid-morning. Trucks lined up along a power easement, men in harnesses climbing, while others feed branches into a wood chipper. This is where Iliad spent his days and where he first saw what Pablo Rangel Rubio was doing. To understand the danger Iliad walked into, you need to understand the world he was trying to change. His supervisor at Wolf Tree was that man, Pablo Rangel Rubio. According to federal indictments, Pablo was a Mexican citizen who was in the United States illegally. He had been working as a supervisor for Wolf Trees for years, despite his immigration status. Consider the irony. An undocumented immigrant supervising a naturalized American citizen? An illegal alien in charge of verifying worker eligibility? The fox guarding the hen house? But Pablo's real business, according to prosecutors, it wasn't tree trimming. That's not how he made his money. It was labor trafficking. [14:33] According to court documents, Pablo spent nearly a decade hiring undocumented workers. He housed them in a trailer park that he owned. He provided them with fake identities and fraudulent social security numbers to get them through the hiring process. And then according to the federal indictment, he systematically stole from them. The scheme worked like this. Wolf Tree would issue paychecks to employees. Pablo would intercept those paychecks. He would cash them himself. And then he would pay the workers in cash, keeping a significant portion for himself. [15:17] Think of it like a cage. Pablo built a cage and held all the keys. He controlled their housing. They lived in his trailer park. He controlled their employment. He decided who worked. He controlled their documents. The fake IDs came from him. They couldn't go to the police. They couldn't complain to management. They couldn't leave without losing everything. According to prosecutors, Pablo was skimming approximately $10,000 every single week. Over 10 years, that added up to $3.5 million, according to federal filings. More than 3.5 million and Iliad Montoya saw all of that. According to trial testimony, Iliad confided in a co-worker named Joel Reyes. He told Joel what he was seeing and he told Joel about his plan to report it. And according to court documents, investigators found a notebook in Iliad's vehicle after the murder. And among his handwritten notes was this. They are always watching me because of a complaint I put on. [16:39] Joel Reyes would later testify that he warned Iliad. He told him to be careful. He told him the Wrangles are big. He told him that Pablo had family who might be willing to do more than just threaten. Iliad filed his complaint anyway. He knew the risk. He filed anyway. Because some things matter more than safety. By Thursday in Savannah, the countdown had a calendar date, August 17th, 2017, and Ilya didn't know he was already on it. [17:20] Thursday morning, August 17th, 2017, Savannah, Georgia. Temperatures pushing past 90 degrees, with the kind of sticky humidity that clings to your skin. Afternoon thunderstorms are going to be rolling in as they do most summer days in coastal Georgia. Iliad Montoya walked into the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission office with a folder of evidence. According to federal records, he filed a formal complaint alleging that Pablo [17:51] Rangel Rubio was running an illegal labor scheme. He included notarized statements from other workers who were willing to corroborate what he was saying. [18:04] This was not his first attempt to stop what was happening, Four months earlier, in April of 2017 Iliad had reported the scheme directly to his employer Wolf Tree and their corporate officials, He put it in writing a formal internal complaint, And what happened next is documented in the federal indictment. According to prosecutors, Pablo Rangel Rubio obtained a copy of Iliad's written complaint and then did something extraordinary. He read it aloud. He read it in front of the entire Savannah area crew in Iliad's presence. He stood there and read the complaint that accused him of labor trafficking out loud to approximately 30 workers. Maybe it was intimidation. Iliad is said to have been sick afterwards. [19:11] And then, nothing. Wolf Tree did nothing. Four months passed and the scheme continued. The cage stayed locked. So Iliad went federal. On August 17th, he walked into that EEOC office and filed again. This time with the federal government. And the countdown had begun. 48 hours. Saturday, August 19th. Another oppressively hot Georgia day. Temperatures in the upper 80s. Bright sun beating down through the scattered clouds. According to prosecutors opening statement at trial, Juan Rangel Rubio's day started early that morning. He called Higgino Perez Bravo and told him to meet him at Kroger on Highway 17. And when Perez Bravo arrived, Juan climbed into his white van. And then they went hunting. According to the prosecution, phone location data and surveillance video would later show that white van circling the area of the mobile home park for nearly four hours. Just waiting for the right time waiting for the right place. [20:35] Perez Bravo drove. Juan sat in the passenger seat, scanning out the window, telling Perez Bravo where to turn, where to go. And for four hours, they circled, watching, waiting. Then Juan told Perez Bravo to drop him off at the pilot gas station. About 500 feet from Iliad would be found. According to trial testimony, Juan got out of the van carrying a little brown bag. He told Perez Bravo to leave. He would call him when he was ready to be picked up. And then Juan waited for his opportunity. According to court documents, at approximately 1.30 in the afternoon, someone found Iliad Montoya on Old Dean Forest Road. [21:27] To understand where he died, you have to picture the area. Old Dean Forest Road runs through Garden City, not far from the Dean Forest Baptist Church. It's a quiet two-lane road. The kind of place where you can stand in the middle of the asphalt and hear little, maybe you hear birds. Some distant traffic from the main highway. On one side of the road, a thick wall of pine trees and scrub brush. Dense. Georgia woods that swallow sound and block any line of sight within 20 feet. On the other side, a residential neighborhood, small houses set back from the road, a church, families going about their Saturday afternoon. Iliad's work truck was a white-cabbed tree service rig with a dark black bed and a red crane with some equipment. It was parked on the left side of the road, facing oncoming traffic. [22:28] His body was found on that side the side facing the trees away from the houses away from any witnesses who might have been looking out their windows from across the street, on a hot saturday afternoon in august while most people were staying inside their air conditioning this stretch of road might as well have been on another planet the perfect place to wait for, Ilya Montoya lay face down in the grass beside his truck, on the side facing the woods. His nose was broken. His work truck was still running beside him. The radio was still playing. His car keys in the ignition, his cell phone visible on the dashboard. And on his feet, still perfectly in place, were his flip-flops. According to the lead detective's testimony, this detail was highly unusual. In his training and experience, flip-flops are the first thing that normally gets tossed off. When someone is involved in the struggle or trying to defend themselves, the flip-flops fly. But Iliad's were still on his feet. Properly displayed, the detective testified. [23:49] Iliad never saw it coming. According to the prosecutor's opening statement, at least five shots tore through Iliad Montoya's body, in the back, in the head. The full extent of the damage wouldn't be known until the autopsy. According to sworn testimony, when the first officer checked for a pulse, there was none. When EMS arrived and checked for a heart rhythm or breathing, nope, there was none. Approximately an hour to an hour and a half later, Iliad would officially be pronounced dead, and the investigation became a homicide. According to the search warrant affidavit, the Chatham County Deputy Coroner examined the body at the scene. The murder scene was just down the street from his home at Savannah Pines, just far enough that no one from the park would hear anything, And just close enough that the killers knew exactly where to wait. [24:55] The Chatham County coroner would later confirm that the attack happened on foot. This was not a drive-by. This was not random violence. Someone had walked up to Iliad Montoya, shot him multiple times, and left him to die. In broad daylight, roughly five and a half hours before sunset on a sunny Saturday afternoon. [25:21] And when he was done shooting, according to the prosecution, Juan Rangel-Rubio called for the getaway driver. He called Perez Brava. [25:33] Within hours, his mother, Avelina, arrived at the scene. WJCL News captured what happened next. An interview you are about to hear recorded that same day. I didn't know. I didn't know anything. Until the moment I came to the scene, I didn't know anything. Avelina Alvarez got the news her son was dead. She gathered her family and rushed to the scene in front of their neighborhood. I feel so sad. It has left my family with nothing. But when police asked her if she had any idea who might be responsible, Avelina Alvarez answered without hesitation. His boss killed him. She was right. Iliad's brother, Geraldo, would later tell reporters that same day, My heart is broke. I'm gonna stay sad for the rest of my life, I guess. [26:30] I want to pause here because what happened to Iliad Montoya follows a pattern I've seen too many times in my 30 years of investigating financial crimes. Whistleblower retaliation is real. It's unfortunately probably too common. And it escalates. The typical pattern starts with ostracism. Being frozen out, passed over, treated differently. Then come the threats. Sometimes veiled, sometimes explicit And then job loss And in the most extreme cases, physical violence, What makes this case different isn't the pattern No, it's the speed, 48 hours from federal complaint to murder That kind of rapid escalation tells you something It tells you the person running this scheme Was so threatened. [27:30] By what Iliad knew And so confident in their ability to silence him, That they moved immediately. [27:41] Pablo Rangel Rubio wasn't just running a fraud. [27:45] According to prosecutors, he had built a cage around nearly 100 workers. He housed them, he employed them, he held their documentation, and when one of those workers, one who had become an American citizen, couldn't be controlled the same way and threatened to expose everything, Pablo allegedly saw only one option. Elimination, And here's the question I keep coming back to Who benefits if Iliad stays quiet? Well, Pablo, obviously His brother Juan, yeah The entire system that led to this scheme run for a decade Yeah, and maybe, Maybe, I don't want to be cynical and I don't want to be accusatory But maybe the corporation that was supposed to be verifying workers wasn't? And I'll come back to that question. [28:48] Let me ground us in what just happened. Iliad Montoya filed a federal complaint on Thursday. By Saturday afternoon, he was gunned down and left for dead on a rural Georgia road. His mother arrived at the scene and told police exactly who was responsible. His boss. Now, investigators are about to search that boss's property. And what they find will confirm everything Iliad died trying to expose. [29:18] According to court records, detectives interviewed the family that same day. They speculated that they knew who had killed the decedent. They gave police a name, Pablo Rangel. And investigators tracked down Joel Reyes, the co-worker Iliad had confided in. According to trial transcripts, Joel was visibly shaken when detectives found him. He told them he didn't want any trouble. He told them Iliad had been fearful for his life, and he told them Iliad knew retaliation was coming. And when the detective asked Joel if he knew who might have done this, according to court transcripts, Joel didn't hesitate either. He gave him the same name, Pablo Rangel. By Sunday, investigators were working around the clock. According to federal court records, police obtained search warrants for Pablo Rangel Rubio's property within 24 hours of the murder. 20 officers descended on a 26-acre compound at 275 Milton Rahn Road in Rincon, Georgia. The property they called The Farm. In an oppressive Georgia heat, they searched for three to four hours. [30:42] What they found painted a picture. According to court documents, the compound consisted of four to five trailers scattered across the acreage. One Rangel Rubio, Pablo's brother, lived in a pull-behind camper on the property. Canine units moved through the wooded area, checking outbuildings and sheds. And then they found the weapons. According to court records, the total weapons haul from the property was staggering. Fourteen firearms in all, six pistols, six rifles, two shotguns, all belonging to men who were in the country illegally. Canine units searched wooded outbuildings and sheds. Inside a cramped trailer showing signs of recent habitation, investigators made a discovery that would prove damning at trial. According to prosecutor Tanya Groover's testimony, inside the defendant's oven, hidden where no one would usually think to look, they found .22 caliber Magnum ammunition, Exhibit 27, hollow point, metal jacketed rounds, the same caliber used to kill Iliad Montoya. [32:03] Among the other ammunition seized, CCI Maxi Mag-22 Winchester Magnum hollow point rounds, the packaging was marked Varmint and Small Game. These bullets, designed to expand on impact for maximum tissue damage, matched the bullets recovered from Iliad's body. And within 48 hours of Iliad's death, according to court records, the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security had joined the investigation. The scope of what investigators had uncovered required more than local resources. This wasn't just a murder. This was a federal conspiracy investigation. [32:49] As investigators dug into Pablo Rangel-Rubio's operation, the scope of what Iliad had been trying to expose became clear. According to the federal indictment, Pablo had been running his scheme since approximately 2007. For nearly 10 years, he had systematically exploited undocumented workers who had no ability to report him without risking deportation. The operation was sophisticated. According to court documents, Pablo built a complete system of control. He would recruit undocumented workers, people who couldn't report him without risking deportation. He would provide them with housing in a trailer park that he owned, creating a captive workforce dependent on him for shelter. He would supply and sell fake identification documents and social security numbers so they could pass employment verification, charging them up to $1,500 for the paperwork. The cage, the housing, the employment, the documents, all walls. But the fourth wall that was feared, They depended on him for housing. They depended on him for employment. They depended on him for the documents that let them work. They couldn't go to police. They couldn't complain to management. Pablo held all the keys. [34:18] Let me be direct about something. Yeah, Pablo Rangel Rubio was an illegal alien. And yes, his brother Juan was an illegal alien. And yes, they hired and exploited other illegal aliens. I'm not going to pretend otherwise. But don't get distracted by the immigration issue. This story is not about that. This is a story about good and evil. This is a story about power, about control, about greed. Pablo happened to exploit immigration status as his tool of control. If he had been operating in a different industry, he would have found a different lever. Debt, addiction, criminal records, whatever kept people silent. Predators find vulnerable people and exploit their vulnerability. That's what predators do. [35:21] The immigration status of these workers didn't make them deserve to be exploited. It made them easier to exploit. There's a difference there. [35:33] And Iliad Montoya, the naturalized American citizen, the man who did everything right, who earned his place in this country, was killed precisely because his immigration status couldn't be used against him. He could speak. So he was silenced permanently. [35:55] The prosecutor put it plainly in her opening statement. Iliad Montoya spoke out. He helped those who, because of their immigration status, could not speak for themselves. And that's why he died. And then Pablo would steal from them. According to prosecutors, Pablo would receive the workers' paychecks directly. He would cash them, and he would pay the workers in cash, keeping a portion for himself. Court records indicate he was skimming approximately $10,000 every week. In over a decade, that added up to more than $3.5 million. But Pablo wasn't the only one profiting. According to federal prosecutors, his brother Juan Rangel Rubio was also part of the scheme. Combined court records show the brothers received a lot of money through their fraudulent operation. And Wolf Tree, the subsidiary of Davy Tree Expert Company, had been paying employees through this system for years. Despite being contractually obligated to verify employment eligibility. Despite Iliad's internal complaint four months before the murder. Who benefits if Iliad stays quiet? See, now you're starting to see the list. [37:21] Four other defendants would eventually be charged for their roles in this conspiracy. According to court records, they received sentences of up to 24 months, lower-level participants in a scheme that had grown far beyond one man's operation. When Iliad filed his EEOC complaint, he wasn't just threatening Pablo's income. He was threatened to expose a decade of corporate negligence and tear down the cage entirely. The timeline of what happened next is documented in federal court records. 48 hours! That's all the time Iliad had left. Let me walk you through those final days. [38:09] April 24th, 2017. Four months before the murder, Iliad reports the labor trafficking scheme directly to Wolf Tree corporate officials. He puts it in writing, a formal internal complaint. And then something extraordinary happens. According to the federal indictment, Pablo Rangel Rubio obtains a copy of Iliad's written complaint, and within days, he decides to make an example of the man who filed it. According to trial testimony from Oscar Cruz, one of Pablo's crew leaders, Pablo told him to call a meeting of all Savannah area employees, and the purpose, according to Cruz, to confront and embarrass Montoya about the complaint. [39:02] All the employees assembled at one of their regular show-up locations. And with Iliad standing right there among them, Pablo reads the complaint aloud. Every accusation, every name, every detail of what Iliad had reported, spoken out loud in front of the entire crew, with the man who wrote it forced to stand there and listen. The humiliation was public, and the message was clear. Nothing's going to happen. And this is what happens when you talk. [39:42] The company didn't just ignore the complaint. According to Oscar Cruz's trial testimony, they went further. Cruz testified that he overheard a conversation between Wolf Tree managers Michael McCollum, David Jackson, and Chris Branch. According to Cruz, they said they wanted to prepare a paper trail so they could fire Montoya. Not investigate his complaint. not protect a whistleblower, but build a case to terminate him. And that's exactly what they did. The paper trail was coming. Pablo kept running his operation. The cage stayed locked. And the man who tried to tear it down and protect workers? Well, he was about to learn just how far the company would go to silence him. Iliad must have been furious. Maybe he felt betrayed, but whatever he felt, he didn't give up. If Wolf Tree wouldn't act, he'd find someone who would. He escalated this to the federal government. July 14, 2017, 36 days before the murder, Iliad receives his paycheck along with an envelope from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. He's preparing to escalate. [41:11] According to evidence photos, investigators would later find that envelope among Iliad's belongings. A manila envelope from the EEOC's Savannah local office. And inside was his paycheck stub from Wolf Tree. [41:26] Check number 56867. His employee number. His hourly wage, $17. Net pay that week, $577.87. And in the corner, his 401K contributions. He had been saving for retirement, planning for a future. He never would see. [41:52] July 27, 2017. 23 days before the murder, Joel Reyes, Iliad's co-worker, files his own complaint about the scheme. According to trial testimony, Joel warned Iliad to stop. His exact words, as recorded in court transcripts, I told him, mister, stop doing that because I know that there could be problems. When Iliad asked why, Joel's answer was simple. Because the Wrangles are big. That family is big here. He explained what he meant. He has nephews and he has brothers and he has family in Texas also. The detective who interviewed Joel later testified about what Joel was really saying Pablo would not kill Iliad himself but he had family members that would Iliad heard the warning he'd already endured the humiliation he'd already waited four months for wolf tree to act. [42:58] August 16th, 2017. It's a Wednesday. Three days before the murder. According to trial testimony, Iliad Montoya was suspended from Wolf Tree. The official reason? Breaking minimum personal distance near electrical lines. A safety violation. [43:21] Remember what Oscar Cruz testified about the manager's conversation? Prepare a paper trail so they could fire him. This was the paper trail. A pretext to push him out. To push out the man who reported the fraud. But Ilya didn't give up. He didn't go quietly. The very next day, the day after they suspended him, he escalated. August 17, 2017. Thursday, 48 hours before the murder, Iliad walks into the EEOC office and files a formal federal complaint. He includes notarized statements from other workers willing to testify. This time, he was not asking his employer for help. He was going over their heads. To the government. Four months of silence, four months of humiliation, and now 48 hours left to live. [44:26] August 18th, Friday, one day before the murder. According to surveillance records, entered into evidence at trial. A white Chevrolet van appeared in the area 16 times that day. An Escalade was observed alongside it. They were conducting reconnaissance. The van would become crucial evidence. According to court photos, it was a white Chevrolet Express cargo van with a ladder rack on top. And on the side, painted in professional lettering, Chiapas' home and kitchen remodeling, a phone number, an email address, and a Georgia license plate. Chiapas, that wasn't just a business name. According to investigators, it was Higuano Perez Bravo's nickname, a reference to his home state in Mexico. He had literally painted his identity on the side of the vehicle, he would use to help commit the murder. According to court records, the same day, the EEOC mailed Iliad a form letter. The letter included a section about non-retaliation protections. [45:40] He would never receive it. On August 19th, a Saturday, according to surveillance evidence, the Chiapas van appeared 27 times. The previous day, it appeared 16 times. 27 versus 16. They were closing in. Phone records entered into evidence showed eight calls between the conspirators between 12.17 and 12.35 p.m. The last call was to Pablo Rangel Rubio. [46:13] Less than an hour later, Iliad Montoya was dead. [46:24] We're at the point in this story where everything changes. Iliad Montoya is dead. His family knows who's responsible. Investigators have found the weapons, the ammunition, the evidence of a decade-long criminal enterprise. But what we haven't answered is the most important question yet. How did Pablo Rangel Rubio arrange for Iliad to be killed? Who pulled the trigger? And what did they confess when investigators caught them? Hey, if this story is hitting you the way it hit me when I first discovered it, I want you to know there's more. Full case files, court documents, the evidence that convicted three men. If you're a subscriber, you would have gotten an email from me when this show dropped with the secret link on how you can download that. It's not too late to subscribe for the next one. Just go to truecrimeunheard.com. You can follow me on Facebook, Instagram, and maybe YouTube. You can join my substack for deep dives like this one. Just search for true crime cases you haven't heard. Now. [47:37] Let me tell you how they planned a murder. [47:48] So here's where we are. Pablo Rangel Rubio ran a $3.5 million labor trafficking scheme for nearly a decade. Iliad Montoya exposed it. Investigators have already found 14 firearms at Pablo's compound. Ammunition matching the murder weapon and evidence of systematic worker exploitation. But the question isn't what Pablo did. The question is how he arranged for Iliad to be killed. And according to prosecutors he paid for it. According to the federal indictment Pablo Rangel Rubio didn't pull the trigger himself. [48:28] Kind of paid someone to do it. Court records show that Pablo recruited two other men to help carry out the murder. His own brother, Juan Rangel Rubio, and Higuano Perez Bravo, the driver from our cast map. Why his brother? Well, according to court records, Juan wasn't just muscle. He was a co-conspirator in the labor trafficking scheme. He worked alongside Pablo and helped hire undocumented workers, helped route paychecks to personal bank accounts, and Juan had his own financial stake in silencing Montoya. [49:07] Remember what Joel Reyes warned Iliad? Their angles are big. That family is big here. He said Pablo had brothers and nephews and family in Texas, and Joel tried to warn him, and Iliad filed a complaint anyway. Was he stupid, or was he brave? Or was he being protective of his crew? For the getaway driver, Pablo went outside the family. Higgino Perez Bravo wasn't related to the Rangel-Rubio brothers. He was a hired hand, available with vehicles, and willing to participate for money. And he provided a layer of separation? Maybe? But here's something the court records reveal about Perez Bravo that kind of complicates the picture. According to psychological testing presented at trial, Higgino Perez Bravo has an IQ of 75. That's borderline intellectual functioning, just five points above what's classified as mild intellectual disability. He came from a rural area of Mexico with limited formal education, An expert testimony suggested he struggled to understand complex language Including legal Spanish used in his Miranda warnings. [50:35] All right, look, I gotta stop here because I found something in the court records that I'm still kind of wrapping my head around. A linguistics professor testified in this case, Dr. Robert Leonard from Hofstra University. That's a respected private school out on Long Island. This guy's a forensic linguist. He studies how language works in legal settings. He's testified in federal courts all over the country, And he examined the Spanish-language Miranda form The standard one The form the FBI uses And Homeland Security and federal agencies use everywhere And here's what blew me away, The form uses the word tribunal for court, And a different word for provide And according to Dr. Leonard Working-class Spanish speakers from rural Mexico They don't know these words They've literally never heard them It's like reading someone their rights in Shakespeare I mean, technically it's English, yeah, sure But kind of functionally useless, The everyday word for court in Mexican Spanish is corte Everyone knows corte But the official form says tribunal. [51:56] And I'm sitting here thinking Wait In cases like this one, defense attorneys can And do Argue their clients had no idea what they were signing, And that's exactly what happened here So when these appeals work and guilty people walk free And convictions get tossed. [52:22] What was the fix? Simple. Translate the form into Spanish. People actually speak. That's it. Cost nothing. But at the time of this confession, the federal forum still said tribunal. I don't know what to do with that, but there it is. [52:43] But back to Perez Bravo, the getaway driver, with a 75 IQ who signed that form. The court ultimately rejected the defense's competency arguments But consider who Pablo Rangel Rubio chose to recruit Not a professional, not a hardened criminal But a man with borderline intellectual functioning An undocumented immigrant from a vulnerable population The same kind of person Pablo had been exploiting for a decade. [53:17] Perez Bravo wasn't a mastermind. That doesn't excuse what he did. I mean, he made a choice. He took the money. He dropped off the killer, and he waited for him to call to pick him up. But it does raise a question. Was Higgino Perez Bravo a co-conspirator? Or was he in some way one more person Pablo Rangel Rubio used and discarded? According to prosecutors, Pablo had been making payments to Perez Bravo in the months before the murder. Court records document a check for $6,000 in May and a wire transfer of $20,000 in June. $26,000 in the federal filings. That's the documented price of Iliad Montoya's life. And he didn't even pull the trigger. The roles were clearly defined. According to court testimony, Juan Rangel Rubio would be the shooter. Higino Perez Bravo would be the driver. And Pablo? According to Perez Bravo's confession, that 141 pages of that transcript, Pablo gave the order. [54:42] When investigators interviewed Perez Bravo, they asked what Pablo had said to him. According to trial testimony, Perez Bravo admitted that Pablo told him, lend me the cars because I need to locate that guy that we're looking for to eliminate him. The detective summarized what Perez Bravo confessed. He stated that he was paid $20,000 by Pablo Rangel to use his vehicles for surveillance and a drop-off one to eliminate the guy. When they asked what Pablo meant by eliminate, Perez Bravo's answer, recorded in court documents, was unambiguous. Eliminate meant kill. [55:29] According to the federal indictment, Pablo conducted surveillance of Iliad near his home in the days before the murder. He was tracking his target, learning his patterns. On August 18th, the day before the killing, the Chiapas van, the Escalade, 16 sightings. On August 19th, they were ready. Oh, they were ready. And according to court records, at approximately 12.35 p.m., Juan Rangel Rubio called his brother Pablo. Less than an hour later, according to the indictment and witness testimony, Perez Bravo pulled the Chiapas van into a travel center about 500 feet down old Dean Forest Road, from where Iliad was working on his truck. Juan got out. According to the prosecution opening statement, Juan was carrying that little bag. And inside that bag, a loaded .22 caliber firearm with hollow point bullets. The prosecution told the jury what happened next. [56:43] Juan got out of the defendant's vehicle, and he was carrying that bag. The bag that had the .22 caliber firearm inside. It was loaded with hollow-point bullets. And according to court documents, Iliad was working on his tree truck. Not a company vehicle. Wolf's tree trucks were green with yellow logos. This one was Iliad's own truck. A white-cabbed work rig with a dark black bed and a red crane and equipment that he used for his side business. Court testimony confirmed he ran his own small tree service on weekends, taking jobs after his regular shifts. The truck was too large to park in his mobile home, so he kept it on that quiet, secluded road beside the woods. And that's where he worked on it, which was often. Because according to court records, he had a lot of problems with that truck. [57:37] Here's what makes that significant, because the killers knew this. They had spent two days conducting surveillance. On August 18th, the Chiapas van in Escalade made those 16 passes around that road. On the 19th of the day of the murder, the van alone made 27 passes before noon. They weren't randomly hunting. They were watching. They were waiting to catch him alone. And according to court records, Montoya could often be found out on that quiet road working on that truck. They knew exactly where he'd be. He was bent over the engine, or maybe underneath it. His car was running beside him. He'd driven down the road from his mobile home park just minutes before. Radio playing, flip-flops on his feet. I don't think he ever heard Juan approach. [58:35] The forensic evidence would later tell the story of what happened next. Not a clean story, not a simple one. According to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation forensic pathologist, who examined the body, a doctor who had performed approximately 2,500 autopsies, Iliad Montoya was shot six times. Two entrance wounds to the left side of his back. One fractured his ribs and injured his lung. The other tore through both lungs. A graze wound across his left shoulder, an entrance wound to the back of his neck that injured his skull and brain. One of three wounds the medical examiner said would classify as instantly fatal. According to court documents, the attack was described as execution style. Iliad did not exhibit wounds, suggesting he had fought his assailant. I mean, think about what that means. Six gunshots, and the only possible defensive wound was on his finger. [59:44] According to defense evidence, that little finger wound, that might have been a defensive wound. Which meant, at some point, maybe after the first shots, maybe as he fell, maybe as he lay on the ground, Iliad Montoya raised his hand to protect himself. The general didn't just fall, he fought. [1:00:09] And then, there's that wound to his mouth. This wasn't an exit wound. According to the pathologist's testimony, this was a separate entrance wound. The bullet entered on his lip, passed upward through the roof of his mouth, through his skull, and into the front of his brain. It fractured his jaw and knocked out teeth. In and of itself, the pathologist testified, this wound was fatal. And the prosecutor's opening statement described what this meant. Juan took out that gun and fired at least five metal-jacketed hollow-point bullets that tore through the body of Iliad Montoya, tore through his head. And the prosecutor continued, He used it to silence Iliad Montoya. He used it to silence that problem employee. [1:01:04] Shot in the mouth, a bullet that entered the lip and traveled upward, according to the prosecution, that would carry a message. This is what happens when you talk. According to the confession transcript, Perez Bravo picked Juan up at the freeway on-ramp about 1,000 feet from the crime scene. And here's what the getaway driver noticed about the man who had just committed the murder. The detective asked Perez Bravo, Was Juan nervous? And Perez Bravo's answer recorded in the transcript, I saw he was very, I saw he was very, and the detective prompted, Agitated? Yes, Perez Bravo confirmed. Like very scared and something like that. The detective asked if there was blood, if Perez Bravo saw a gun. He never just got got there got into my van and his feet were wet his shoes, the detective repeated back his shoes were wet and that was that was it. [1:02:17] Juan Rangel Rubio climbed into the van with wet shoes, agitated, maybe scared. The detective never asked where the water came from, but Iliad Montoya lay bleeding in the grass beside his truck. They left Iliad Montoya face down in the grass beside his truck, engine still running, radio still playing, his flip-flops still on his feet. According to the trial testimony, when the first officer arrived and checked for a pulse, nope, there was none. And when EMS arrived and checked for a heartbeat, no, there wasn't. Six shots later with hollow-point ammunition designed for varmint and small game, according to the medical examiner, three of those wounds were instantly fatal. The others would have required immediate medical attention to survive. And the general never had a chance. [1:03:21] The investigation that followed was swift. According to court records, Pablo Rangel Rubio was in custody within 24 hours. [1:03:29] By Monday, August 21st, the FBI and Department of Homeland Security had confirmed their involvement. What followed was methodical. According to court documents, investigators compiled phone records that showed the coordination between the conspirators on the day of the murder. They obtained surveillance footage showing the vehicles. They traced the financial payments from Pablo to Perez Bravo, and they got some confessions. Pay attention to what happens next. I've been building to this moment for a reason, because the confession I'm about to share with you is the moment this entire case cracked open. According to court records, Perez Bravo's confession spans 141 pages of transcript. In it, according to prosecutors, he described how Pablo ordered the murder. [1:04:28] Pablo paid Perez Bravo $20,000 via wire transfer so he could use the cars and for driving. And to his brother Juan, the man who pulled the trigger, Pablo's instructions were simple. According to court records, Pablo told his accomplices to do whatever they wanted with Iliad. He didn't care. Just eliminate him. [1:04:56] I need to say something about corporate responsibility here. Iliad Montoya filed an internal complaint with Wolf Tree, corporate officials, in April of 2017, four months before he was murdered. According to court records, nothing happened. His complaint was ignored, or at least used against him. A civil jury would later conclude The Davy Tree Expert Company Wolf Tree's parent corporation, Bore 90% of the responsibility for Iliad's death And that civil jury found that the company's negligence Directly contributed to the murder, The plaintiffs argued and the jury agreed That if Wolf Tree had investigated that complaint, if they had looked into what Pablo Rangel-Rubio was doing, if they had taken action when an employee came forward with allegations of fraud, that Iliad Montoya might still be alive. [1:06:06] The company knew, or should have known, that something was wrong. An employee told them so, and they did apparently nothing. This is what whistleblowers face. Not just the danger from the people they're exposing, but the silence from the institutions that should protect them. Iliad followed every proper channel he reported internally first, and when that failed, he went to federal authorities. He did everything right. And he was still murdered for it. Remember the question I asked earlier, who benefits if Iliad stays quiet? Well, now you know the answer. And you know what silence cost him. [1:06:56] The federal indictment came on December 7, 2018, more than a year after the murder, but it was the result of a meticulous investigation. According to the Department of Justice records, three men were charged. Pablo Rangel Rubio, Juan Rangel Rubio, and Higuano Perez Bravo. The charges were extensive. Conspiracy to murder a federal witness. Use of interstate commerce in the commission of murder for hire. Conspiracy to kill a witness to prevent testimony. Conspiracy to conceal, harbor, and shield illegal aliens. And money laundering conspiracy. According to the U.S. Attorney's Office, all three defendants were Mexican citizens who were in the United States illegally. [1:07:45] The irony is not lost on me, maybe not on you, that Iliad Montoya had been a naturalized American citizen for eight years. He had done everything the right way. He had pursued citizenship through the legal process. He worked his way up. He supported his family, and he was living the American dream. And his killers had been in the country illegally the entire time he was building that life. And the workers Iliad tried to protect, they were also undocumented, trapped inside the cage Pablo built, unable to report the exploitation without risking deportation. The perpetrators weren't just undocumented, they were undocumented immigrants exploiting other undocumented immigrants and using their shared vulnerability as a weapon. Iliad was the one person in the system who could speak up without fear of deportation. And that's exactly why they killed him. The government considered seeking the death penalty. [1:09:01] According to court records, the Justice Department's Capital Case Review Committee evaluated whether to pursue the death penalty against all three defendants. Ultimately, prosecutors decided not to seek capital punishment. But the charges they did pursue carried sentences that would ensure the defendants would spend most or all of their life remaining in federal prison. Juan Rangel Rubio, the shooter, initially pleaded not guilty. He would face trial. Pablo Rangel Rubio, the mastermind, and Higgino Perez Bravo, the driver, would eventually enter guilty pleas, but not before the case worked its way through the federal court system for years. [1:09:50] The COVID-19 pandemic delayed proceedings. Defense motions challenged jury selection. The case dragged on. And meanwhile, according to court records, Juan Rangel Rubio was found in possession of firearms the day after the killing. The murder weapon, a .22 caliber firearm, was never recovered. But investigators matched the ammunition found in Juan's oven to the bullets pulled from Iliad's body. And Juan was already facing federal firearms charges when the murder conspiracy indictment came down. The firearms charge was just the beginning because the man who killed Iliad Montoya was about to face something far worse than just illegal gun possession. He was about to face a jury and a co-worker who would deliver the most devastating testimony of the entire trial. [1:10:52] Five years after the murder, October 2022. Now, we've established the scheme. Three and a half million dollars stolen from roughly 100 workers. We've established the motive. Iliad's complaint threatened to expose everything and tear down that cage. We've established the conspiracy. Pablo paid $26,000 and told his accomplices to eliminate the problem. The driver has pleaded guilty. Pablo's pleaded guilty. And now Juan Rangel Rubio, the man who pulled the trigger, faces a jury. [1:11:35] And five years after the murder, Juan Rangel Rubio went to trial. And according to court records, the trial lasted five days. The evidence presented included surveillance footage, phone records, financial documents, and testimony from witnesses that had been part of the scheme Iliad tried to expose. Joel Reyes, the co-worker Iliad had confided in, took the stand. According to trial transcripts, he testified about the warnings he had given Iliad. About the fear in Iliad's voice when he talked about being watched, and about the moment he learned his friend was dead. When asked if he was surprised that Iliad was dead, Joel's answer was simple. No, he was not. He had warned Iliad to stop. He told him to leave Pablo alone. He knew what the Wrangles were capable of. [1:12:32] The prosecution's case was built on evidence that left little room for doubt. According to trial transcripts, prosecutors presented the surveillance footage, showing the Chiapas van and Escalade conducting reconnaissance on August 18th and 19th. They showed the jury the phone records, documenting eight calls between the conspirators in the hour before the murder. They played portions of the confession. And they presented the forensic evidence, connecting the bullets found hidden in the oven to fragments pulled from Iliad's body. And remember those CCI MaxiMag 22 hollow points? The packaging said varmint and small game? Well, the prosecution showed the jury Exhibit 48, bullet fragments recovered from Iliad Montoya's neck, his chest, and his brain. Varmint ammunition That's what they use to kill a father, a husband, and a son Bullets designed to expand on impact to cause maximum damage to small animals, This wasn't a crime of passion With whatever weapon was at hand This was calculated, And the prosecution's closing argument, according to trial transcripts Included a stark interpretation of the evidence. [1:13:56] Iliad had been shot in the back, he'd been shot in the head, he'd been shot in the mouth. And according to prosecution, that last shot would carry the message. Shot in the mouth to shut your mouth. [1:14:12] That was the theory. Iliad was killed not just to stop him from testifying, but to send a message to anyone else who might consider speaking up. Silence him permanently and silence everyone else through fear. That was the prosecution's case. Five days of evidence, surveillance footage, phone records, confessions, the testimony of a co-worker who said he wasn't surprised when Iliad died because he warned him this would happen. Now a jury had to decide. Everything, the life sentence, the justice, the accountability, it all came down to 12 people in a Georgia courtroom. [1:15:00] Guilty. That word, after five years, after thousands of pages of evidence, after testimony from the man who warned Iliad this would happen? Guilty. And let me tell you what that verdict really means. According to court records, the jury deliberated and returned with their verdict. Guilty on all counts. Juan Rangel Rubio, the man who had walked up to Iliad Montoya and shot him six times with hollow-point ammunition, was convicted of conspiracy to murder, a federal witness, convicted of murder for hire, and convicted of using interstate commerce facilities in the commission of murder. With the trial concluded, Pablo Rangel Rubio entered his guilty plea, and according to court records, he admitted to his role as the mastermind, the man who had ordered the killing and the man who said, eliminate him. Higgino Perez Bravo had already pleaded guilty to his role as the getaway driver. All three men now face sentencing. [1:16:18] I've covered a lot of cases over the years. I've seen verdicts that brought closure, verdicts that felt hollow, verdicts that came too late, and this verdict was... it was different. When you hear the words life in federal prison, you might not fully grasp what that means. There's no parole in the federal system. Life means life. Juan Rangel Rubio will die behind bars. He will never see freedom again. For Iliad's family, that's not celebration. It's not even satisfaction. I mean, really. Their husband, their son, their father, their brother, he's still gone. No verdict will bring him back. But there's something in the weight of that sentence, something in knowing that the man who pulled the trigger will never walk free again. It doesn't erase the 48 hours between complaint and murder. It doesn't bring back the years Iliad should have had with his family. But it's something. I mean, it's got to be something. [1:17:34] The criminal case is over. Juan Rangel-Rubio, life without parole. Pablo Rangel-Rubio, effectively, life. Nearly 49 years. And Higgino Perez Bravo, 20 years. Three men who may all die in prison. But the legal consequences didn't end with the murders. The corporation that ignored Iliad's warnings, the company that was contractually obligated to verify workers, and didn't? They faced consequences too. Well, sort of. [1:18:15] The sentencing hearings brought the full weight of federal justice. According to Department of Justice records on April 10, 2023, Judge Lisa Godbey Wood pronounced sentence on Juan Rangel Rubio. Spring had finally arrived in Savannah, and temperatures in the mid-60s, a brisk wind blowing outside. And outside the federal courthouse, the world was coming back to life after winter. Inside, a different kind of finality. Life in federal prison for Juan. No possibility of parole. Juan Rangel Rubio will die in prison. He appealed. And according to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals on April 25th, 2024, his appeal was denied. The court affirmed his conviction on all counts. Six and a half years after Iliad Montoya was gunned down on a sunny Saturday afternoon, the legal process was finally, completely over. The life sentence stands. There's no further repeal. [1:19:30] According to court records, Juan was also ordered to pay restitution to Iliad's estate. On paper. In reality, though, a man serving life without parole, an undocumented worker who had nothing to begin with, he'll never pay a dime. The restitution order is a legal formality. A line and a judgment that means nothing to Iliad's widow or his mother. Pablo Rangel Rubio, the mastermind, was sentenced in November of 2022. Five years and three months after the murder, Pablo stood in a federal courtroom as temperatures outside barely cracked 50 degrees. That gray November sky matched the mood. A far cry from the sweltering August day when his brother gunned down Iliad Montoya under a blazing Georgia sun. According to Department of Justice records, Pablo received 584 months in federal prison. That's 48.6 years. At 49 years old at the time of the crime, Pablo Rangel Rubio will be nearly 100 years old before he's eligible for release. Effectively, a life sentence. [1:20:53] But here's the irony of federal sentencing. Pablo built a $3.5 million criminal enterprise. He exploited 100 workers. He ordered the murder. He paid for it. But because he pled guilty and his brother pulled the trigger, Juan will die in prison while Pablo, theoretically, although unlikely, has a release date. And then there's the third man, Higno Perez Bravo. The driver, the one who got $20,000 or $26,000 to lend his cars and transport the killer, he received 240 months. That's 20 years. Perez Bravo was 52 at the time of the crime. He'll be 72 when he gets out if he survives. And according to court records, he later applied for compassionate release. It was denied. The total restitution order more than $4 million and the total likely to be collected from three undocumented workers serving decades in federal prison. I'm going with zero. [1:22:07] According to prosecutors, Iliad Montoya was murdered for doing the right thing. These sentences, they said, represented a measure of justice for a brave man murdered by criminals. But justice in this case means prison cells, not financial recovery for the family left behind. And there's one more piece of this story, because the criminal convictions were only part of the accountability. The corporation that ignored Iliad's warnings, the company that let this scheme operate for a decade, well, they wound up facing consequences too. [1:22:46] And what those consequences reveal about corporate accountability in America might be the most troubling part of this entire case. [1:22:59] The legal consequences didn't end with the criminal case. According to federal records on July 13, 2023, Davie Tree Expert Company and its subsidiary, Wolf Tree, entered into a settlement with the United States government. The total? $3,984,325.44 According to the settlement agreement, this included restitution to Iliad Montoya's estate. It included forfeiture of the profits Wolf Tree had made from the contracts where illegal labor was used. And it included civil penalties. The settlement acknowledged what Iliad had tried to report. The labor trafficking. The illegal hiring. The cage that had operated for nearly a decade while corporate officials either didn't know or didn't care to find out. [1:24:00] But the civil case went further. According to the court records in June 2025, a civil trial was held against Davy Tree Expert Company, and the jury was asked to determine the company's responsibility for Iliad's death. And their verdict? Davy Tree was 90% at fault. 90%! In the civil judgment, the jury found that this Forbes Best Employers Company, their employee-owned company, the oldest tree care company in North America, bore 90% of the responsibility for Iliad Montoya's death. The total awarded exceeded $5 million, and according to court records, Iliad's widow, Maria Montoya, was awarded $3.1 million. [1:24:59] But here's what Davy Tree didn't face. No criminal charges. The federal settlement was structured as a non-prosecution agreement. In exchange for paying $3.9 million and cooperating with investigators, the company avoided criminal prosecution entirely. No executives went to prison. No one from corporate faced personal consequences For the failures that put Iliad's complaint in the hands of his killer, No public apology Not to Maria, not to Avelina, not to the family that lost everything, $3.9 million sounds like a lot But Davy Tree is a $1.8 billion company That settlement represents less than a quarter of 1% of their annual revenue. Maybe it's just the cost of doing business. The three men who murdered Iliud Montoya will spend the rest of their lives in federal prison. The company that was 90% responsible for creating the conditions that led to his death and paid a fine, they moved on. [1:26:19] Who makes the call when paperwork turns into violence? In this case, no one at corporate even answered it. [1:26:32] At sentencing, Judge Wood addressed one of the killers directly. According to court transcripts, she said, The evidence at trial showed that the victim, Mr. Iliad Montoya, took a brave and righteous path to complain to the EEOC about mistreatment. And in response to Mr. Montoya voicing complaints, you conspired to shoot him in the mouth. A brave and righteous path. That's how the federal judge described what Iliad did. [1:27:08] So that's it, $11 million. That's the price tag on Iliad Montoya's murder. The criminal restitution, the federal settlement, the civil verdict. But no amount of money will bring him back. His mother, Avelina, spoke to WJCL Television on the day her son died. You heard her voice earlier in this episode. Now, listen to what else she said. Mother's plea, recorded just hours after losing her son. And she hopes he gets the justice he deserves. I hope they catch the people that did this. I hope they are held and punished. That's all he would have wanted. He was not a bad person. I've spent weeks reading through these court documents. Trial transcripts, witness statements, federal filings, thousands of pages. Subscribers at TrueCrimeUnheard.com got the link, the secret link, to download those documents when this episode dropped. Primary sources matter. [1:28:19] I want to speak directly to Iliad's family for a moment, to Maria, to Avelina, to his children, to anyone who loved him. I've read thousands of pages describing the worst thing that ever happened to your family. And here's what I need you to know. In all of those pages, in all of that testimony, not a single person, not one, had a bad word to say about Iliad. His co-worker, Joel Reyes, when asked about him by detectives, said simply, he was a good guy. That's how the people who worked alongside him remembered him. The federal prosecutor in open court said he spoke out and helped those who, because of their immigration status, could not speak for themselves. That's how the United States government described your husband, your son, and your father. A federal judge called what he did a brave and righteous path. And those are the words in the official record. Brave and righteous. The detective who caught his killers described him as what I would deem as a whistleblower, a man who tried to do the right thing. [1:29:46] His co-workers called him the general, remember? They looked up to him. Not because he gave orders, but because he led. Because when something needed to be done, he did it. And because he looked out for the people who couldn't look out for themselves. And that leadership, that courage, it's what got him killed. Because he refused to stay silent, because he filed the complaint anyway. That's who the general was. [1:30:23] He worked seven days a week every single day so his mother could stop working, to care for his wife and children. He carried his whole family on his back, and I don't think he ever complained about the wait. And when he saw nearly a hundred workers being exploited trapped inside a cage they couldn't escape he spoke up for them, even when his first complaint was ignored even when his friend warned him the wrangles are big, even when Pablo humiliated him in front of his co-workers and even when he wrote in his notebook they are always watching me, He filed his complaint anyway Because that's who he was Remember that EEOC envelope the investigators found among his belongings? His paycheck stub, his employee number And his 401k contribution, He was saving for retirement $17 an hour Putting away money for a future he believed in He did everything right He became a citizen He worked every single day. He saved for tomorrow. And they killed him for it. [1:31:44] And when they shot him six times from behind like cowards, his body was found in the grass beside his still running truck just down the street from home. He never had a chance to say goodbye. But I think your father was a hero. And I think the court records prove it. And I think the testimony proves it. The prosecutors proved it. I hope you know that. And I hope you have always known it. And I hope that now more people will know it. [1:32:26] I started this episode by telling you that this case was never covered on a podcast before. I still think that's true. And despite everything, the murder, the multi-million dollar fraud, the life sentence, the civil verdict holding a major corporation 90% responsible for a man's death, I don't think anyone's told this story until now. I don't know why, but that ends today. [1:32:53] Iliad Montoya's story deserves to be heard Not just because it's a story about crime and punishment Or good and evil But because it's a story about the kind of person We should all hope to be, Someone who sees something wrong and tries to fix it Someone who protects people who can't protect themselves And someone who does the right thing Even when the right thing might get them killed, His killers are in prison The corporation that ignored his warnings was held accountable And the scheme he tried to expose was dismantled, The cage he tried to tear down is gone And the workers he tried to protect Saw the men who exploited them brought to justice. [1:33:41] Iliad Montoya didn't live to see any of that But it happened because of him, And to his children Your father was the kind of man Any of us Would be proud to call a friend I know I would The kind of man who makes you believe People can still be good, And the court records are full of evidence and exhibits But the most important thing in those records Is the picture they paint Of who your father was He was not a bad person, He was a good man A brave man A hero, And now his story has been told, If this story moved you, I need to ask you something. Can you please rate and review this podcast? It helps other people find these stories. Stories that haven't been told anywhere else. You can subscribe at truecrimeunheard.com. You can follow me on Facebook and on Instagram and YouTube, Substack. Just search true crime cases you haven't heard. I'm Steve Rode. Stay curious. [1:35:03] Stay safe. Stay subscribed. [1:35:08] And enjoy the full show theme song. Bye.