The Story of Vicente, Who Murdered His Mother, His Father, & His Sister - Sandra Rodríguez Nieto

Sandra Rodríguez Nieto’s The Story of Vicente, Who Murdered His Mother, His Father, and His Sister is a disturbing piece of investigative reportage centred on a shocking triple murder in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. In May 2004, sixteen-year-old Vicente and two high-school friends murdered Vicente’s mother, father and younger sister.

Using the case as a starting point, Rodríguez Nieto reconstructs the crime and investigates the circumstances surrounding the three boys, while widening the story into a portrait of life in Juárez. The book examines the city’s drug cartels, poverty, political corruption, failing institutions and the culture of violence that took hold along the US-Mexico border.

Rodríguez Nieto was an investigative reporter for El Diario de Juárez and spent years reporting from the city despite the enormous risks involved. The result is a grim, intimate work of true crime and investigative journalism that uses one family’s tragedy to explore the much larger forces behind Juárez’s violence.