The Mysterious and Tragic Death of Yusely Verdecia Reyes - One Year Later Republication, Introduction
Hard to believe it has been one year since Yusely Verdecia Reyes was found hanging from a tree in North Portland, Oregon, with contusions, signs of rape and torture riddled all over her body.
No investigation has been opened, no arrests have been made.
The death has been officially recorded as a suicide.
Yusely’s mother, Marbelis Reyes, hired a private investigator months ago, paying his fees with scraped together donations from friends, and–mostly–from her church’s congregation. Because so few who assert they know the truth of Yusely’s murder are willing to come forward, speak with investigators, police, or stand with the DA for prosecution, nothing material has progressed this case.
Shortly after the private investigator was hired, he asked CDR to cease our multipart series covering this story, and we obliged, concurring our publicized stories could jeopardize efforts to achieve justice.
CDR was already three years deep in covering the Homelessness Crisis in Portland when this happened, then shifted focus to Yusely’s death. We interviewed over 100 people regarding this case. Eleven people, ten houseless, claim to have heard or witnessed horrifying events that left the 18-year-old Yusely dead last May. None have been willing to risk their lives by cooperating with authorities for fear of retaliation from the five named suspects due to their alleged gang and cartel affiliations.
So, there’s not much more that can be done. Despite the truth, there is no case. If the well-justified fear of gangs successfully keeps police and prosecutors from indicting suspects, much less trying this case, not much more can be done than remembering sweet Yusely, who happened to come of age in a town that is approaching its nadir economically, as well as an existential crisis of self-identity.
CDR remembers Yusely Verdecia Reyes here, by republishing the first three parts of the story of her death, and pledging to finish the series.
We will never forget you, Yusely Verdecia Reyes, your life was not ended in vain.
About three years ago, when I first became editor of County Democrat Reader, I embarked on a series of stories about homelessness in Portland, which at that point had already reached epidemic levels.
During that time I met many amazing people, and one of them was Yusely Verdecia Reyes.
She was 15 at the time, had lied and told me she was 18, and she looked it. Every time I returned to the encampment she lived in, locally called The Cut, I would always try to check in with Yusely (pronounced you-SEH-lee), to make sure she was okay.
In May of this year, three months after turning 18, Yusely died.
Official designation of death has been suicide.
In fact, according to her mother, police had Yusely’s suicide report completed and ready to be signed by the medical examiner — before she was even dead.
There has been no investigation at all by any official or law enforcement agency that Yusely’s family and friends are aware of, even though her body was covered in bruises, lacerations, and indications of rape. There are many allegations and folks who claim to have seen, or heard, events that tragic night.
I have not met a single individual who has been interviewed by law enforcement of any kind.
I was completely shocked when I heard the news, like every person who knew this vibrant, beaming young woman.
Yes, she was traveling down a dark path, we knew that.
Yes she was making choices for self-medication that would probably not be the wisest in terms of self-care.
There are so many off-ramps when it comes to caring for people who are homeless, but they all rub raw when positioned against Yusely.
Her mother, Marbelis Reyes, agonized trying to get her off the street, even when work required her to move to another state. However, a 32-year-old boyfriend who kept her on drugs, and victimized by repeated bouts of severe violence, outweighed her chances by the end.
I spent the entire summer, when I wasn’t looking for my next paying job, doing everything I possibly could to get to the truth about how she died.
Yusely deserved this.
On top of having been subjected to every sort of corporeal crime, in life, she was being victimized again in death by a system willing to neglect and marginalize her case.
Investigating required me spending overnights in encampments, interviewing over 100 people, traveling far outside my comfort zone, and putting myself in extreme danger. The effort consumed every single free moment I had available.
The closer I got to the truth, it seemed, the more in danger my life became.
I received several death threats throughout the process.
When I finally learned the single final puzzle piece of information that made the whole situation make sense (like a domino effect: motive, premeditation, cover up, all of it), I was met with a physical attack involving someone I knew, someone I had just confronted because evidence of planning Yusely’s death led straight to him.
I could not believe the reaction.
This normally calm, articulate and intelligent “friend” of three years became unhinged. He started crying, screaming, his face turned into a panicked lion’s until he pulled out a ten inch bolo knife and tried to stab me upward and into my sternum.
I felt the point of his knife pierce my shirt and skin, like a pin prick growing into a bee sting, growing into what could possibly be the end of my life.
If I’m honest, I remember being heartbroken as he took four steps toward me, yelling, saying he was sorry, gripping the knife tightly with his right hand.
“No,” I thought. “Not you! You have been lying and misleading me all this time? It really was you? All along? And what about the other girls who are missing? I thought you were my friend!”
All this was running through my head until… he made the mistake of grabbing my right shoulder and started to push the blade into my chest.
Then, something took over. It was all business after that momentary heart break.
It took me nine seconds to get out of that situation because my father, a master boxer and military man, taught me to fight like a mother f***** when I was growing up. I don’t often share that fact because I don’t want people to use my 6’2" frame as a reason to be scared — — I want people to feel safer because they’re around me, not threatened. I have always been this way, ask anyone who knows me.
When those nine seconds were over, the bolo lay on the ground, and I had the perpetrator over a mini cliff ready to push him over, I have never been so grateful for my father’s tough love in my entire life. Because not only did it save my life, it saved the life of a pathetic, two-faced liar who reportedly planned the entire death and involved people in a rape, torture and murder to try and cover up another of his heinous crimes.
Because of my father, I was able to save my life, take pity on his.
“Do I push you, ______?” I asked. “Or do I save your f**king life?”
“Save me,” he whispered.
So I did.
I pulled him back from the edge.
And then, he quickly reached for the knife again.
By this time, another camper had heard the commotion and had come to see what was going on. He was there in time to put his foot on the blade.
“I think we’re done here,” he said authoritatively. “I think it’s pretty clear, ______, you are outmatched. And there will be no killing here today. Are you okay with that?” he asked, looking at me.
“Yes.”
That, however, is where my mercy ends.
I hold many people and organizations accountable for this tragic and senseless death, especially myself.
In fact, I consider her death to be the single biggest failure of my adult life.
Certainly, I could have done more. Certainly.
We all must do better to take care of our brothers and sisters in the streets, in the senior living centers, in the beautiful houses, and the ones made out of cardboard.
I’m calling everyone out to do just that.
Today County Democrat Reader publishes this Introduction, and Part One of what will be many describing the life, and horrendous death, of this wonderful child who grew into womanhood on the dirt path of a homeless encampment, trapped in a relationship with a man who’s best love included punching his girl around and keeping her addicted to drugs, even when she was underage and he was committing statutory rape.
I don’t care if you are reading this in Macedonia, South Africa, Tasmania, Japan, China, Canada, we are all accountable for the Yuselys of our life.
If we are ever going to do better and get out of this global darkness, we just have to do just one thing: care.
Care.
Care is what my cohorts did, for me, at CDR, as did my fellow Democrats by supporting me, and this story, as I got through the agony I barely wished to recover from immediately following Yusely’s death.
In the months afterward, many helped me to sift through mountains of information, much of it disinformation, necessary to get to: the greatest possible truth.
I am forever in their debt, my cohorts and Dems, and after Yusely and her family, this work is dedicated to them.
Yusely Verdecia Reyes pictured with her mother, Marbelis Reyes
For the record, interviewing Yusely’s mother 3 weeks after the alleged murder of her daughter was the second most difficult thing I have done in the last 10 years, including getting through the deaths of my own mother and grandmother.
The single most was: hearing the details of Yusely’s reported rape, torture, and murder from witness after witness after witness after witness, against the backdrop of a terrified community who would prefer to drive by a homeless encampment detached from dignity of acknowledging it was filled with suffering human beings.
