Episode 7: Four Lesbians and a Baby

Summary

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The Devil You Know with Sarah Marshall

Episode 7: Four Lesbians and a Baby

Date: December 1, 2025 | Podcast by CBC | Host: Sarah Marshall

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Episode Overview

This episode of "The Devil You Know" examines the devastating consequences of the Satanic Panic on four young queer women in 1990s San Antonio, Texas—Anna Vasquez, Liz Ramirez, Cassie Rivera, and Kristi Mayhugh—collectively known as the San Antonio Four. Their story encapsulates how homophobia, family values politics, and lingering satanic panic hysteria combined to upend their lives, resulting in wrongful convictions and years in prison for crimes that never happened. Host Sarah Marshall returns to the intersection of anti-LGBTQ panic and the myth of satanic ritual abuse to dissect how the most outlandish fears can, over time, be woven into the fabric of mainstream reality—with catastrophic consequences for the marginalized.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Introduction to Anna Vasquez and the Found Family

• Anna’s Aspirations and Upbringing (00:30–01:18)
  • Anna grew up in a hardworking, single-parent household, dreaming of becoming a nurse to help others.
• Love, Friendship, and Safety in Queer Community (01:33–03:07)
  • Anna meets Cassie Rivera, and quickly forms a close-knit friend group with Cassie, Liz Ramirez, and Kristi Mayhugh—all lesbians in a conservative city.
  • Their group grows even closer with Liz's pregnancy: "So, you know, baby Hector was like our baby. Four lesbian women that want to raise this baby." (Anna Vasquez, 03:22)

2. Culture Wars of the 80s and 90s: Family Values and the Satanic Panic

• Backlash Against Queer Visibility (04:29–11:04)
  • The episode traces the shift in public rhetoric—from explicit claims equating queerness with child predation and satanic ritual to more coded accusations embedded in "family values" politics.
  • Archival audio of Anita Bryant (07:45–08:58) illustrates early anti-gay activism: "Homosexuals cannot reproduce biologically, but they have to reproduce by recruiting our children." (Bryant, 08:49)
  • The rise of the Christian Right and the AIDS crisis further stigmatize queer people.
  • Parallels are drawn between the anti-LGBTQ panic and the mechanisms of the Satanic Panic: "They're out there actively recruiting vulnerable teens… they're preying on your children." (Sarah Marshall, 11:04)

3. Love and Closeted Existence in 1990s San Antonio

• Closeted Lives and Family Rejection (14:18–19:28)
  • Anna and Liz discuss navigating conservative, often homophobic, families.
  • Liz describes coming out and being sent out of her home at 15: "My mom gave me my emancipation papers when I was 15 and so I've kind of been on my own ever since." (Liz Ramirez, 17:38)
  • Their apartments become essential safe havens for queer friendship and love.

4. The Catalyst: False Accusations and the Role of Javier

• Javier’s Role and the Allegations (21:43–23:39)
  • Liz’s brother-in-law, Javier, asks if his daughters (Liz's nieces) can stay with Liz. After, he accuses Liz and her friends of horrific sexual abuse against the girls.
  • The accusations quickly spiral into lurid, implausible claims, e.g. forced nudity, drugging, and threats of violence—all without evidence.

5. Investigation, Prosecution, and the Role of Homophobia and Junk Science

• Coercive Investigations and Homophobic Bias (23:10–31:38)
  • Liz and the group cooperate with police, certain their innocence will save them.
  • Prosecution casts Liz as the ringleader and deploys inflammatory rhetoric:
    • "The evidence is going to show that young woman over there held a nine year old girl up as a sacrificial lamb to her friends…. We’re going to ask you to believe a nine year old little girl who was sacrificed on the altar of lust." (Opening Statement Read by Anna Vasquez, 26:46–26:59)
  • Their sexuality is wielded against them throughout, often more than any evidence.
  • Dr. Nancy Kellogg, a pediatrician, testifies the alleged abuse may be “satanic related” (31:00), and her sole “proof”—a scar—is later debunked as normal anatomical variation.
• Quote: "It feels like what the state was getting at was not that the women were child abusers and gay, but that they were child abusers because they were gay." (Sarah Marshall, 29:33)

6. Trials, Conviction, and Shattered Lives

• Conviction and Devastation (36:35–39:27)
  • Liz is found guilty, sentenced to over 37 years:
    • “I remember when they said that the jury had found me guilty and I had to stand up and they were taking me to the back. I remember hearing my mom was like, no. Like she screamed…. as soon as they shut the door behind me… I fainted.” (Liz Ramirez, 36:41)
  • Anna, Kristi, and Cassie are each sentenced to 15 years on similar charges.

7. Incarceration, Guilt, and Fighting for Justice

• Struggling to Prove Innocence (40:02–41:45)
  • The women endure prison, haunted by feelings of guilt and injustice.
  • Liz, in particular, shoulders enormous blame: “I felt guilty because… their lives were taken away because of, you know, my brother in law and my nieces…” (Liz Ramirez, 40:02)
• Emerging Hope: Recantations and Documentary Interest (41:45–43:34)
  • Documentary filmmaker Deborah Eskenazi takes up the case.
  • On camera, Stephanie (one niece) recants and asserts nothing happened:
    • "And we told them nothing happened. Nothing happened. Nothing happened. They didn't buy it." (Stephanie, 41:28–41:34)

8. Legal Breakthroughs: The Junk Science Writ and Exoneration

• Scientific Reckoning and the Fight to Reverse the Convictions (43:34–47:10)
  • The Texas “junk science" law opens a path to challenge convictions based on faulty forensic evidence.
  • Dr. Kellogg reverses her position; new research shows the “scar” means nothing.
  • The Innocence Project aids their case; Anna is paroled (and kept on the sex offender registry); the other three are released on bail (2013).
  • Memorable moment:
    • "We saw two girls kissing [after prison]. We were, like, all freaking out because, you know, they didn't do that… Before we went into prison." (Liz Ramirez, 45:39)
• Full Exoneration and Emotional Release (47:10–47:48)
  • In 2016, all four are fully exonerated. Liz describes the anticlimactic, text-message notification; hugs her adult son for the first time in years.

9. Legacy, Reflection, and the Persistent Danger of Moral Panic

• Personal Growth from Tragedy (48:37)
  • Anna reflects: “I feel like it made me into the person I am today. And that is, you know, stronger, more vocal, just wanting to help others. I have more empathy, I have more compassion, I am more transparent....” (Anna Vasquez, 48:37)
• The Satanic Panic’s Enduring Legacy (49:32–end)
  • Marshall argues the anti-LGBTQ panic has resurfaced in new guises—again targeting queer people as threats to children, policing family boundaries, and writing new laws to punish “crimes” of existence and care.
  • Closing insight: "It's a panic that puts real children in danger in order to protect imaginary ones…. The devil you know." (Sarah Marshall, 49:32)

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Notable Quotes and Memorable Moments

• On the discriminatory fusion of queerness and satanic panic:
  “It feels like what the state was getting at was not that the women were child abusers and gay, but that they were child abusers because they were gay.”
  — Sarah Marshall (29:33)

• On courtroom trauma:
  "I remember when they said that the jury had found me guilty and I had to stand up and they were taking me to the back. I remember hearing my mom was like, no. Like she screamed…. as soon as they shut the door behind me, taking me to the back, I fainted."
  — Liz Ramirez (36:41)

• On personal transformation through adversity:
  “I feel like it made me into the person I am today. And that is, you know, stronger, more vocal, just wanting to help others… Just speaking from my own experience, you know, I really was living a lie for the majority of my life up into my conviction.”
  — Anna Vasquez (48:37)

• On post-exoneration freedom:
  "We saw two girls kissing. We were, like, all freaking out because, you know, they didn't do that when we were… Before we went into prison."
  — Liz Ramirez (45:39)

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Timeline of Key Segments

• 00:30 – Anna's background; forming chosen family
• 03:22 – Liz's pregnancy: “Four lesbians and a baby”
• 07:45 – Anita Bryant’s anti-gay rhetoric, family values politics
• 14:18 – Growing up closeted, family rejection
• 18:01–21:47 – Found family becomes a haven; pregnancy news
• 23:10–26:46 – False allegations and investigation
• 26:46 – Salacious prosecution rhetoric at trial
• 31:00 – “Satanic related” junk science enters the case
• 36:41 – Verdict and severe sentences
• 41:45 – The recantation; documentary involvement
• 43:34 – Impact of junk science law; Innocence Project onboard
• 47:10 – Exoneration at last
• 48:37–end – Legacy, reflection, and warning about ongoing panics

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Conclusion

Episode 7 lays bare how prejudice, panic, and junk science combined to destroy the lives of four innocent young queer women—whose only “crime” was building their own family. The episode not only documents their ordeal and ultimate exoneration, but warns that the forces underlying the Satanic Panic—fear and hatred of the “other”—are alive and well, merely adopting new faces as society changes. Sarah Marshall’s empathetic narration and the women’s firsthand accounts offer both a cautionary tale and a testament to survival, solidarity, and truth.

Transcript

[Narrator / Sarah Marshall]

Vrbo's last minute deals make chasing fresh mountain powder incredibly easy. With thousands of homes close to the slopes, you can get epic pow freshies, first tracks and more. Find last minute deals with the last minute filter on the app. Book a private vacation rental [e-mail] this is a CBC podcast. Just a heads up that this episode contains discussions about child sexual abuse, suicidality and domestic abuse. Please take care while listening.

[Anna Vasquez]

When I was growing up, I wanted to be a cop. And then in high school, I wanted to be in the service. I wanted to be a marine. And then it became being a nurse.

[Narrator / Sarah Marshall]

In 1994, Ana Vasquez was 19. And she had dreams.

[Anna Vasquez]

And if you really look back to all those different professions, it all goes back to helping others.

[Narrator / Sarah Marshall]

Anna grew up on the west side of San Antonio. She was raised by a single mom who worked hard to support the family. Five sons and one daughter.

[Anna Vasquez]

And my mom would always tell me that she would cry when she would leave us because she was so afraid that something would happen. You know, her having to be at work at 4 o' clock in the morning.

[Narrator / Sarah Marshall]

Anna wanted to follow in the footsteps of a lot of her family members who worked in nursing. She enrolled in community college right after high school. But the financial pressures quickly added up. Anna had to drop out during her first semester.

[Anna Vasquez]

I ended up getting a job at a fast food restaurant, Little Caesar's, you know, with the hopes of getting back to community college. The way I looked at it, it wasn't something that it was going to be permanent. You know, I had a dream. I had, you know, the path that I was going to follow. I just had a setback, so. So I was still very much focused on that. And then I met Cass.

[Narrator / Sarah Marshall]

We don't always recognize the moments that change our lives as they're happening, but for Anna, it was obvious that this moment was different, that this woman, Cassie, was different. It was love at first sight.

[Anna Vasquez]

Like right away there was a spark.

[Narrator / Sarah Marshall]

The stoicism you might initially hear in Anna's voice is camouflaging what's underneath. A very soft heart. But in 1994, Anna needed that tough exterior. She was young, Latina, working a minimum wage job in a small, conservative city, and she was a lesbian.

[Anna Vasquez]

It just went from there. And we got into a relationship very quickly.

[Narrator / Sarah Marshall]

In true u hauling fashion, Anna and Cassie soon merged their lives. Anna met Cassie's good friends Liz and Kristi. The four got along, but they bonded over something incredibly meaningful that they all.

[Anna Vasquez]

Shared because we were all lesbians. And during that time, you know, we just felt like we were safe in that environment.

[Narrator / Sarah Marshall]

The four women grew closer and they started to feel like something more than friends. They felt like a family. And that family was about to get a little bit bigger because Liz was pregnant.

[Anna Vasquez]

So that, you know, baby Hector was like our baby. Four lesbian women that want to raise this baby.

[Narrator / Sarah Marshall]

This is my moment to pitch Four Lesbians and a Baby as a sitcom. And can you imagine? The theme song, the hijinks, the very special episodes, an instant classic. But like most good TV shows about queer people, this one would be canceled far too soon.

[Anna Vasquez]

I received a call from Detective MacJeca. You know, would you come in and come and talk to me or. Sure, you know, I have nothing to hide. Unfortunately, that was the worst thing I could have ever done.

[Narrator / Sarah Marshall]

Instead of a wholesome family sitcom, the four women's lives began to resemble a true crime drama, complete with lurid allegations, sensationalist coverage, and a gross miscarriage of justice.

[Anna Vasquez]

I just couldn't believe that these two little girls were saying these horrible things. Nothing like that ever took place.

[Narrator / Sarah Marshall]

For a few short months, these four women were creating something beautiful. They built a home with each other and for each other. But they lived in a world that wouldn't allow them to keep it. The world of the Satanic panic. For those who feared or hated the changing values of the 80s and 90s, the growing visibility of queer people, and the decline of the so called nuclear family, the Satanic Panic now offered a bedrock justification for hate. Cases in the 1980s had drawn an explicit link between being gay and being a baby killing Satan worshipper. Now, in the 90s, it was no longer necessary to say the quiet part loud. By this time, the Satanic panic no longer generated the kind of screaming headlines it had 10 or 15 years before, but not because it had been disproven or forgotten. Over time, it simply became reality. It made targets out of those who might not have looked like Satanists on the surface, but were deemed to be so simply by existing. I'm Sarah Marshall and this is the devil you know. Welcome to the 90s. Let's catch up on what's been going down. Repeating once again our top story. Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev has been removed from power. Governor Clinton is now President Elect Bill Clinton. Internet is a growing grid of independent computer networks. Interlaced conflicts were down, the economy was up, and new technology promised limitless growth. Or at least that's how we like to remember it. And the idea of capital F family was still so much of an issue that during the 1992 presidential race in the U.S. both Republican and Democratic candidates made so called family values a cornerstone of their campaigns. Perhaps one of the more memorable instances of this came of course from then Vice President Dan Quayle, the man who couldn't spell potato. He gave a speech on the campaign trail in which he lamented the breakdown of the family structure, personal responsibility and social order due to essentially single moms on welfare. His comments reinvigorated an older narrative that never really died out. That women's autonomy would be the downfall of society and therefore a single woman was a dangerous woman, or worse, a lesbian. Sometimes we think it will give women's.

[Liz Ramirez]

Rights, but the only rights it will.

[Narrator / Sarah Marshall]

Really give it's not equal work for.

[Anna Vasquez]

Equal pay, but equal gay it will.

[Liz Ramirez]

Do and give more rights to the homosexuals to marry and to adopt children.

[Narrator / Sarah Marshall]

That is Anita Bryant speaking at a Protect America's children rally in 1978. Bryant was a former pageant queen, singer and glorified orange juice saleslady. In 1977, she became a bona fide right wing culture warrior. Floridians in Miami Dade county passed an ordinance that prohibited discrimination based on sexual orientation. Anita Bryant got up on her orange crate to proclaim that this would put children at risk of molestation and gay recruitment. She based this on thoroughly disproven claims based on old psychiatry and junk science and regular old homophobia. Of course, she said this on the news show who's who biologically, that God made mother so that we could reproduce.

[Liz Ramirez]

Homosexuals cannot reproduce biologically, but they have to reproduce by recruiting our children.

[Narrator / Sarah Marshall]

This marked the beginning of an organized political movement against gay rights in the United States. Implied or sometimes stated outright is that if being queer is a choice, it's something you can recruit people into. Queer sexualities were spoken of as if they were diseases. And that would imply that it's something you hear or that you infect others with.

[Liz Ramirez]

A mystery disease known as the gay.

[Narrator / Sarah Marshall]

Plague has become an epidemic unprecedented in.

[Liz Ramirez]

The history of American medicine, that today. From the center for Disease Control in Atlanta, Thomas.

[Narrator / Sarah Marshall]

That is how Channel 5, New York reported on the emergence of HIV AIDS in 1982. The epidemic hit North America in 1981 and soon became a crisis. The reigning Reagan administration in the US refused to even acknowledge it for years until 1987, the moniker of the gay plague gave officials a convenient cover to turn a blind eye to the rising rates of infection and and death. By 1995, the crisis had taken the lives of over 300,000Americans demonstrators have come.

[Liz Ramirez]

To the Capitol from every state demanding civil rights for the gay community and.

[Narrator / Sarah Marshall]

Accusing the government of indifference.

[Anna Vasquez]

Help us deliver a message to the White House. No more a business as usual.

[Narrator / Sarah Marshall]

Queer individuals and communities were catapulted into the national spotlight, often through their own political organization and direct action. It made the fight for equal civil rights impossible to ignore.

[Anna Vasquez]

America, this day marks the return from exile of the gay and lesbian people. We are banished no more.

[Narrator / Sarah Marshall]

While all this was going on, the Satanic Panic was chugging along right beside it. And it would not have been nearly as powerful as it was without all the inroads laid by these pre existing anti queer movements and backlashes. The allegations made by the Satanic Panic's proponents were taken straight from this playbook. They're out there actively recruiting vulnerable teens. They're trying to destroy the country. They're preying on your children. The body of knowledge about child abuse was growing, and as it grew, it contradicted the satanic abuse narratives. The FBI also published a landmark report in 1992 that was incredibly skeptical of satanic ritual abuse claims. It was pretty damning stuff unless he believed the FBI had already been infiltrated by Satanists. But for many, bigger conspiracy theories like that one were becoming perhaps a little too fantastical to believe, even if they had readily believed that a few dozen cult members were chanting in the woods by night and working at a local nursery school by day. So Satan hunting in the 90s had to get a bit more down to earth, more indirect and a little bit more dog whistley. Remember Whitney Phillips, the journalism professor from episode four? This is how she put it. By the time you get to the 1990s, all of the underlying dynamics of pointing to particular groups of people and saying, either literally or metaphorically, they're evil, they're bad, they're destroying the country that had just become part of family values discourse. So maybe it was no longer the fashion to directly accuse people of being Satanists, but you could now accuse them simply of being evil. Especially if they were communists or feminists or gay. And jackpot. If they were all three, your audience could be relied on to know what you really meant. The feminist agenda is not about equal rights for women. It is about a socialist, anti family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians. That is from a 1992 letter sent out by the Christian Coalition, an organization founded by televangelist Pat Robertson. Frankly, it's iconic and makes feminists sound way cooler than we probably are. So the panic would retain its essential narratives about shadowy groups grooming, recruiting, and abusing children. But the time had come to put a new coat of paint on top of an old story. And that is exactly what happened in San Antonio in 1994. Because with every step forward for queer people, there comes a backlash.

[Anna Vasquez]

I knew I was gay, straight out of the womb.

[Narrator / Sarah Marshall]

That's Ana Vasquez again.

[Anna Vasquez]

In school, I was able to get away with it because being in sports, you were a tomboy. You weren't gay. You were just a tomboy. So I think that's the way that I got away with it. But did I have girlfriends? Yes, I did, growing up. Of course. They were my best friends.

[Narrator / Sarah Marshall]

Let the record show the. The interviewees made air quotes. Yeah, yeah.

[Anna Vasquez]

And the relationships that I did have in the past as, you know, a teenager, they were always hidden. Like I said, they were my best friends. They weren't known by anybody except me and the other person. I was living a lie. You know, it. I. I just couldn't be my authentic self. And I feel like that is not the way to live.

[Narrator / Sarah Marshall]

But that changed in 1994 when Anna met Cassie.

[Anna Vasquez]

Somebody that I grew up with called me and asked me for a pizza. And she and Cassie walked in to Little Caesars, and. Yeah, from there it was. We started seeing each other basically, like, automatically.

[Narrator / Sarah Marshall]

Cassie Rivera was also 19 when she met Anna. At the time, she was working in an AutoZone, and she loved fixing up classic cars. It didn't take long for that initial spark to grow into a warm, constant devotion.

[Anna Vasquez]

Cassie came with two children. It wasn't like we could just come up with a plan and leave. We could never do that. She was a very good mother at being so young. So it was, you know, they were very much a part of my life. You know, we lived together. I feel like I helped raise them.

[Narrator / Sarah Marshall]

Cassie's kids loved Anna, too. It was easy for the couple to see a future together, but the couple had to be guarded. Anna was out to some family and close friends, and she dressed a bit more masculine, but she wasn't comfortable holding hands or kissing in public.

[Anna Vasquez]

And, you know, there was a lot of gay bashings, especially here in, you know, San Antonio. It's. It was very conservative back then, so it wasn't. It wasn't something that you wanted to be out and about like the way it is today. You know, everybody's gay. Oh, if only, you know, no public display of affection. It was just something you didn't do.

[Narrator / Sarah Marshall]

While Anna's mom accepted her. Cassie's did not.

[Liz Ramirez]

Of course, Cassie's mom didn't agree with her being gay or being with another woman.

[Narrator / Sarah Marshall]

That's Liz Ramirez. She was one of Anna's best friends in 1994. She was also just 19.

[Liz Ramirez]

There was times where I remember Cassie used to have to hide Anna in the trunk when they would go to the house so she wouldn't know she was in the car. You know, things like that. It was just so crazy. Yeah.

[Narrator / Sarah Marshall]

Liz first realized her own attraction to women in high school and that's when she found her first girlfriend.

[Liz Ramirez]

We just kind of clicked and, you know, stayed together and I guess explored our sexuality.

[Narrator / Sarah Marshall]

Liz came from a large Catholic family that was very traditional. So when she came out, her mother refused to accept it because of my.

[Liz Ramirez]

Lifestyle and me being gay and with women. My mom gave me my emancipation papers when I was 15 and so I've kind of been on my own ever since.

[Narrator / Sarah Marshall]

She ended up staying with her sister and brother in law for a while, Rosemary and Javier. She was able to be open about her sexuality with them and spend time with her girlfriend there, at least at first.

[Liz Ramirez]

And I was sitting down on the bed and she put her head on my lap and we were watching tv, which we thought was innocent. You know, we didn't think anything of it. Well, Javier was pissed about it. He would put me in the room and talk to me and say, well, close the door and tell me how I should act and shouldn't act and things like that. I don't have to be with other women and things like that.

[Narrator / Sarah Marshall]

Liz grew more uncomfortable with Javier's attention. Eventually she was able to move out and get her own apartment. She had to drop out of high school and work to support herself. But she still felt a lot of pressure to conform. Compulsory heterosexuality is a hell of a force.

[Liz Ramirez]

My life changed in 94. I was like, okay. Was missing my family and I tried to be with a man and that was awkward, you know, I think I did that to see if that was something that I wanted or if maybe it was just me because my mom always said I was in a. What do you call those stages where you're just like exploring that I will be over it, you know, and. And it wasn't, it wasn't for me.

[Narrator / Sarah Marshall]

It was near the end of this straight phase, if you'll pardon the expression, that. Liz met a couple new friends. Cassie Rivera and Christy Mayhew had a lot in common with Liz. Cassie had recently left a relationship with a man herself. Christy who was 20, was estranged from her mom as well.

[Anna Vasquez]

The way that Liz, Cassie, and Christy met was at a grocery store that they all worked at. You know, they just clicked. And I came along to that group when I started seeing Cass.

[Narrator / Sarah Marshall]

So that brings us to 1994. In the face of rejection from their original families, they created for each other the kind of acceptance and love that they had lost.

[Liz Ramirez]

And it's the same way as growing up. That's just how my mom always raised us. You know, we stick together as a family. And so it was really hard dealing with that. But I always told myself I never wanted to change the person that I was.

[Narrator / Sarah Marshall]

Because Liz had her own apartment, it quickly became a hub for the group. Christy eventually moved in. She was working to save up enough to go back to college at Texas A and M, where she had been studying veterinary science.

[Liz Ramirez]

It was kind of like our safe place, because you couldn't go out in public and hang out with your girlfriends, hold hands, or do anything like that without anybody looking at you crazy or. San Antonio is very conservative. So, you know, of course, it wasn't accepted.

[Narrator / Sarah Marshall]

During that time, the friend group was blossoming into a found family.

[Liz Ramirez]

When I found out I was pregnant, all three of them went with me to my doctor's appointment to find out that I was pregnant. And that's when we found out that I was seven weeks.

[Narrator / Sarah Marshall]

Liz discovered she was pregnant in early 1994 after that aforementioned attempt at a straight lifestyle. When she was missing her family. She said the father was clear that he didn't want to be involved.

[Anna Vasquez]

Oh, there's a baby. I got you pregnant. I'm leaving. You know, baby. Hector was like, our baby. He was like, you have four lesbian women that want to raise this baby right, and this guy's running out the door. So we were just, you know, making sure that she was going to her doctor's appointments and making sure everything was right.

[Narrator / Sarah Marshall]

All four women were getting ready to welcome this new addition to their family. But in the summer of 1994, something happened that put it all at risk. In July, Liz heard from her brother in law.

[Liz Ramirez]

And so Javier asked, you know, can they come stay with me? And I was like, sure.

[Narrator / Sarah Marshall]

Javier had two daughters with Liz's sister Rosemary. But Rosemary was now living in a different state, and Javier had more custody. So the girls were close with Liz. They often would stay at the apartment with her for weekends or sleepovers.

[Liz Ramirez]

I had just come home, and I did let Javier know, look, I just got out of the hospital. You know, I'm Pregnant. And then that's when he told me and he was like, well, you know, I can help you with the baby and this and that. I was like, no, my son has a father. I don't need your help.

[Narrator / Sarah Marshall]

Liz didn't really have the time or the energy to think too much about this when it was happening. And she loved her nieces so she agreed to have them stay with her for a week. Like Javier asked.

[Anna Vasquez]

Liz periodically offered to have the girls stay over, which was Stephanie and Vanessa, who are 7 and 9. It wasn't something that was, was out of the ordinary. They had stayed there before.

[Liz Ramirez]

Everything was like normal. We were having fun. We were just, you know, going out, doing things.

[Narrator / Sarah Marshall]

Stephanie and Vanessa stayed with Liz for a week. At the end of July, at some point after they had returned home, Javier called Liz again and he said, hey.

[Liz Ramirez]

And I said, well, hey, what's going on? And he was like, you know, I'm sorry. And then all of a sudden he hung up and never came back to the phone.

[Narrator / Sarah Marshall]

Liz chalked it up to yet another weird Javier interaction. That is until the homicide detective came.

[Liz Ramirez]

To my apartment complex and introduced himself and asked if I can come down to the station. And I thought homicide. I thought maybe, you know, my ex girlfriend had gotten killed or something had happened and you know, they wanted to ask me a few questions. The detective was, asked me if I knew Vanessa and Stephanie, Javier Limon, and that if I knew that he had accused me of assaulting, sexually assaulting both my nieces.

[Narrator / Sarah Marshall]

What Liz was being accused of was nothing short of violent child sexual abuse. She would eventually learn that Stephanie and Vanessa claimed to have been trapped in her apartment during that week long visit and forcibly stripped, molested, injected with strange substances and threatened with guns and a knife. According to the girl's grandmother, they were acting strangely in the days after their visit with Liz. In one account, Stephanie was playing with dolls. She undressed them and made them do possibly sexual things. She said she learned how from Liz. Javier and the grandmother said the girls were crying themselves to sleep and, and having nightmares. At some point the girls said that while they were staying with Liz, people were undressing them and touching them. At another point, one of the girls said someone put something in their, quote.

[Liz Ramirez]

Private part, in which of course I denied everything. And then he asked about Christy, Cassie and Anna.

[Narrator / Sarah Marshall]

Liz was shocked, confused, and beyond heartbroken. She loved her nieces. They often played with Cassie's kids. They knew Anna and Christy. They were a part of this family that the four women had built.

[Liz Ramirez]

I Was like, how could this happen? For them to say that I locked them behind a door, held them down, assaulted them for two days.

[Narrator / Sarah Marshall]

Detectives began to question the friends and they cooperated. They gave statements and took polygraph tests.

[Liz Ramirez]

I let them search my apartment without a search warrant. I went down willingly to the police station by myself. And the investigation just started from there.

[Narrator / Sarah Marshall]

After all the women figured they were innocent, why wouldn't they cooperate? Wouldn't the truth set them free?

[Anna Vasquez]

Almost six months to the day after the investigation that I had been then charged, I was indicted.

[Narrator / Sarah Marshall]

In March of 1995, Anna was publicly arrested at her job at Little Caesars. All four women were indicted for child sexual abuse.

[Anna Vasquez]

Cassie was already in the cop car when they came and picked me up. And we were on our way to go see Liz. And remember I told you that she was pregnant. She had just had baby Hector maybe two days prior.

[Narrator / Sarah Marshall]

The women were out on bail and awaiting trial for almost two years. They got lawyers, worked with them and prayed that they were building a solid defense. And in the meantime, the state was building its case too. Liz went to trial without the rest of the group. In 1997, the state cast her as the ringleader of a perverted orgy of abuse. The prosecutor, Philip Kazin, set an extreme tone in his opening statement.

[Anna Vasquez]

The evidence is going to show that young woman over there held a nine year old girl up as a sacrificial lamb to her friends. We're going to ask you to believe a nine year old little girl who was sacrificed on the altar of lust.

[Narrator / Sarah Marshall]

It matched the extreme story that the state laid out. Vanessa and Stephanie alleged that the four women locked them in Liz's apartment and assaulted them, taking turns holding them down, sometimes using objects like tampons to hurt them. They alleged that the women were either drunk or high and had a white powder and a big syringe that they used on the girls. They alleged that the women were topless or naked and laughing as they assaulted them. And they alleged that the women showed them a gun and threatened to kill them if they ever told.

[Anna Vasquez]

That was the stuff that just made me absolutely sick. I just couldn't believe that these, these two little girls were saying these horrible things about us, knowing that nothing like that ever took place. And then, you know, reading it in newspapers the next day of, you know, just these horrible monsters that we were made out to be.

[Liz Ramirez]

When we were in the, in the courtroom, they both turned around and looked at me and smiled like, who would do that? If I had, if I had violently hurt Them sexually, who would look at you in the courtroom and smile and just like I know I wouldn't.

[Narrator / Sarah Marshall]

The story had clear inconsistencies from the beginning in different interviews and testimonies the girls gave. But both before and during the trials, key details continually changed. Now, there's no question that if the girls indeed underwent such a traumatic experience, their memories of the events could be distorted. But other details undermine the story, too. The four women showed that their work schedules only allowed for very small windows of time in which the four of them could have been in the apartment together that week. And those didn't match some of the times that the alleged assaults happened. Both girls said that they had screamed, but police didn't bother to ask the neighbors on the other side of the wall if they'd heard anything. And when police searched Liz's apartment, they never did find a gun. The women's sexuality was an undeniable aspect of the case against them, despite paper thin attempts by the state to insist otherwise.

[Anna Vasquez]

Really, in Liz's case, was it really just out there, like, I mean, they were just badgering her and, you know, this is what lesbians do, and how do lesbians have sex? And, you know, they're just being real, real blatant.

[Narrator / Sarah Marshall]

The insinuation being that because the women were lesbians, they couldn't simply have platonic friendships or monogamous relationships or even be capable of understanding consent. Obviously, they had to be attracted to each other and to the children. It feels like what the state was getting at was not that the women were child abusers and gay, but that they were child abusers because they were gay. In his closing argument for Liz's trial, the prosecutor said, do not go back.

[Anna Vasquez]

And convict her because she's a lesbian. It's only important in the sense that that activity generally is consistent with the activity alleged in the indictment. And that's all.

[Narrator / Sarah Marshall]

But that was in the closing arguments, after hours and hours and hours of rhetoric and questions linking the women's sexuality with child abuse. In case all that wasn't enough, the state also had a trump card. An expert witness. Dr. Nancy Kellogg was a local pediatrician and researcher. She was a frequent expert witness in child abuse cases in the 90s. And in 1994, she gave Stephanie and Vanessa physical examinations two months after the alleged abuse.

[Anna Vasquez]

It was the pediatrician that had examined the alleged victims, where she put in her notes that this could possibly be satanic related.

[Narrator / Sarah Marshall]

Anna's not glossing over anything here. What Kellogg wrote word for word, was, I have spoken to Sergeant McKay regarding concerns this may be satanic related. It really was that vague. So what made the alleged abuse look satanic related? The answer, according to Dr. Kellogg, was simply that the defendants were female, as were their victims. Apparently that is a red flag for possible satanic abuse. Kellogg claimed there was a body of research out there about cult based abuse of children to back her up. She just didn't cite any.

[Anna Vasquez]

I just thought she was full of shit. Like what? I mean, how does that even have any merit in here when she's never spoken to me or the other three?

[Narrator / Sarah Marshall]

Crucially, Dr. Kellogg testified that one of the girls had a small white scar on her hymen. Kellogg said that this was consistent with sexual abuse trauma. Put a pin in that one for now. This was all part of her testimony in Liz's trial.

[Liz Ramirez]

I'm in trial and the prosecutor tells the jury, close your eyes. Imagine four women sacrificing two children on an altar, holding them down for the altar of lust. Imagine them saying that we were doing this to these children because this is what gay people do. He inflamed the jury's mind.

[Narrator / Sarah Marshall]

The state used language like this throughout the trial. Perversion, cult type activity and referred to the girls as angels.

[Liz Ramirez]

The fact, like, we had the daycare scares where they were talking about crazy stories about helicopters coming in and taking them to Mexico and, you know, all these crazy outcries that they had, like, how do people believe that these things happened where these children have such an imagination because they either feed into it or they coach them into saying these things, you know, and not realizing the impact of it. I mean, I knew that we had a lot of gay bashing in San Antonio, but I had never known anything about the Satanic panic until my trial.

[Narrator / Sarah Marshall]

Comparing this to the McMartin case or to Justin's charges in the last episode, the Satanism content is relatively negligible. The prosecution made no explicit accusation of occult conspiracy or. Or pentagrams drawn on the walls in animal blood. But this is still very much a satanic panic story and a prosecution made possible by two decades of the Satanic panic behind it. The fact that Dr. Kellogg brought up satanic abuse in such an offhand way speaks to how much it had been integrated into these fields by 1997. You just had to be a bit more down to earth about it, like we talked about earlier. So as the panic went on, often what you'd see is initial accusations of Satanism coloring the investigation and the news story around a case, but not officially making it into the prosecution Kind of like what happened with the satanic conspiracy story in Pearl, Mississippi that we heard in the last episode. Despite allegations of Satanism not making it into the courtroom, they still shaped the way the town and the world saw the case as it unfolded, meaning that the legal proceedings themselves were still fruit of the poison tree. Between 1983 and 1991, over 100 daycares across the US were investigated for satanic ritual abuse of children. The first daycare worker ever convicted in the US was an out gay man, Bernard Barron. In 1985, he was convicted of sexually assaulting two toddlers. The parents who first accused him were openly bigoted, having complained to the daycare that he should be fired because he was gay. After serving over two decades in prison, Barron was exonerated in 2009. These cases were made possible by regular old homophobia, but also in a neat trick, they could be used to justify it. Homosexuality would be framed as a manifestation of pedophilia, just another aspect of perverse child abuse. Because the satanic panic had so saturated the culture, accusing someone of being gay meant aligning them with an imagined world of organized predators, even Satanists.

[Liz Ramirez]

Foreign. I'm Sarah James McLachlan, host of the Opportunist. Join me every other Monday for news.

[Narrator / Sarah Marshall]

Stories about ordinary people who turn sinister.

[Liz Ramirez]

By twisting opportunity and transform into thieves, scammers and murderers. We're pulling back the curtain on a fresh lineup of opportunists who stop at.

[Narrator / Sarah Marshall]

Nothing to get ahead. These are the stories of criminals who saw a loophole, a chance to cash.

[Liz Ramirez]

In, to warp opportunity into a weapon. Subscribe now to the Opportunist wherever you get your podcasts. I was like, how can they convict me still? I didn't do anything. Like, how are they going to believe these stories?

[Narrator / Sarah Marshall]

On February 6, 1997, Liz Ramirez awaited her verdict.

[Liz Ramirez]

I remember when they said that the jury had found me guilty and I had to stand up and they were taking me to the back. I remember hearing my mom was like, no. Like she screamed and I was like, oh my God. Like, I was just so lost in the days that as soon as they shut the door behind me, taking me to the back, I fainted.

[Narrator / Sarah Marshall]

Liz was found guilty of aggravated assault of a child and indecency with a child. She was sentenced to 37 and a half years in prison. Liz's son was an infant when the allegations began. If she served her entire sentence, he would be middle aged by the time she was free.

[Liz Ramirez]

Well, you know, when I got convicted, my son wasn't there. He was at home. So that morning when I left and I gave him a kiss and said, you know, I'll see you later, baby. And I wasn't able to see him again. Like, you know, I had five minutes with my family and to say bye to my mom and everyone, but, you know, that was the last time I was able to see my son.

[Narrator / Sarah Marshall]

A year later, in February 1998, Anna, Christie and Cassie faced their own verdicts. Even though Liz had been convicted, Anna was still holding out hope.

[Anna Vasquez]

And there was just a lot of things that were said that we were able to prove that that was a lie. So I really felt like we were in good shape to be honest with you. So they did closing arguments. I don't know, I'd say Friday, about noon. Next morning, you know, we, we were there, we were there a few minutes before the jury came in. So me and my family went down to the cafeteria where the vending machines are or whatever, and we're just gonna get something to drink. By the time we got to the bottom floor, they were asking for us to go back. They had a verdict. They said we were guilty.

[Narrator / Sarah Marshall]

Anna, Christie and Cassie were each convicted of aggravated sexual assault of a child and indecency with a child. They were each sentenced to 15 years in prison.

[Anna Vasquez]

I'll never forget that particular part only because my mom had like, she made this, she made this noise like, like pain, hurt. I don't know, I can't, like a, a gasp. And she made that and I turned to her. I was more concerned about her than what they were saying about me. But that's, that's why I remember that. I'll never forget that.

[Narrator / Sarah Marshall]

When Anna, Christy and Cassie began their prison sentences in 2000, their found family, which was so new and so full of promise, was finally, truly shattered. Anna and Cassie's romance was abruptly extinguished. Cassie and Liz had to watch their children grow up from behind glass. The four women couldn't contact each other for years. They all tried to adjust to a new life inside prison, learning trades or taking classes where they could. But they didn't give up on their innocence for a long time.

[Liz Ramirez]

I want to say I felt guilty because like their lives were taken away because of, you know, my brother in law and my nieces and I, you know, I carried that. But for a long time I remember fighting and you know, I wouldn't give up for years just writing and writing letters to try to get help for someone to hear, you know, or listen to know that we were innocent and a crime had never happened.

[Narrator / Sarah Marshall]

Slowly, painfully slowly, the women's story reached the ears of folks willing to listen. And it reached Deborah Askanazi, a documentary filmmaker who had recently come out as a lesbian herself. In 2012, Eskenazi started producing the film that would premiere in 2016. Southwest of the story of the San Antonio Four, Debra reached out to Javier, Vanessa, and Stephanie, Liz's nieces and brother in law, who had made the accusations. Stephanie was only 7 when the allegations were made. Now she was 25. In a crowded coffee shop, Stephanie agreed to speak on camera. Okay, so me and my sister had dolls, you know, Barbie dolls.

[Anna Vasquez]

We're young, we're stupid.

[Narrator / Sarah Marshall]

We're gonna experiment. We're gonna see what you show us, you know, and my grandma caught us.

[Anna Vasquez]

And they locked us in a room. They sat there for, I don't know.

[Narrator / Sarah Marshall]

What seemed like forever, like, what happened there? What happened there?

[Anna Vasquez]

You know, something happened there.

[Liz Ramirez]

Yes.

[Narrator / Sarah Marshall]

You know, something happened there. Which nothing happened.

[Anna Vasquez]

And we told them nothing happened. Nothing happened. Nothing happened. They didn't buy it.

[Narrator / Sarah Marshall]

And she goes, you know, who touched it? Stephanie was recanting, and she was confirming suspicions that the women had harbored for 18 years.

[Liz Ramirez]

Javier was still always, like, coming around and trying to help me, like financially give me money for school clothes or just, you know, money in general for food, things like that. He used to just write me poems and just write me letters and things like that. And. And because he was my brother in law, I never thought his intentions were more than that.

[Narrator / Sarah Marshall]

Liz says Javier made passes at her for years, starting when she was a teenager. He's always denied it and also said that these love letters were forged. But remember how he also offered to be a father to Liz's unborn child?

[Liz Ramirez]

I think his thing was he wanted a relationship. He didn't like the fact that I was with women and that I wouldn't be with him, you know, and if.

[Narrator / Sarah Marshall]

You were wondering where Rosemary was in all of this, Liz's sister, the girl's mother. Javier had been preventing Rosemary from seeing their children for years. One of his tactics was to make baseless sexual assault allegations against Rosemary's friends, something he had done in 1991 and 1990. This was never a case of satanic lesbianism, but you already knew that. The atmosphere created by the satanic panic allowed for even the thinnest of cases with the smallest of references to Satanism to be taken very seriously. But even all this was still not enough to free the San Antonio four, because, remember, the outcome of their case had been tremendously influenced by. By One crucial detail, the alleged scar that the expert witness had found. Recognizing that science can get it wrong sometimes. Texas was the first to pass the junk science law in 2013. It allows those convicted using bad forensic science a second chance. In 2013, the Texas State legislature passed the junk science writ. As you heard here from local station ksat, it opened a pathway for people who had been convicted of a crime to show that scientific developments could produce new evidence to help them or undermine or contradict the evidence that had been used against them at trial. So this piece of legislation started an entirely new chapter for the four women. So back to this mysterious scar that Dr. Kellogg found that supposedly proved that the girls had been sexually abused. It turns out it looked like a scar, but was just as likely to be a normal variation of a healthy hymen. Research showed that these can be found on both children who have been abused and those who have not been. In other words, it meant nothing. In 2013, Dr. Nancy Kellogg signed an affidavit. She said that if she had the scientific research, then she never would have said the girls were sexually abused. But according to other researchers who reviewed Kellogg's findings and the relevant research at the time, this information was available and fairly well known in her field by 1994. Either way, this was the last piece that the San Antonio four needed to get the state of Texas to reexamine their case under the new junk science writ. The Innocence Project of Texas filed to reverse their convictions. In 2012, Anna got out on parole. Though she was forced to register as a sex offender, she became another voice for the women on the outside. And finally, In November of 2013, Cassie, Christy, and Liz were released on Bailey.

[Liz Ramirez]

It was so crazy because we were driving back from the prison to the county and all three of us and it, you know, it was kind of awkward at first. We were kind of quiet, you know, and then we just started, you know, hey, how are you doing? How you been? You know, things like that. And then they stopped at a gas station to put some gas, and we saw two girls kissing. We were, like, all freaking out because, you know, they didn't do that when we were. Before we went into prison.

[Narrator / Sarah Marshall]

By then, Kristi and Cassie had served 13 years. Liz had served 15 years. The first place they went, Anna's house.

[Liz Ramirez]

I remember Anna was on the sex offender registry, so my son couldn't come to her home. And I had to cross the street and meet him at a stop sign. And I remember seeing him and hugging him, and he was tall, and I was crying. And I told him, you know, I love you. And he says, I love you too, mother. And I waited so long to hear those words, you know, from my son.

[Narrator / Sarah Marshall]

The four were physically free when the state reviewed their case, but they were only out on bail and still convicted felons. They had new evidentiary hearings in 2015. After that, it took over a year for the state to review the case and come to a decision. On November 23, 2016, the court handed down its decision. The San Antonio Four would be exonerated.

[Liz Ramirez]

And I was asleep because I was working nights. I had just gotten off that morning at 6 o'. Clock.

[Narrator / Sarah Marshall]

The women were told of their freedom in perhaps the most anticlimactic way possible. A group text from their lawyer.

[Liz Ramirez]

He says, we won. And I'm like, we won. And I remember just sitting up, back in shock, and I called my son, cuz he's in the other room asleep. And he's like, mom, what's wrong? And I said, son, I can't believe it. You won't believe what happened. He says, what? I said we were found innocent. He goes, no, mom, are you serious? He comes and gives me a hug and he's just like crying. And I'm crying and I'm like, I just can't believe that. Right before Thanksgiving, as a matter of.

[Narrator / Sarah Marshall]

Fact, Liz, Anna, Cassie and Christy were finally fully free, able to spend that Thanksgiving holiday with their families, children, parents, siblings, and of course, each other. In 2018, the San Antonio Four had their criminal records fully expunged, meaning their felony convictions were officially removed. It has now been 31 years since that summer week in 1994 that started it all, and a lot has changed. Did this change the way that you see yourself, do you think?

[Anna Vasquez]

In a sense, Sarah, this may sound weird that I'm saying this, but I feel like it made me into the person I am today. And that is, you know, stronger, more vocal, just wanting to help others. I have more empathy, I have more compassion, I am more transparent. Just speaking from my own experience, you know, I really was living a lie for the majority of my life up into my conviction. I mean, even when the accusations came about, I wasn't out yet. It wasn't until it started being circulated in the media that, you know, newspapers. I was pretty much thrown out. But it's very hard to live a lie and to not be your authentic self.

[Narrator / Sarah Marshall]

So while much has changed since 1994, a lot hasn't. Debbie Nathan, one of the first journalists to cover these cases, skeptically once called the case of the San Antonio Four, the last gasp of the Satanic Panic. And maybe that was true for a time, but now in 2025, we're able to see that the panic has just been playing possum. It has now come back with new force and this time it is even more overtly anti queer than ever before. Simply existing as queer earns you accusations of grooming and indoctrinating children. So much of this panic is couched in the language of parental rights or protecting children and families, but it was never really about that. It's about policing who gets to be a family. It's a panic that puts real children in danger in order to protect imaginary ones. If you go back to the very beginning, the case of the San Antonio Four was about four young women, essentially girls, some of them still teenagers, who had no safe place to be and so made a home for themselves and each other and the children they were caring for. This was their real crime. And it's this kind of crime that we are currently writing new laws to punish people for. The language of the Satanic panic, then and now, is all about being a savior. Saving the children, saving the country, saving yourself from anyone who makes you uncomfortable. You can tell people that the discomfort they feel is not something they can sit with and learn from and use to grow the same way their children and their communities are growing. You can tell people that this discomfort actually is proof of evil and that the only possible response is to destroy the evil that threatens you. Thank you for listening to the W Know. Our producer is Mary Stephanhagen. Fact checking by Katherine Barner Production Assistant by Nicole Ortiz. Thanks to Jay Cowett for voice coaching. Your voice actors in this episode were Michael Hobbs and Woody Sticks. In previous episodes you've heard the voice talents of River Butcher, Aubrey Gordon, Michael Hobbs, Jamie Loftus, Janet Varney, Alex Steed and Chelsea Weber Smith. I've been your host, Sarah Marshall, Sound design by Evan Kelly and Julia Whitman. Roushni Nair is our coordinating producer. Our Senior producer is Jeff Turner. Executive producers are Cecil Fernandez and Chris Oak. Tanya Springer is Manager of Growth for CBC Podcasts. Arif Nurani is director of CBC Podcasts. Listen to every episode early on the CBC True Crime YouTube channel. For early and ad free listening, subscribe to the CBC True Crime Premium Channel on Apple Podcasts.

[Anna Vasquez]

For more cbc podcasts go to cbc ca podcasts.