A key protected witness has been assassinated in the emblematic and unresolved case of Angie Peña who was kidnapped and trafficked by the Delta Team organized crime ring.
“Angie is just one of the victims of the network which, like that of billionaire Jeffrey Epstein, specialized and trafficked minors to pedophiles, particularly foreigners.”
“The Public Prosecutor’s Office [...] said that the Delta Teams began “operating” around 2017 and counted among their clients “a network of high-ranking officials.” Angie is just one of the victims of the network which, like that of billionaire Jeffrey Epstein in the United States, specialized and trafficked minors to pedophiles, particularly foreigners.”
“When, during the last week of January 2026, the U.S. Department of Justice declassified millions of documents related to the billionaire pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, a journalistic investigation in Honduras revealed that the name of the Central American country—and Roatán in particular—appears several times in emails. There are no direct references in those documents to human trafficking or the Delta Team, but there are references to the island where that network of American pedophiles exploited young women and minors from Honduras and other countries for years.”
(Quotes from Hector Silva article, below)
The sex trafficking kidnapping of Angie Pena is one more harsh story that shines a condemning light on the darker side of the global (including Americans and Canadians) tourism onslaught along Honduras’ Caribbean coast, Roatan and the Bay Islands, all being ancestral lands of the Garifuna people.
It shines a condemning light on the U.S. and Canadian-supported military coup in 2009 that brought to power 13 years (June 2009–January 2022) of military-backed, open-for-global-business governments controlled by the National Party, with Narco-President Juan Orlando Hernandez at the helm. And a condemning light on how the U.S. government trashed the November 2025 general elections, and ushered National Party member Nasry Asfura into the President’s office while pardoning former Narco-President Juan Orlando Hernandez from a 45 year jail sentence in the U.S. for operating a drugs and weapons smuggling crime ring from the President’s office between 2013-2022. Hernandez is back in Honduras, and allegedly the U.S.-linked power behind the throne of President Asfura.
Below
Rights Action has translated three reports from independent media outlets in Honduras.
August 31, 2026: Excerpt from a CriterioNews update on how a protected witness in the Angie Peña case was publicly identified, and then assassinated.
February 23, 2026: In-depth report by Hector Silva, Radio Progreso News, about the Delta Team crime ring dealing in human trafficking for sexual exploitation, child pornography, criminal conspiracy, arms trafficking and drug trafficking, including the case of Angie Peña.
February 9, 2024: Article by Kelly Ortez, CriterioNews. A look into the broad issue of kidnapping and trafficking of girls and young women, across Roatan and the Bay Islands.
Need for media coverage, political oversight, and lawsuits in U.S. and Canadian courts
The steady, ethnocidal land theft of Garifuna lands and territories (usually corrupt, often violent) by wealthy Honduras and global (including American/Canadian) investors and operators, needs much wider media scrutiny in the U.S. and Canada. It needs long overdue political oversight and accountability, and criminal and civil law accountability in U.S. and Canadian courts.
A protected witness in the Angie Peña case was publicly identified and later murdered
Criterio news, Editorial Staff, August 31, 2026
https://criterio.hn/testigo-protegido-de-caso-angie-pena-fue-identificado-publicamente-antes-de-ser-asesinado/
It has been four years since Angie Peña went missing in Roatán, the Bay Islands, Honduras. Her disappearance is allegedly linked to the “Delta Team,” an organized crime network composed of U.S. citizens and one Honduran national who have been accused of crimes related to human trafficking and criminal conspiracy.
The murder of Dereck McNeil, a protected witness in the case related to Angie Peña’s disappearance, once again calls into question the Honduran government’s ability to guarantee the safety of individuals who cooperate with high-profile investigations. The case has also raised questions regarding the alleged disclosure of his identity in the media during the judicial proceedings.
Dereck McNeil was murdered on August 17, 2026, days before the publication of the complaint filed by Angie Peña’s family members, despite having given a pre-trial statement in the case involving U.S. citizens and a Honduran national accused of crimes related to human trafficking and criminal conspiracy.
One of the main questions raised following the murder is precisely how McNeil’s identity ceased to be protected. Angie Peña’s relatives have alleged that, since 2024, attorneys linked to the defense of some of the defendants had publicly identified McNeil as one of the protected witnesses.
Leak of Protected Witness Names
Angie Peña’s family publicly identified attorneys involved in the defense of individuals charged in the Delta Team case. One of them, Marlon Arévalo, questioned the credibility of McNeil’s testimony and the statements made to the media by former Deputy Minister of Security Julissa Villanueva.
On August 25, 2026, Michelle Melgares, Angie Peña’s mother, posted a video on social media showing Marlon Arévalo—a lawyer and defense attorney for those charged with human trafficking—revealing the identity of protected witness Dereck McNeil, who had been murdered 14 days earlier by unknown assailants.
In the clip posted on X—formerly Twitter—it is attributed to an interview given by Arévalo in 2024 to the media outlet EDN. In the video, attorney Marlon Arévalo—who is defending Americans Harold Green and William James, as well as Honduran Gustavo Trejo—is seen denying that his clients committed the crimes they are accused of and questioning McNeil’s statements.
“(…) All of this is based on the story spun by a protected witness, Mr. Derek McNeil, who is essentially the one who created this whole story, and the Public Prosecutor’s Office has bought into it,” Arévalo stated in the 2024 interview.
The lawyer also asked Angie Peña’s family not to give credence to McNeil’s testimony and questioned the statements made by the then-Deputy Minister of Security, Julissa Villanueva, regarding the young woman’s whereabouts.
Arévalo further argued that the Prosecutor’s Office had failed to prove the crimes attributed to his clients and asserted that there was no victim who directly accused the defendants of having recruited her for exploitation.
The complaint regarding the disclosure of the protected witness’s identity, however, raises a different question: Who had access to the confidential information, and who made it public?
Full article in Spanish: https://criterio.hn/testigo-protegido-de-caso-angie-pena-fue-identificado-publicamente-antes-de-ser-asesinado/
Angie Peña: Kidnapped by the “Delta Team,” a Network of American Pedophiles
February 23, 2026, by Héctor Silva Ávalos
https://www.radioprogresohn.net/es/angie-pena-como-la-corrupcion-frustro-el-rescate-de-la-joven-secuestrada-en-roatan/#segunda-parte-angie
Last January marked the fourth anniversary of the disappearance of Angie Samantha Peña Melgares, the young Honduran woman abducted in West Bay, Roatán, by a human trafficking ring (the “Delta Team”) led by an American pedophile.
The family is certain that Angie is still alive, in the hands of the network, which remains active despite the fact that some of its members have already been captured. An attempt to rescue her failed due to leaks from judicial officials and police to the kidnappers. An informant had claimed that Angie Peña would be at a party at a house in Roatán during the last weekend of August 2022, eight months after the young woman was kidnapped by a human trafficking ring operating on the island, led by U.S. citizens and protected by local authorities.
The instructions and orders to raid that location and others associated with the Delta Team network had been ready for several days. Everything, it was assumed, was in place for several Honduran law enforcement officers to arrive at the party location, arrest the Americans, and rescue Angie. But something went wrong: someone leaked the information to the suspects.
Angie’s family has always been convinced that she is still alive, and they have never wavered in their determination to find her. They have worked closely with the Honduran government and the prosecutor’s office, but they have also publicly criticized them whenever they felt the case was stalling or being derailed.
One of the largest human trafficking networks in Central America
Very soon after Angie’s disappearance, the family realized that behind the young woman’s abduction and forced disappearance lay a human trafficking network that a Honduran official described as one of the largest and most significant in Central America.
Investigations conducted by private investigators and public officials, some of which the author has had access to, further indicate that two of the police officers, who participated in the initial investigations, and a judge colluded with the network by obstructing and diverting the initial investigations, and that a court in Roatán sold information from the case file to the trafficking network, known on the Honduran island as Delta Team.
For nearly two years, the author has spoken with Angie Peña’s family members, two high-ranking officials in Xiomara Castro’s government [January 2022-January 2026], lawyers, and investigators who have had direct involvement in the investigation and the ongoing legal proceedings related to this case. The author has reviewed dozens of pages of reports prepared by state and private investigators since January 2022, when Angie disappeared.
Above all, these sources tell a story that is very Honduran, very Central American—that of [an international] criminal organization that has operated for years under the protection of judges, police officers, and politicians. In this case, a network of American pedophiles kidnapped young Honduran girls and sold them through a catalog or turned them into sex slaves for VIP clients—mostly American and European men—who traveled to Roatán in search of sex tourism.
Gary Lee Johnston, a leader of the Delta Team
According to the evidence uncovered, this is what happened to Angie Peña: a Honduran middleman handed her over to the American, Gary Lee Johnston, one of the network’s leaders, who then sold her to another American named William James Murdock, also known as Mr. Smith, Jean, or “the Frenchman.”
Johnston was arrested in August 2022 and tried for human trafficking and child pornography in a case unrelated to Angie Peña’s kidnapping; he was sentenced last October to 32 years in prison. His arrest was one result of the investigation opened into Angie’s case.
According to an investigation report prepared by the Public Prosecutor’s Office on January 17, 2025, Johnston’s network was protected for years by judicial officials and police officers stationed in Roatán. On that day [January 17, 2025], one of the prosecutors who took over the case ordered the investigation into the kidnapping of Angie Peña to be expanded to include a group of individuals suspected of committing crimes of “human trafficking for the purpose of commercial sexual exploitation, child pornography, criminal conspiracy, arms trafficking, and drug trafficking,” including the Americans Harold Joseph Green, Anthony Frank Grayson, Mr. Smith (William James Murdock), and the Hondurans Gustavo Trejo and Dorothy Gómez.
In his memo, the prosecutor also requested that the investigation be expanded to include officials suspected of “influence peddling” and “breach of duty,” including Jessica Montoya, a judge in Roatán, and two police officers, Jasson Quintanilla and another identified as “Carías.” An official from the Security Secretariat confirmed that the police officers are under investigation and have been removed from their posts in Roatán. As for Judge Montoya, the author attempted to contact her court, but received no response.
“What can I say about the authorities? They were brazen, and everyone involved in the kidnapping has to pay, whether they’re judges, prosecutors, or police officers. They have to pay,” says Yenely Díaz, Angie Peña’s aunt, speaking about the suspicions surrounding Honduran officials.
Obstruction of the Investigation and Cover-Up
An investigative report indicates that, in February 2022—one month after her disappearance—Honduran authorities had fairly precise information about what had happened to Angie Peña since her abduction on January 1, when she boarded a rented jet ski with a guide on the beaches of West Bay, on the western tip of Roatán.
This suspicion was noted in an internal report by the National Police, initially drafted behind the backs of local officers and even prosecutors from the Public Ministry, who were then under suspicion of negligence and complicity.
“A human source has provided information… Several years ago, Gary Lee Johnston was informally reported for pedophilia… Information was received that he is (involved) in Angie’s case and that she was on the island of Roatán,” says a report prepared in February 2022, at a time when the agents investigating the young woman’s disappearance were insisting to the family that she had been lost at sea.
A witness who spoke with Honduran investigators stated that the young woman had been handed over to Johnston hours after being kidnapped at sea, and that the American asked some of his associates on the island for help in taking her to a house he owned in Turtle Beach, about eight kilometers north of West Bay. According to this testimony, Angie was then taken to a hotel called The Dock, then to Colombia, and later returned to Roatán, where she was handed over to Murdock in exchange for between $10,000 and $40,000 USD.
By March 2022, Honduran authorities had an even clearer picture of what had happened. To begin with, Deputy Minister of Security Julissa Villanueva dismissed the theory put forward by the Public Prosecutor’s Office and the police at the time of the kidnapping—that Angie Peña’s disappearance had been an accident or that the young woman had gotten lost at sea.
Villanueva, whom President Xiomara Castro personally tasked with the investigation after hearing the family’s suspicions that something was amiss, took the matter into her own hands to set the record straight.
Soon after interviewing witnesses and the officers who conducted the initial investigation, clues began to emerge about the cover-up of Angie Peña’s kidnapping by the Delta Team and about the complicity of judicial and police authorities in the entire affair.
The police officers stationed in Roatán knew everything that had happened from the start, but, in collusion with Johnston and the kidnappers, they staged a cover-up operation to distract the family. Those police officers and members of the Roatán Merchant Marine, who participated in the initial search operations, insisted to the family that Angie had been swept away by a sea current and that, most likely, she had gone missing in the Caribbean or off the coast of Belize.
In February 2022, just over a month after the kidnapping, Michell Melgares, Angie’s mother, contacted one of the National Police officers investigating the case, whom we will refer to here only by his initials, LFC, for legal reasons. Melgares wanted information about the search.
– “How’s the case going? I’m extremely worried,” the woman asks.
The police officer reiterated what he, members of the Merchant Marine, and even the police chief stationed in Roatán had repeated over and over whenever the family asked—or even in the Honduran media: it was all just an accident.
– “Well, everything still points to an accident. I’m waiting for the report on what was found in Belize; they haven’t sent it to me yet,” LFC replies.
Angie’s mother is growing impatient. She knows—after days of investing her money and energy in one unsuccessful search after another, and after what other investigators have begun to uncover and the family’s own reconstruction of events—that the accident theory doesn’t make sense.
– “No. I’m in Belize. The tides are different. That guide is lying,” the woman replies, and her response holds several clues as to what is really going on.
Understanding the cover-up requires knowing all the details of the kidnapping, starting with the accounts of Lizzy Peña, Angie’s sister, who was with her on New Year’s Day 2022.
On January 1, after celebrating New Year’s Eve the night before, Lizzy and Angie rented two jet skis near a hotel that, as it later turned out, was linked to Gary Lee Johnston. Within minutes, Lizzy lost sight of her sister, who had gone off with a guide. When Angie didn’t return, Lizzy notified the family, who immediately demanded that the owners of the rental business go out and look for the young woman, but they refused. Shortly thereafter, when the police interviewed the guide Angie had gone with, he insisted that she and the jet ski had been swept away by the current.
But no. All the witnesses who came forward later, as well as the investigations—the details of which remained hidden for months—confirmed that the accident theory was a lie.
Yenely Díaz, Angie’s aunt, who was involved in the search for the young woman from the very beginning, sums it up this way:
“My sister searched by plane, by helicopter, by small plane, by motorboat, by ship, and whenever the police spotted them coming ashore, the officer was already standing there with the words on his lips: ‘It was an accident, ma’am, regarding your daughter; it’s an accident; we’re treating it as an accident.’ My sister would say to him, ‘But if it’s an accident, why can’t I find the body?’ But not a single word other than ‘accident’ came out of that man’s mouth: he wanted to bury it deep in our minds and have us accept it without any kind of investigation, without any kind of forensic analysis. Everyone who was around that day practically told her (Angie’s mother) outright, ‘Shut up, don’t say a word.’”
The negligence extended to the Public Prosecutor’s Office. The first two prosecutors assigned to the case also insisted that the accident theory was valid and, according to investigators who were closely involved in the proceedings at the time, pressured Angie’s family not to discuss the case with journalists. “Every time you speak to the media, I’m going to stop the investigation,” one of the Public Prosecutor’s Office agents told the family, as confirmed separately by two of Angie’s relatives who preferred to remain anonymous for safety reasons.
The threat became a reality when Angie’s parents spoke to the media to demand that the investigation be expedited. After that, one of the prosecutors assured them that she had halted a search operation that had already been scheduled. Another prosecutor, the second one assigned to the case—five prosecutors have handled the investigation so far—named Karla Zavalah, even blocked Angie’s mother from her email, according to Joaquín Mejía, a human rights advocate who has been supporting the young woman’s family.
Angie’s family members confirmed that Prosecutor Zavalah stopped communicating with them for weeks, having lost “her sensitivity and sense of responsibility” and because she “is unaware of or fails to respond to the forensic findings in the case.” The author attempted to contact the Public Prosecutor’s Office to obtain a response to this allegation, but received no reply.
On June 9, 2022, the family sent a letter to the top security officials in Xiomara Castro’s administration, complaining about the negligence of the Public Prosecutor’s Office and irregularities they attribute to the police officers who initially handled the investigation. They allege, for example, that the police lost or hid Angie Peña’s cell phone, a key piece of evidence. The phone was later found, but someone had already used WhatsApp and deleted photos.
One of the first irregularities documented in the case of Angie Peña’s disappearance was, in fact, the forensic handling of the young woman’s cell phone, which her family had handed over to the National Police’s Directorate of Police Investigations (DPI).
While the police were still insisting that Angie had been swept out to sea by a current all the way to Belize, at least one of those officers had clues suggesting that the young woman might have been in danger before she even reached Roatán. On her phone, they found conversations in which a man threatened to harm her and her family out of personal vendetta.
The police also confiscated the phone belonging to Lizzy Peña, Angie’s sister and the first person to report her disappearance, and they did so “without any formal procedure or signed document.” After March, when Deputy Minister Villanueva’s office took over, the investigation moved more quickly, but within a few months it once again stalled in other offices of the Honduran authorities.
In those days, however, something happened that definitively disproved the accident theory. A judicial official stationed in Roatán, who later admitted to having made deals with and covered up for the Delta Team, decided to cooperate with the investigators. This witness, whom we will refer to here as Chivo, exposed some of the institutional corruption surrounding Angie Peña’s disappearance.
‘Chivo’ is the pseudonym of a judicial official stationed in Roatán who later admitted to having made deals with and covered up for the Delta Team, and then decided to cooperate with the investigators.
Angie Peña: Chivo’s Testimony and a Stalled Investigation
This is the second installment of the investigation into the kidnapping of the young Honduran woman Angie Peña in Roatán. A witness alleges that judicial authorities sold investigation files to the Delta Team, the gang of American pedophiles accused of kidnapping Angie. Several members of that criminal group are set to stand trial later this month.
Chivo provided clues and made revelations, one of the most significant being that the Delta Team had influence in the courts of Roatán, the Merchant Marine, and the police. He confirmed that, from the outset, at least two agents assigned to the investigation had tampered with evidence and redirected attention toward the accident theory.
The witness also revealed that at least one judge on the island was complicit with the traffickers by informing them of legal actions taken against them by the Public Prosecutor’s Office or by private prosecutors. Later, during a series of interviews—the first of which took place in Roatán and the most extensive in Tegucigalpa—he described in detail how Angie Peña’s kidnapping had occurred. This is what Chivo recounted:
Angie Peña was abducted at sea on the orders of Gary Lee Johnston and taken to a house and then to a hotel called The Dock, which is owned by another American, Anthony Frank Grayson. She was held there for between 24 and 72 hours and was then taken out of Honduras for a time before being returned to the island, where she was believed to be when a special forces unit from Tegucigalpa attempted to rescue her in August 2022. That operation failed due to leaks from local police to the Delta Team, according to Chivo.
At some point in Honduras, the young woman was handed over to Murdock, who had supposedly paid for her.
Chivo, who has already given his testimony through official channels, claims that his life is in danger and that authorities from the Public Prosecutor’s Office’s Technical Agency for Criminal Investigation (ATIC), rather than protecting him, have threatened him. The witness has already reiterated in administrative proceedings what he had told the investigators who interviewed him about the Delta Team and its clients.
“I looked at Angie Peña. I know who the Delta Team are and who their clients are—politicians and pedophiles. That’s what Roatán is all about. I looked at her and kept quiet,” Chivo said.
This witness was one of the main sources of information for investigators from the Undersecretary of Security and the Public Prosecutor’s Office during the early days of Attorney General Johel Zelaya, who attempted to revive the investigations in response to strong public pressure from Angie’s family.
Chivo—officially, the Public Prosecutor’s Office assigned him an alphanumeric code that is not reproduced here for security reasons—said that the Delta Teams began “operating” around 2017 and counted among their clients “a network of high-ranking officials.” Angie is just one of the victims of the network which, like that of billionaire Jeffrey Epstein in the United States, specialized and trafficked minors to pedophiles, particularly foreigners.
Regarding the kidnapping of Angie Peña, Chivo repeated the same account in several interrogations, a story that investigators corroborated with other testimonies given by victims of the trafficking ring, and by police officers who had been on the Americans’ payroll. The witness reiterated that Angie had been under surveillance for some time, even back in Tegucigalpa, and that by the time she got on the jet ski in West Bay, her fate was already sealed.
The report prepared by the special task force in August 2022 also states that investigators suspected the Delta Teams of having ties to local drug traffickers, to whom they offered young Honduran and Colombian women for sexual services in exchange for $300 or $500 USD.
Those investigations progressed and even led to more witnesses, but, once again, the apathy, negligence, or complicity of Honduran state officials undermined some of those advances.
Another witness disappears
A few months after Angie Peña’s kidnapping, the special investigative unit had another witness, also a victim of the trafficking ring, to whom they offered protection. The young woman, however, backed out after realizing that agents suspected of collaborating with the Delta Team knew she was speaking with the authorities.
“They would have killed me by now, and you wouldn’t even have noticed. I’ll just say that you promised me protection, and I also told you I was leaving here, but you didn’t care if something happened to me or my family. That’s on your conscience. Because as far as I know, no one knew I was a protected witness, but with so much corruption, you can’t even tell who’s lying and who’s telling the truth anymore. I hope to hear nothing more about this,” the young woman wrote in a WhatsApp message to one of the investigators.
After that message, the potential witness vanished without a trace. No one ever heard from her again.
Despite the setbacks, the special task force formed in Tegucigalpa, led by the Undersecretary of Security, managed to compartmentalize some information and interview key witnesses and some of the local officers stationed in Roatán without interference. From there, they uncovered evidence of collusion with the pedophile ring and established that the entire judicial system and police force on the island were corrupt.
“We took the first (local) head of the investigation to Tegucigalpa and got everything out of him. ‘We’re going to get you fired. We’re going to put you in jail,’ we told him,” says an official who helped lead the special task force that took charge of the search for Angie Peña.
Eventually, some officials admitted to collaborating with the Delta Team and provided leads, such as the names of hotels, houses, and locations used by the child sex trafficking ring. They also confirmed what Chivo had said: that Angie Peña was alive and being held in Roatán.
One of the informants said during those interrogations that the young woman was going to be at a party in late August 2022. The Undersecretary of Security decided to launch an operation to try to rescue Angie.
Failed Raids
Honduran police officers and officials dispatched from Tegucigalpa arrived in Roatán between Thursday, August 25, and Friday, August 26, 2022. The plan, as explained by one of the officials in charge of the operation, was to go directly to the house, which, according to the case files of the investigation opened shortly after Angie Peña’s kidnapping, was owned by Gary Lee Johnston.
The information gathered indicated that the young woman would be at a party on Saturday, August 27, but the raids were delayed by obstacles that, according to the official who participated in the operation, were created by the Public Prosecutor’s Office and the local court. Officials colluding with the Delta Team delayed issuing the necessary warrants to enter the properties. It wasn’t until Monday, August 29, that the teams managed to enter Johnston’s home, where they found him with a minor. They arrested him. The Public Prosecutor’s Office, however, did not immediately charge him with the kidnapping of Angie Peña.
Photo: Héctor Silva Ávalos’ Radio Progreso article
Honduran authorities have known since 2017 that Johnston is part of a human trafficking network linked to pedophiles—or at least a judge, Jessica Montoya, court clerks, and police officers in Roatán have known this since then. One of these officials has stated that Johnston is primarily responsible for the kidnapping of Angie Peña:
“Everyone in Roatán knew about the gringo (Johnston) and Angie, but he was untouchable … every time he was reported, he would meet with the judges and that’s where it all ended… in the end, the accusers ended up being the ones under investigation,” says the informant in a video included in the investigation file.
Following the investigation that began in 2022 after the kidnapping of Angie Peña, and after a special investigative task force—led at the time by Deputy Minister Julisa Villanueva—thwarted attempts by local officials to derail the investigation, testimony from witnesses such as Chivo and other raids carried out in 2023 enabled the Honduran government to arrest more members of the Delta Team in 2024, including Harry Green and Murdock, also known as Mr. Smith or Jean the Frenchman.
Investigation logs documenting the raids carried out in Roatán in 2024 show that Murdock was able to travel to and from the island by air without any problems. In early April of that year, an informant claimed that the American would be returning to Roatán; he was monitored and photographed with a woman as he got into a vehicle after leaving the airport. Murdock left with the woman, who appeared to be a minor, and went to a house on the island, where he spent the entire night. The agents monitoring him set up a roadblock and apprehended him when he left the premises.
By the second week of April 2024, the agents had already apprehended nearly the entire gang. Only one remained: Antony Frank Grayson, owner of The Dock hotel in Roatán, where Angie is believed to have been held during the first few days of her kidnapping.
Tony Grayson. Photo: Héctor Silva Ávalos’ Radio Progreso article
On July 16, 2024, a court in Tegucigalpa issued an arrest warrant for Grayson, but the American remains at large despite the fact that several witnesses have confirmed to investigators that he has been in Roatán on multiple occasions.
In the end, after much pushing and pulling and despite the efforts of prosecutors, police, and even a judge—according to investigations by the Public Prosecutor’s Office—the alleged members of the pedophile ring known as Delta Team, or at least most of them, will face a public trial in late March 2026.
Unfortunately, the failed attempt to rescue Angie Peña remained unresolved, as did investigations into how child trafficking for sexual exploitation has operated on Roatán with the complicity of the authorities.
A story that doesn’t end with Angie Peña
Investigations conducted by the Public Prosecutor’s Office and the special investigative unit that Xiomara Castro’s government formed in 2022 within the Undersecretariat of Security made several things clear. The first is that Angie Peña did not disappear at sea, as claimed by police, members of the Merchant Marine, and even prosecutors.
The second is that the Honduran police had the opportunity to rescue the young woman from the pedophile ring that kidnapped her—or at least had enough clues and evidence to try—and that this possibility was thwarted by corruption in the courts and police stations.
The logs, reports, telephone records, surveillance notes and testimonies gathered by investigators between 2022 and mid-2025—when Angie Peña’s case finally stalled in the offices of the Public Prosecutor’s Office (MP) and the Anti-Corruption and Transnational Crime Unit (ATIC)—also document that human trafficking, especially of underage women, and the criminal networks engaged in it have operated in Roatán with near-total impunity.
When, during the last week of January 2026, the U.S. Department of Justice declassified millions of documents related to the billionaire pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, a journalistic investigation in Honduras revealed that the name of the Central American country—and Roatán in particular—appears several times in emails. There are no direct references in those documents to human trafficking or the Delta Team, but there are references to the island where that network of American pedophiles exploited young women and minors from Honduras and other countries for years.
In Honduras, all documents related to the Delta Team refer to eleven distinct groups involved in human trafficking in the Bay Islands, the Honduran archipelago of which Roatán is the main island. One of those networks—the largest in 2022—was run by Gary Lee Johnston, the man who kidnapped Angie Peña. But there are others, and they are still active.
An intelligence report, compiled in 2022 by private and government investigators, documents at least two dozen establishments—including bars and hotels, both large and small—where Hondurans and foreigners exploit young people and minors, primarily women, whom they offer to local and foreign clients in person or through catalogs.
The report contains details on establishments, addresses, testimonies, and specific evidence of how key judicial and law enforcement authorities in Roatán have facilitated the activities of these groups. It also includes intelligence on the link between human trafficking and drug trafficking.
Two former high-ranking officials in Xiomara Castro’s administration confirmed to the author that all the information gathered during the investigation into the Delta Team following the kidnapping of Angie Peña is in the hands of the Public Prosecutor’s Office.
For now, after four years of investigations, four Americans and three Hondurans directly linked to the network are in custody and awaiting trial. Another is on the run. However, although a prosecutor requested that the investigation be expanded to include a judge, Jessica Montoya, and several police officers, most of the officials implicated remain free and are even still performing their duties.
Angie Peña is still missing.
In 2023, 105 victims of human trafficking were rescued
By Kelly Ortez, February 9, 2024
https://criterio.hn/en-2023-rescataron-105-victimas-de-trata-la-mayoria-originarias-de-islas-de-la-bahia/
Image: Criterio article
The Bay Islands, located in the Honduran Caribbean, is the department from which most of the victims of human trafficking rescued in 2023 originated, according to figures provided by the Inter-institutional Commission Against Commercial Sexual Exploitation and Human Trafficking in Honduras (CICEST).
The figures reveal that 39 victims were rescued from January through December 2023. Notably, in Roatán, Islas de la Bahía, the young woman Angie Peña was reported missing on January 1, 2022; two years after her disappearance, authorities have still not been able to locate her.
The only strong lead was the arrest of U.S. citizen Gary Johnston, who was charged with aggravated human trafficking involving commercial sexual exploitation and child pornography.
The operation took place in August 2022, during which the U.S. citizen was found in the company of a 17-year-old girl at his residence in Roatán, in the Bay Islands.
Regarding Angie Peña, her earrings and swimsuit were found, confirming that the young woman was indeed in the custody of the 63-year-old man, as confirmed by the missing young woman’s father, Walter Peña.
The operation was carried out by authorities as part of the investigation into Peña’s disappearance, and on February 2, 2023, the Criminal Court of Appeals in La Ceiba, Atlántida, issued an indictment against the tourism entrepreneur and ordered his pretrial detention.
Photo: Horacio Lorca/Criterio.hn
Two years after Angie Peña’s mysterious disappearance, her family has searched tirelessly for her. Recently, Peña’s relatives, 16 human rights organizations, and the United Nations (UN) Committee on Enforced Disappearances demanded that the Honduran government take decisive action to locate the young woman.
Victims in the Bay Islands
The beauty of this idyllic island has been marred in recent years by human trafficking networks, organized crime, and the violence that plagues the area.
One of the most shocking cases was the massacre that took place on January 10, 2024, in which the bodies of three women were found inside a car after they had been missing for three days.
The last time the young women were seen alive, they were accompanied by the American Gilbert Reyes, who was in a romantic relationship with one of them—which is why he stands out as the prime suspect in the multiple murders.
The next day, Reyes left the country for the United States, since at that time there was no alert issued by Interpol.
These are not the only such cases that have occurred in Roatán; the most recent one took place on February 2, when a 39-year-old man was reportedly arrested on suspicion of kidnapping and sexually assaulting a 15-year-old girl in Aldi Western, Roatán.
Women and Girls Are the Main Victims
The department of Cortés (36), in northern Honduras, and Francisco Morazán (13), in the central region, are the two departments with the second-highest number of rescues related to human trafficking after the Bay Islands, bringing the total to 105 in 2023 alone.
Women and girls were the primary victims of human trafficking in Honduras in 2023, according to the rescue registry of the Inter-institutional Commission Against Commercial Sexual Exploitation and Human Trafficking (CICEST).
The registry records a total of 105 victims of human trafficking in its various forms; of this total, 60 were women (57%) and 27 were girls (26%).
Another group of victims of this crime includes 16 boys (15%), one adult male (1%), and one member of the LGBTI community (1%).
It is important to note that the victims were subjected to various forms of human trafficking, including child pornography, irregular adoption, forced marriage, forced labor, forced begging, recruitment for criminal activities, servitude, sexual exploitation, slavery, and forced pregnancy.
Stepping Up Efforts in Roatán
Regarding the care provided to victims of human trafficking in 2023, Sua Martínez Ibarra, secretary of CICEST, explained to Criterio.hn that all victims rescued in 2023 received comprehensive care from psychologists, lawyers, and social workers.
This program consists of providing crisis, psychological, legal, and medical care, as well as a safe home for victims, in addition to upholding the principle of non-return, which ensures that individuals are not sent back to the place where they were victims of a crime.
“When dealing with a case of human trafficking, we must coordinate efforts to determine where to provide protection—whether by placing the victim in decent housing, renting a home for them, or training them to start a business (…), the goal is to repair the harm and reintegrate them into society,” Martinez noted.
Regarding the high incidence of cases in the Bay Islands, Martínez stated that she opened a CISET office in the area, where assistance is being provided to victims originally from there.
She stated that due to the case of Angie Peña’s disappearance and the strong evidence that she was a victim of human trafficking, a massive search was conducted, and as a result, the whereabouts of the 39 victims of human trafficking who were reported in the Bay Islands the previous year were located.
Missing Women in Roatán, Possible Victims of Human Trafficking
For her part, Seydi Irías, from Cattrachas’ Observatory on Violent Deaths of Women, stated in an interview with Criterio.hn that in the Bay Islands—specifically in Roatán—a pattern of missing women has been identified, with the strongest hypothesis suggesting they were victims of human trafficking.
Irías noted that although the most high-profile case has been the disappearance of Angie Peña, there have been other disappearances of women in previous years who have not yet been located.
Data from the Media Monitoring Center reveal that a case similar to Peña’s occurred with Martha Fabiola Matute, who was reported missing on August 15, 2017.
Similarly, there is the case of Alda Villanueva Flores, who in 2021 was found showing signs of sexual abuse after being summoned for a job interview.
Irías noted that many of the victims wish to remain anonymous and have their cases eventually forgotten, since the Bay Islands is a tourist destination and they do not want to damage the area’s image.
However, by remaining silent about death and crimes such as human trafficking, disappearances, and violence, these acts are being allowed to go unpunished, even though they are often committed by foreigners.
“Since it’s a tourist destination, it seems that the mayor’s office and the city councilors are more interested in it as an economic system, but they haven’t considered how this affects women,” Irías noted.
A key fact is that on June 22, 2023, nine members of a criminal organization called “Cash Seymour” were arrested on charges of human trafficking and sexual exploitation in the Dixon Cove area, in the municipality of Roatán, in the Bay Islands.
Tourist Areas Most Prone to Human Trafficking
Javier Acevedo, executive director of the Center for Research and Promotion of Human Rights (Ciprodeh), told Criterio.hn that the high number of victims in the Bay Islands is likely due to the fact that it is a tourist area—a situation that has existed for years and occurs in various countries with similar characteristics.
“The Bay Islands have become attractive to tourists, and this creates demand for certain types of services—such as lodging, food, and adventure activities—but also for illicit activities like human trafficking and commercial sexual exploitation.”
In this regard, he noted that safety cannot be measured by the number of cases alone, but rather by the incidence of other crimes.
Acevedo noted that the murder of three women in a district like Islas de la Bahía is a serious matter when considering the small population.
More information
CATTRACHAS, https://www.cattrachas.org/
Centro de Investigación y Promoción de los Derechos Humanos (Ciprodeh), https://x.com/ciprodeh1
OFRANEH & Garifuna people, @ofraneh / garifuna@ofraneh.org / www.ofraneh.org /
Karen Spring, Honduras Solidarity Network, karen@hondurassol.org
Grahame Russell, Rights Action, info@rightsaction.org
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