Paying the Price | 7
2024-05-20 00:38:26
<p>When ex-Bunny girl Jayne Gaskin spots the desert island of her dreams for sale online, she decides to risk it all. Trading in their English village home, Jayne and her family relocate to their own private paradise, just off the coast of Nicaragua. And a reality TV crew follows them to film a new show, <em>No Going Back</em>. But soon they all discover that paradise has its secrets. The locals claim the island belongs to them, and it’s been sold illegally. Jayne’s not leaving without a fight. A fight that will soon turn deadly.</p><p>Hosted by Alice Levine.</p><p>Listen to The Price of Paradise on the Wondery App or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes early and ad-free on Wondery+. Join Wondery+ in the Wondery App, Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Start your free trial by visiting <a href="https://wondery.com/links/the-price-of-paradise/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">https://wondery.com/links/the-price-of-paradise/</a> now. </p>
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Jane looks in the mirror, clicks off the lid, and sweeps on her lipstick. A pop of colour normally cheers her up, but not tonight. Jane's been trying everything to lift her spirits recently, but to no avail. She looks across at her daughter, who's reading on the bed. Darling, they're going to be here soon.
She'd better get the place ready, make the bed, tackle the dishes spilling over in the sink.
Oh, too late. Jane takes a deep breath, plasters on a smile, and walks across the room to open the door.
It was a very dark, very rainy, cold night, I remember, and we traipsed up there to meet her.
Researcher James and producer Billy have come to visit, because Jane's back, in England, living just around the corner from their TV offices. Jane ushers the boys into the bedsit and offers them a cup of tea.
And it was this fairly kind of incongruous scene, really, where a very colourful Jane, with pink hair, head to toe in a kind of playboy outfit. There was a playboy tracksuit bottoms, a playboy singlet, the bed had playboy cushions all over it, and she was this very bright, very colourful creature.
It's been seven years, and many colourful outfits now, since the TV crew filmed Jane in her village kitchen, preparing to leave for her very own desert island, full of hope and excitement. And today, here she is again, back in miserable old England, a place she'd vowed never to return. James and Billy are desperate to hear the full story, a story they've already pitched to Channel 4,, of course. If it's commissioned, the follow-up documentary promises to reveal why Jane was forced to put her island up for sale, and what she plans to do next. As Billy sets up the camera, James can sense that behind Jane's bright exterior lies an inner turmoil.
You know, she was big, she was provocative, she was colourful, but there was a sense of sadness within her.
As the story unfolds, it becomes clear Jane's life overseas had taken a dark turn.
Jane left Nicaragua under a bit of a storm cloud. She'd lost all the money that she'd invested, and she'd burnt through all of the money they had put aside for the build, and for their life on the island.
And now, here she is. Her boys have grown up, and she's living with her daughter, in a small flat in North London. From nine acres of freedom, to a cramped rental on a run-down estate, she's trying to put on a brave face. But James can see through the facade, to the real Jane.
Who seemed like a caged bird. in many ways. You know, she was like a caged bird of paradise, perhaps, where she was back in London. Grey, gloomy, rainy England.
Jane always knew she didn't belong in their quaint Hampshire village, and Janique wasn't the happy ending she was hoping for. But she's insistent that moving back to England is not her final chapter. She tells James and Billy that she's got an idea. Paradise hasn't been lost. It's just been put on hold.
Because Jane has grand plans for her next dream destination. Plans which nobody could have predicted.
From Wondery, I'm, Alice Levine, host of British Scandal. And this is the Price of Paradise.
It seems like several lifetimes ago now, since Jane Gaskin logged onto tropicalislands.
com from her village kitchen and laid eyes on the desert island of her dreams, Lime Quay. With its endless shining beaches and azure waters, a kingdom of her own. A place to call home, or Janique. But when they landed, the Gaskins were shocked to discover that other people laid claim to their island too. People who'd been there for centuries before them.
And what began as a local land dispute, quickly escalated into a national scandal and fierce battle, with Jane at its centre.
Life just got very difficult where she felt constantly under threat.
And of course, there was the money, or lack thereof. After ploughing the last of her savings into Steve's reptile business, Jane watched as all her savings slithered away. Jane had no choice. She put Paradise up for sale, on a different website. this time.
The online market for tropical islands is clearly booming, despite everything. The other woman in our story, Maria Acosta, has also been forced to leave her home in Bluefields. After Frank was murdered, it was just too dangerous to stay. You might recall, four years earlier, back in 2004,, her husband's killer, Ivan Rivera, had finally been caught in Costa Rica. As Rivera set foot on home soil, Maria was feeling hopeful.
Hopeful that he'd come back and confess all to the Nicaraguan authorities, including the real identity of the gringo who hired him. For her, there's only one suspect.
It was the missing link, it was the direct link with Socos.
But if Maria thought that everything was about to fall into place, when Rivera returned to tell the world the truth about Socos, she was mistaken.
When he came to Nicaragua, he never talked again.
Just as Maria was hoping for a final conclusion to the story. Rivera fell silent. You see, while he was a fugitive, he'd been sentenced in absentia and given 20 years in prison. Renting the apartment from Maria, then going on the run, was enough evidence to convict him of premeditated murder. Since he didn't need to stand trial, when he returned to Nicaragua, Rivera went straight to jail.
Do not pass, go, do not ask for bail money, and do not get up in court and tell everyone who hired you as a hitman. Just imagine that. You know he's coming back to Nicaragua. You think he's going to spill all and this will be the end of it. And then nothing.
She suspects that pressure is being placed on Rivera to keep quiet by his lawyers.
What I think happened is that Socos and Martinez hired the lawyers, and the lawyer's mission was not to defend them but to keep them silent.
Despite Maria's repeated requests, no one is permitted to interview Rivera about his claims, not even the police. Maria's crushed. Her attempts to relaunch proceedings against Socos and Martinez are fruitless. The judge says the case is closed. With Rivera locked up, the narrative around Frank's killing changes.
What had been labelled by the papers as a murder for hire is now just an atrocious killing. It seems like everyone is ready to move on. Everyone but Maria. Even if she can't get Rivera to repeat his accusation, Maria has the paperwork that connects both of the Peters to Frank's death. There's the ballistics report, which links Frank's murder to the gun owned by Peter Martinez, plus the letter from Master Security which states that Rivera worked for Peter Socos.
So Maria decides to take the case higher, to the Supreme Court. But when the next judge finds out, he's furious. He hasn't asked for more evidence and refuses to reopen the case. Now maybe I'm naive, but I'd have thought that if a big fat juicy envelope of evidence turned up on your desk, you'd at the very least just take a look. I guess not.
Peter Martinez is angry too. In his downtown office, he tells a visiting TV crew that there's a police insider who's conspiring against him. Someone on the inside who's trying to frame him.
There's a guy who definitely is in the police, who are being pressured to create a case.
It makes no sense. I'm going to lend my registered pistol.
in my name to a killer who I don't even know.
It's definitely never a good idea to lend your gun to a killer. you don't know. Let's just all agree on that. Martinez successfully petitions a local judge to have the policeman involved arrested for falsifying evidence. So Martinez is out of the frame yet again.
Maria's disappointed, but not surprised.
They wanted to intimidate me, so I wouldn't continue with the fights for the keys. They also underestimate me, I think.
If there's one thing I've learned in this story, it's that nobody should ever underestimate Maria Acosta. If Maria can't get a fair trial at home in Nicaragua, she's going to need to take her case even higher. Maria knows she's got one last shot at justice. Her final target is set.
March 2009,. Jane's bleach blonde hair billows behind her in the wind as she jogs across the beach. Ted and Baby, her two fluffy dogs, scamper behind her until she reaches the porch. As she sits down to relax, Peepo, her tiny capuchin. monkey, leaps onto her shoulder and nestles into her neck.
But this isn't Janique. Jane has downsized, selling her nine acres on the Pearl Keys for a more bijou too. Great key. Yet another island which also once featured on tropicalislands.com. Yes, you are not mistaken.
After the surreal ups and downs of the island years, all eight of them, Jane is going back for more. She's giving her island dream another go. The sequel, if you will. Let's just not focus on the fact that the sequel is always worse than the original. But it really is different.
this time. She's got nothing to lose.
When she set sail for Janique, she took her young children out of school, emptied their life savings and put her relationship to the test. Now the picture has changed dramatically. Her boys have flown the nest, now Jane holds the purse strings and of course, Phil is gone. It's just Jane and her daughter now and a growing menagerie of pets to keep them company. In customary fashion, Jane has renamed her new kingdom Pink Pearl and she's set about designing everything on her colourful new treasure.
She starts by hiring a construction crew to build a round pink house with a heart-shaped pool, which researcher James says was fairy Jane.
It was all pink. It was all very slightly saucy and a bit rough and ready looking, to be honest with you, quite concrete kind of build.
There are several cabanas that Jane plans to rent out to tourists, surrounding the slightly saucy Coconut Ice Bar. Not for the first time, I feel like the Love Island producers have a lot to thank Jane for.
She was now going to do what she had never been able to achieve on her previous island journey, have it as the ultimate holiday destination and start making money.
Imagine having owned not one desert island in your lifetime, but two. If you've made it this far in the story, it won't shock you to hear that owning a dream island is tough going. Without Phil's expertise and money management, Jane is struggling. Colour schemes are more her thing, not construction.
She had no experience of project managing a big build. She had no experience of managing whole teams of builders and also doing all of that on an island which is 90 minutes offshore.
Take some advice from me and daytime TV makeover shows, Jane. You can do it all yourself for half the price with a few lessons on YouTube. But instead what happens is actually the age-old story. They smell Jane's lack of experience a mile off and the bills start to rocket. While the building work is underway, Jane is living on the mainland in Bluefields.
But with the rising construction costs, plus all the boat trips, as her first year draws to a close, Jane's funds are dwindling. But that's not the only problem on the horizon. Because yet another storm is brewing.
It's midnight in November. Jane is wide awake in her Bluefields apartment. Outside, winds are raging. Trees are thrashing against the windows with terrifying force. They'd been warned that a hurricane might be coming.
And now it's arrived. Jane spends all night fearing the worst. If it's been this bad here on the mainland, what's been happening out at sea? She closes her eyes and tries to sleep.
The next morning, as her panga reaches Pink Pearl, Jane steps out onto shore. Her mouth drops open. The thatched roofs of several cabanas lie upside down on the sand. Yellow window frames are dangling from their hinges. Her round house is missing.
a balcony. Pink painted wood is strewn across the beach. Everything is ruined. In that moment, it hits her. The repairs will take months, maybe longer.
She can't bear the thought, or the cost, of starting it all again.
You know, the money was running out. And I think she had to admit defeat.
Jane has lived through a kidnapping, a death, and now a hurricane. She's finally ready to accept that it's time for her to leave the Pearl Keys behind.
While Jane's been island hopping, over in Bluefields, the fight to reclaim the Pearl Keys has intensified. The indigenous campaigners have taken Peter Sokos to court to try and reclaim the islands. But after a long and bitter court battle, the judges rule in his favour. Locals are outraged. We knew that the government was going to use any strategy to stop us from demanding our rights.
Community leaders like Alejandrina see the court's verdict as clear evidence of corruption. And anger soon spills into the streets.
In April 2008,, over 1,000 residents marched through the town in protest.
Bluefield is the most calm place you've ever seen. People don't protest for nothing.
For this to happen in Bluefields, Maria knows that tensions had reached breaking point.
It was not something about me or about Frank, even about Sokos or Martinez. It was bigger.
Some protesters even break into the local parliament to express their fury. And then the campaign spreads even further. We took our protester, Managua, to the Attorney General's office. He said he couldn't do anything. It was out of his hands.
Finally, the following year, after months of political pressure, there's a major breakthrough. The local government in Bluefields officially recognize the Pearl Keys as communal land. Land that can be used legally by locals for traditional activities, like fishing. Foreign owners will need to prove their island deeds are genuine. If they can't, they've got to leave.
And even if they can prove it, they need to share the islands with indigenous groups. Watching from afar, Maria is delighted. Finally, the Pearl Keys will be protected. By law.
They support the people's cry. It was too big for them. So they supported the people's claim.
There's a triumphant win for the turtles, too. The state declares the Keys a wildlife refuge with an order to protect marine species. That means no new luxury cabanas and no new dive resorts on their nesting sites. So victories for everyone.
Around the same time, tropicalislands.
com mysteriously disappears, as does its owner, Peter Sokos. Nothing to see here. All very unrelated. But, and I'm sorry because I know that celebrations can feel few and far between in this story, these wins will prove to be short-lived. In October 2016,, just two months before the Pearl Keys are due to be handed over to the local communities, the Supreme Court intervenes.
It declares, out of nowhere, that the islands will instead be registered as government property. Strangely, apart from Grape Key. So the island Jane, renamed Pink Pearl, is protected and can remain in private hands. As to why, your guess is as good as mine. But the local community are not giving up.
And they vow to continue their battle to get all of the Pearl Keys back. And Maria is gearing up for her next battle too. Never one to shy away from a major confrontation, she's escalated Frank's murder case to the top. If the Nicaraguan authorities won't investigate who was behind Frank's death, and now she knows for sure that they won't, then she'll take his case all the way up to the highest court on the continent. Now it's Maria versus the state of Nicaragua.
10th of October, 2016,, Ecuador. Wearing a black suit and pearl earrings, 57-year-old Maria Acosta is sitting in front of a large stage adorned with flags. Seven judges in red and black gowns take their seats at the bench.
There was a lot of people. It was a huge auditorium.
Maria is about to testify in front of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. She has to admit she's nervous, but she's ready.
I always call it, this is a show.
All the appeals she's filed, all the articles she's written, all the conferences she's attended have led to this point.
The court. commissioner, a stern man with a sharp grey beard, gets straight to the point. The court is here to decide whether or not the state of Nicaragua is guilty of denying Maria Acosta justice by failing to thoroughly investigate the motives.
behind her husband's murder.
After a brief introduction, it's Maria's turn to speak. She takes a sip from the glass of water in front of her, adjusts her glasses, adjusts her microphone and begins.
And then I had to give my testimony and it was horrible.
Maria unravels the last 14 years for the judges, reliving every moment, every memory.
I had to describe the relationship we had with Frank and my children. We had to talk about my work and I had to talk about how I felt when he was killed.
This isn't like any other court case she's been through.
I was being the human being there, you know, the person, the widow, the victim. And I don't like to play the victim, but it was something that I had to do, but I didn't enjoy it. It was hard.
Maria carefully outlines all the evidence she's gathered, linking Peter Sokos and Peter Martinez to Frank's murder. Then the court asks what impact Frank's murder had on their family.
As tears fill her eyes, Maria says that her home life was over. Her family was over. It was like they threw a Molotov cocktail. It wounded everyone. Suddenly, Maria feels overwhelmed, but now more than ever, she can feel Frank's presence.
It's like he's here by her side.
I know he's always been with me. Not only in this case, but in all the cases of what I have worked for justice for the people.
Maria takes a deep breath as she reaches the end of her testimony. She's made her case and now it's time for the attorneys to defend the state of Nicaragua and its investigation into Frank's murder. But as Maria glances across the court to the opposition's benches, a familiar face catches her eye. A stocky man named Guevara. Guevara is one of the state's senior attorneys sent to cross-examine her, and he barely looks up from his sheet of paper.
as he and his colleague rattle off a list of questions for Maria. They ask her to cast her mind back to the aftermath of Frank's murder. Do you recall telling the judge in Bluefields that you hadn't received any threats related to your work with indigenous peoples before Frank's murder? Maria can see where this is going. She reluctantly admits that she did tell the judge that she hadn't been threatened.
Guevara continues. During Maria's testimony to this court, she had stated that she was the intended target of Frank's murder. Wouldn't that suggest that she'd felt threatened?
They were sort of accusing me.
Other attorneys join in seizing the chance to undermine her story. If there were no threats against Maria, then there's no proof that Frank's death was linked to her work on the Pearl Keys. So why would the judges in Bluefields investigate Peter Sokos or Peter Martinez, the men who sold the islands?
Maria tries to steady her nerves. It's exactly what she was afraid of. They're spinning the story against her. It was Maria, they continue, who agreed to rent the apartment to Frank's killers, one of whom was from her hometown.
They may have wanted to imply that I knew him from somewhere else. They treat me like I was a liar. It was crazy.
Guevara takes centre stage once again to deliver the final blow as he commences his conclusion. The state denies any persecution, harassment or bullying of Maria Acosta. Maria Acosta made it clear that she hasn't been persecuted by the state. A fair trial was held for the murder of Mr Garcia, resulting in a 23-year prison sentence. Maria's crusade has been designed as a smear campaign, he says, to sully the good name of Nicaragua's judicial system.
In Nicaragua, there haven't been any cases of human rights defenders being murdered, unlike in other countries. It's a huge blow. After everything she's been through, after everything the community has been through, Maria is crestfallen.
It's very painful, very, very painful. You know, I felt exhausted physically and emotionally.
But as the hearing draws to a close, she has one last revelation. A new piece of information she's been holding back for a moment. just like this. Maria explains to the court that after Frank's murder, she endured vicious attacks on her character. Her reputation lay in tatters.
Feeling desperate and isolated, Maria turned to Nicaragua's public ministry for support and she was put in touch with a young lawyer there.
And I asked him to read the files and he brought a wonderful, a very good and professional memorandum about the case.
And in that memorandum he detailed the countless times Maria had been failed by the courts since Frank's murder. In fact, she's used many of those findings in the hearing today. But it's not the memorandum that Maria wants to present to the court. It's the lawyer. Because Maria reveals that he's sitting right here in this courtroom.
The room falls silent. And that's when she shifts her gaze to the man in question. Guevara. Cesar Guevara.
And now he was on the other side.
Cesar, the sympathetic lawyer from the public ministry who'd been helping Maria, is the man now accusing her of lying. Maria's revelation stuns the court. As they turn to stare at him.
When I said that, everybody was like waiting for his answer, you know. It was like a ping pong game. Everybody looked at him. And the judge asked him, is that true? And he said, yes.
Guevara states that he never signed the memorandum. But Maria knows he was the person she spoke to for hours on the phone about Frank's case. And it was Cesar's assistant prosecutor whose signature appeared at the bottom of the document. The judge is staggered at Maria's revelation. At this change in allegiance.
And not long after, he orders the court to adjourn. Maria's case is over. Now she must wait.
Over the next few weeks, Maria hears nothing. Five months later, just as she's losing hope that the report will ever appear. She receives an email from the Human Rights Commission. She nervously clicks on the message and sees there's an attachment.
And then I open the file and begin to read it.
The judge did not investigate in a serious, diligent and competent manner the hypothesis that indicated that Mr. Garcia could have been murdered by people whose interests could be affected by the activities of defence of indigenous peoples carried out then by Miss Acosta. The court has ruled that Nicaragua needs to reopen Frank's case and exhaustively reinvestigate all lines of inquiry to find everyone responsible for the homicide. And they need to identify all the people who participated in the different levels of decision and execution. Including the local judges in Bluefields to see if there's any evidence of corruption.
It's the moment she's been waiting for.
Maria has done it. The highest court possible has ruled in her favour.
That should have been the closure. Maria needed. The justice that she'd fought so hard to get for Frank. But it's a bittersweet result. In Maria Acosta's case, the judges ruled that Nicaragua must pass laws to protect human rights defenders.
But so far, the government has refused. Because in the seven years since that verdict, Alejandrina says the situation in Nicaragua has intensified as developers encroach on indigenous land. The new settlers come in, they're armed, they burn down villages and plantations, they kill indigenous people and the police do nothing. And today, freedom of speech is a thing of the past. Demonstrations are no longer tolerated.
Now, whenever they think there might be a protest, the police surround my house and block me from leaving. Many community leaders were silenced and had to leave the country. Like Maria. After receiving anonymous death threats, she was forced to flee Nicaragua for good.
But from her new home, Maria continues to fight for indigenous rights. She hopes that one day, Frank's case will be reopened, as the court ordered. And that Socos and Martinez will finally stand trial for her husband's murder.
Despite all the harm these people has inflicted on me and my family, I kept my dignity and my principles and I believe in justice.
Maria and Jane both followed their dreams to start a new life, to find their own paradise. Two decades later, both of them have left to start again, somewhere new. After the hurricane, Jane left the Pearl Keys behind. But, a woman of her word, she didn't settle back in the UK. No grey skies and wet winters for her.
She decided to find a more glamorous destination to end her story. A sunny spot on the coast, a bit closer to home. And it's here that we lose track of Jane's story. There are rumours that she bought a dilapidated chateau to overhaul. But she decided not to invite Billy and the camera crew to film that one.
Understandable. Although, I definitely would have watched. We invited Jane to take part in this podcast series, to give us her side of the story. But she didn't get back to us. So, we'll never know about the chateau.
But she did bring a little piece of paradise back home. A tattoo of the Pearl Keys. A permanent memory of a past life that could feel like a dream. And over the years, Jane still has the odd phone call with Billy.
People are still interested in the documentary and want to know where Jane is and what she's doing and what's happened to the kids. But Jane's quite a private person, actually.
A private person, just not on a private island.
I don't think she regrets going to Nicaragua. But I think she probably wants to draw a line under that.
We've all dreamt of starting again, one time or another. Running away. Chasing a dream. Finding our own personal paradise. But what happens when reality doesn't quite match up to our dreams?
The two women in our story, Jane and Maria, both took their chances on a new life. When Jane ran away to her very own island paradise, she couldn't have foreseen the price she'd pay. The price everyone would pay. Because Jane's dream island was somewhere that other people had called real life for a long time. With all the joys and heartaches of reality.
Maria's dream was to help those people reclaim their island, their freedom, their way of life. The two women never met, but they found themselves on opposite sides of the same battle. And now their stories are forever intertwined. Bound together by an island. A dream of freedom.
The freedom to be yourself. To live without limits. A dream which they both still hold. So you might think that's where this surreal story ends. A fantasy gone wrong.
But it's not over yet. If you, like Jane, find yourself idly surfing the world wide web one day, dreaming of a perfect paradise far away, you too might stumble on the pearl keys. The pink pearl, Jane's second island, is once again up for sale.
I don't have words to describe it. Nothing's moved on.
Listed as an off-grid sanctuary with a hefty price tag of just under a million US dollars.
So here we are again, 20 years on, people still trying to appeal to this weird dream of owning a tropical island.
I just hope whoever buys it realises, after this, there really is no going back.
It's just. no one can see through the lies.
But it's my, it's my Eden.
From Wondery, this is the final episode of The Price of Paradise. A note about this podcast, not everything was captured on film at the time, so we can't always know exactly what was said in every moment. In places, our script is based on the testimony of our interviewees and all of the sources available to us. Special thanks to Centre for Legal Assistance for Indigenous People, run by Maria Acosta. If you want to find out more, visit kelpy-nicaragua.com.
Peter Sokos did not respond to a request for comment. In past interviews, he stated that he had nothing to do with the death of Frank Garcia and was acquitted of any implication in the murder. He also stated that all business dealings carried out by him in Nicaragua were legal. Peter Martinez did not respond to a request for comment. He's previously denied any involvement in the murder of Frank Garcia.
He states that the real perpetrators have been caught and sentenced. The Price of Paradise is produced by Forest Sounds and is hosted by and with additional writing by me, Alice Levine. For Forest Sounds, our producers are Ella Cattle and Aaron Keller. The assistant producer is Valeria Rocker. The managing producer is Anne Fitzgerald.
The production coordinator is Nina Abdullah. The researcher is Tom Cass. Executive producers are Pete Sale and Jeremy Lee. For Wondery, our producer is Theodora Leloudis. Our managing producer is Rachel Sibley.
Our consulting producer is Brian Taylor-White. The production assistant is Imogen Marshall. Music composition by Ian Chambers. Sound design by Joe Richardson and Ian Chambers. Our sound supervisor is Marcelino Villalpando.
The music supervisor is Scott Velazquez for Frisson Sync. Legal advice is from Louise Lambert at Reviewed and Cleared. The actors were Theo Solomon, Sarah Quist and Olly Rayhart. Special thanks to Stephanie Edwards, Niall Thomas, Jamie Cooper and Barney Lee. Archived material courtesy of The Living Documents and Mallory Soma and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.
Executive producers for Wondery are Michelle Martin, Jessica Radburn, Marshall Louis and Jen Sargent.
Follow The Price of Paradise on the Wondery app, Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey at wondery.com slash survey.
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