For 17 years, Patricia Ruiz lived with the pain of not knowing what had happened to the man with whom she had shared 12 years of marriage. The police investigated, the family searched, neighbors speculated, but Roberto had simply vanished—like smoke dissolving into the air of a city with 20 million inhabitants.

Then, one morning in September 2023, Patricia walked into a bank branch in the southern part of the city to take care of a routine errand, and her world came to a sudden stop. The man standing three people ahead of her in line had the same posture, the same gestures, the same way of scratching the back of his neck that Roberto had.

When the man turned slightly and Patricia saw his profile, her heart jolted so violently that she had to lean against the wall. He was 17 years older, with more gray hair and deeper wrinkles, wearing glasses he never used to wear. But it was him. It was impossible. It was unreal. But it was Roberto.

And when he left the bank, Patricia made the decision that would change everything. She followed him.

What she discovered in the hours that followed would shatter everything she believed she knew about the man she had married, about the life they had built together, and about the true reason Roberto Campos had disappeared without a trace.

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Now let’s go back to understand how everything began, to understand what happened in August 2006. To do that, we need to know who Roberto Campos was and the life he had built in Mexico City.

Roberto was born in 1972 in Guadalajara, Jalisco, but moved to the capital at age 22 in search of better opportunities. He was of average height, slim build, with a face that blended into the crowd on the subway—nothing particularly striking. He worked as an accountant at a medium-sized construction materials distribution company in the industrial area of Vallejo.

It was a stable job that allowed him to support his family without luxury, but with dignity. He met Patricia Ruiz in 1993 at a birthday party for a mutual friend. She worked as a receptionist at a dental clinic and had a contagious laugh that lit up any room. They married in 1994 in a simple ceremony at the neighborhood parish, attended by close family and a few friends.

They didn’t have much money, but they had plans—dreams of a better future. Their first son, Daniel, was born in 1996, and their second, Alejandro, in 1999. By the year 2000, they had managed to buy a modest house in Lindavista, a working-class neighborhood in the Gustavo A. Madero district in the north of the city.

Roberto was what people would call a good man. He didn’t drink excessively, didn’t gamble, came home every night. On weekends, he took the kids to the park, helped Patricia with groceries, watched soccer with the neighbors. He was the kind of father who attended school meetings, who carefully saved a little money every month for the annual family vacation to Acapulco, who dreamed of someday being able to pay for his children’s university education.

His coworkers described him as serious but kind, meticulous with numbers, always punctual, never causing trouble. Life in Lindavista during those years was typical of working-class neighborhoods in Mexico City. The streets were always full of street vendors, the sound of garbage trucks mixing with the bells of sweet potato carts in the afternoons.

The Campos family lived in a two-story house with a red brick façade and a small garden in front that Patricia tended carefully, planting geraniums and bougainvillea that added color to the street. Neighbors knew one another, borrowed sugar when needed, watched each other’s children, and gossiped on street corners on Sundays after mass.

But beneath this appearance of normalcy, Roberto Campos carried a secret that was eating him alive—a secret that neither Patricia, nor his children, nor anyone close to him suspected. And that secret was about to explode in the most devastating way possible.