Chasing shadows

From stolen human organs to deported gangsters, Mariana Van Zeller follows whispered horror stories in a new season of Trafficked.

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Trafficked With Mariana Van Zeller Season 3 Thursdays (from 9 February) National Geographic (*181) 21:00

Over years of reporting on the world's most dangerous and secretive illegal net-works, seasoned investigative reporter Mariana Van Zeller has come face to face with everyone from cocaine cartels, to pimps, gunrunners, and white supremacists. But as the third season of her doccie series Trafficked begins, she still visibly winces when a human organ trafficker nicknamed "The Wrecker" (as in someone who breaks down cars in a scrapyard) in Medellín, Colombia, shows her proof of the Clan del Golfo cartel's new "operation" on his cellphone. In his video, she sees him butcher organs out of a human donor. More than a private slasher movie screening, though, what she sees becomes a thread she follows through a maze of horrors.

WE DON'T SAY THAT

Wrecker tells Mariana that donation isn't always voluntary. And that donors aren't always unconscious for the procedure. Those two facts seem to make the hardened cartel members she speaks to squirm as if Mariana has been indecent by bringing it up. Later, even her Mexican cartel contact "Paloma" hurries to shush the spokesman for their ringleader - who's talking to them via cellphone in prison - as Mariana tries to confirm these details. Paloma chides the speaker, telling him that "people disappear".