Oct 6, 2026 · 25 min · 15 segments
Reporters Madi Bolanos and Anna Sussman take listeners behind the gates of Chowchilla women’s prison, and share stunning new developments in the story. *We Are Jane Doe* is a KQED and Snap Judgment…
Anna SussmanGuestSukti LewisHost
Madi BolanosGuestSo, Anna, can you tell me a little bit more about Gregory Rodriguez? You know, what do we know about this man? What were you able to find out about how he was allowed to operate for so long?
I've written to him in prison via several avenues and he hasn't gotten back to me.
And from the trial, we learned that he had what I'm going to call a system of In which he would write down the names of female prisoners who he was interested in.
He would look them up in the kind of prison information system and he would call them in to his office and offer them information.
kind of perks jobs and in uh exchange for the jobs you would get a an extra phone call or you would get a bottle of vodka in some of the cases he would really cultivate the relationship going so far as to like make a little bed in a closet where he would bring somebody uh in order to sexually assault them um and in some of the cases it seemed that he really felt he had From my reading of it, it really felt like he had relationships with some of these women.
In some of them, it was real more kind of quick and dirty, like he would assault them literally behind a curtain, like in a mop station.
It seemed to me he knew exactly where there were no cameras, and he knew where to take women to do what he wanted with them.
And when we were at the prison, Madi, I remember you and I peering down that hallway and where we knew he had done all of this and you kind of you got chills and you were like this is chilling
yeah i mean it was within the first five minutes of our tour i felt sick and i don't consider myself to be someone who gets queasy very easily but um it just yeah immediately being put in that space was a very uncomfortable feeling
I want to get more into the tour in a second, but there's one more thing that I want listeners to kind of know and clock before we go move on to that, which is about the timing of the investigation, what we uncovered through, you know, that.
conversation that you had, Anna, with that secret source, and then also through the trial transcripts and from CDCR's own communication with UMIDI, which is that they clearly stated that Rodriguez was under investigation in June of 2022.
And this is when Ali is at the prison and he goes on to assault her while he is under investigation twice at least in July and in August before she is finally released.
I believe, you know, that he was allowed to flourish and do this because nobody believed that these women deserved any better.
So, Anna, can you tell me a little bit more about Gregory Rodriguez? You know, what do we know about this man? What were you able to find out about how he was allowed to operate for so long?
I've written to him in prison via several avenues and he hasn't gotten back to me.
And from the trial, we learned that he had what I'm going to call a system of In which he would write down the names of female prisoners who he was interested in.
He would look them up in the kind of prison information system and he would call them in to his office and offer them information.
kind of perks jobs and in uh exchange for the jobs you would get a an extra phone call or you would get a bottle of vodka in some of the cases he would really cultivate the relationship going so far as to like make a little bed in a closet where he would bring somebody uh in order to sexually assault them um and in some of the cases it seemed that he really felt he had From my reading of it, it really felt like he had relationships with some of these women.
In some of them, it was real more kind of quick and dirty, like he would assault them literally behind a curtain, like in a mop station.
It seemed to me he knew exactly where there were no cameras, and he knew where to take women to do what he wanted with them.
And when we were at the prison, Madi, I remember you and I peering down that hallway and where we knew he had done all of this and you kind of you got chills and you were like this is chilling
yeah i mean it was within the first five minutes of our tour i felt sick and i don't consider myself to be someone who gets queasy very easily but um it just yeah immediately being put in that space was a very uncomfortable feeling
I want to get more into the tour in a second, but there's one more thing that I want listeners to kind of know and clock before we go move on to that, which is about the timing of the investigation, what we uncovered through, you know, that.
conversation that you had, Anna, with that secret source, and then also through the trial transcripts and from CDCR's own communication with UMIDI, which is that they clearly stated that Rodriguez was under investigation in June of 2022.
And this is when Ali is at the prison and he goes on to assault her while he is under investigation twice at least in July and in August before she is finally released.
I believe, you know, that he was allowed to flourish and do this because nobody believed that these women deserved any better.
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