Kriti Mehrotra
As a documentary living up to its title in every way conceivable, Netflix’s ‘Caught in the Web: The Murders Behind Zona Divas’ can only be described as eerily haunting and intriguing. That’s because it delves into the dark underbelly of sex work in Mexico by shining a light on the five murders of foreign women affiliated with the titular online escort promotional service in 2017 and 2018. Unfortunately, most of these brutal homicides remain unsolved to this day, yet it has since been alleged that Brayan Mauricio Miranda González, aka El Pozoles, was responsible for at least two of them.
Brayan González Has Long Been Affiliated With the World of Organized Crime
Although not much regarding Brayan’s early years or familial life is public knowledge, we do know his paternal uncle Armando Miranda Peralta is a trusted operator of the Los Rojos cartel. As per local officials, this gang is likely responsible for the 2014 Iguala mass kidnapping, wherein 43 young male students from the Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers’ College disappeared, never to be seen again. It thus goes without saying the former essentially grew up in a surrounding that was far from affectionate, conventional, or reputable, and he ended up following in the footsteps of those he really knew.
Brayan reportedly resided in the historic city of Oaxaca, Mexico, for a long while, where he owned and operated a small bag shop while also serving the mob by extorting money from fellow local merchants. That’s how he gradually rose the ranks in his industry before eventually becoming a core member of the inherently violent Unión Tepito syndicate owing to his own supposed interests and tendencies. After all, according to reports, he ended up evolving into the main local leader of this criminal group, only to then be linked to several extortions, kidnappings, as well as murders of foreign escorts.
Brayan González is Allegedly Extremely Abusive
It was reportedly around 2017 that Brayan first came across Venezuelan model/escort Kenni Mireya Finol at a party, just for them to immideately click in such a way they soon officially got involved. While the latter had never really seriously dated, she didn’t hesitate to tell all her loved ones about him because she thought she had finally met her Prince Charming and the possible love of her life. It turns out he truly treated her like a princess, took her out on quality dates, as well as made her feel secure at first, only to do a complete 180 in the blink of an eye, per the original production.
The Netflix show actually incorporates not just messages from Kenni to her family but also personal videos that indicate Brayan was far from the perfect boyfriend — he was abusive and controlling. She had purportedly first grown wary of him when he “admitted” he was a bad man who had done a lot of things for money, including drug trafficking, extorting, harassing, stalking, and killing. She knew then she wanted to stay away from him because while her type was thugs, it wasn’t murderers, but he initially didn’t even let her have the freedom to make that choice of walking away.
Instead, per this docuseries, Brayan demanded Kenni literally give him a body part as a sacrifice (she gave him a toe), tied her up whenever he left home, and often even brandished his guns in her face. Then, once she finally got the courage to walk away, he apparently asserted she should leave Mexico for good if she didn’t want to end up dead like her late friend/fellow escort Karen Grodzinski. Nevertheless, according to her accounts from her cell phone, she was still emotionally, mentally, as well as physically tortured by him for months on end before she finally lost her life in February 2018.
Brayan González Has Only Ever Made to Court on Drug Charges
Despite all the suspicious evidence recovered from Kenni’s phone after s he was found acid-burned, beaten, raped, tormented, and strangled to death, Brayan was never charged with her homicide. The truth is an audio note she had saved even incriminated him in the December 2017 murder of Argentinian Karen Grodzinski, who was shot twice in a hotel room, yet he was never indicted for this either. In fact, when Mexico State officials arrested him in November 2019, it was only for drug trafficking/”crimes against health,” enabling him to walk away with what many considered was a mere slap on the wrist.
Brayan, or El Pozoles, was actually released around November 2022, ostensibly without ever having even been seriously questioned about Zona Divas escorts Kenni and Karen’s horrific homicides. However, things soon changed for this Unión Tepito leader as he was again arrested less than a year later — on October 13, 2023 — on the streets of the Roma Norte neighborhood in Mexico City. This then 31-year-old, alongside his 30-year-old Venezuelan girlfriend, Kassandra Rodríguez, was immediately taken into custody, just to then be indicted on 271 separate drug-related charges.
That’s because this couple was reportedly in possession of 98 doses of apparent marijuana, 93 blue paper packets containing what looked like cocaine, and 80 small bags of crystal meth-like goods. As if that’s not enough, even though Brayan has never once been formally charged with offenses like abuse, domestic violence, extortion, intentional injuries, identity theft, or murder despite being linked to it, he has since been accused in an unrelated disappearance case. Therefore, today, with the final court proceedings concerning the accusations against him still pending, it appears as if he remains detained in a local correctional facility, awaiting a definitive verdict.
Read More: Ignacio Antonio Santoyo “El Soni” Cervantes: What Happened to Zona Divas’ Co-Founder?
