Welcome to a new chapter here on Operation Crime. On December 29, 2024, in Aguachi Caesar, one of the most shocking events in Colombia took place. The Lora Rincón family was murdered in cold blood while having dinner at a restaurant. I would like to introduce you to Héctor Sarasi, a renowned journalist and chronicler with experience in digital media and television.
His work focuses on telling stories of social impact and crime, traveling throughout Colombia to document little- seen realities. She has conducted an exhaustive investigation into Zaida Sánchez, known as La Diabla, a figure linked to organized crime in Colombia. I’ve known you for a while, we worked together on Testigo Directo.
Thank you so much for accepting this invitation. Dr. Belisario is not with us at the moment due to work commitments, but he will be with us in the next chapter. Hector, welcome. Valentina, thank you very much. How did this investigation of alias La Diabla begin, and the whole issue of the Rincón family? The story begins or unfolds when the shepherds are killed in Aguachica, which closes at noon on December 29.
They were killed by the same man who killed Marlon. Marlon Lora killed the mother Yurlay, killed the daughter Ángela Natalia, and killed Santiago, all four people. That caused a scandal because it was a crime that shocked not only Hanchica, but Colombia. That event began to unfold a whole criminal story with its background and developments.
With a background that stems from a crime that had occurred two days earlier in Banco Magdalena, 2 hours and 20 minutes from Agua Chica, the murder of Alexander González Pérez, known as alias “El Calvo,” he arises and says, “Well, what does Alexander’s murder have to do with the pastors?” Very simple. Alexander is the husband at that time of Zaida Andrea Sánchez Polanco, alias “La Diabla,” a woman who was immediately linked to the murder of the pastors.
She was in that place, the business is called “Juices and Drinks” in Aguachica, which was on Carrera 30 with Calle Quinta in Aguachica, a central sector on the outskirts of Aguachica heading towards the interior of the country or the coast. So, Zaida was there. Everyone said, “She told him to get lost.” So, they linked that fact to the fact that there was a history of alias ” El Calvo,” Alexander González, with an alleged connection to illegal activities related to, and they apparently linked her because of a long criminal record she had,
being, they say, a thief, a robber, being different activities that they said in the town she committed and that indeed one consults the judicial pages and finds that she has open cases related to crimes. Then that event, the death of the shepherds, unleashed a plot that has some antecedents in the death of the bald man and has all some developments in the murder.
On January 21st at 9 pm in western Medellín, the murder of Saida Sánchez, which was a crime that also shocked, was one of the consequences. Zaida, what did she do for a living? Tell us a little about what information is available about Alias La Diabla. Saint Andrea is a 27- year-old woman who had several open cases against her, one in 2021 for homicide and another in 2017 related to theft, something like that if I’m not mistaken.
So the profile of her that is linked to her was that she had engaged in some criminal activities as a background. According to the reporting, she was supposedly employed in Aguachica, a humble woman at some point, and in 2017 she was captured because she was part of a gang of people who had stolen, even having someone steal money from her.
That was the version that was given. And she appears in a video at that moment. She seems like a very humble, very simple woman. In that video where four people are seen , she is captured in that video . But then he appears in the process with an exuberant, very beautiful, blonde, very well-dressed woman, and on social media she presents herself as a wealthy woman, she is seen in very nice places, she is seen with her partner, with Alexander, she is seen in a high-end vehicle, and somehow on social media she frequently seems to challenge her
enemies. a very popular video she made where she says, “I have for you, for you, and for you.” Seeing me with my head down, “No, my love, I have enough for you, for you and for everyone.” Then, her criminal profile is unleashed when those signs point to her and she begins to be a relevant figure for the media with something in particular.
In her statement, she says that she has nothing to do with it. Okay? even though the authorities have indicated over time that she is also involved in human trafficking and has a certain connection to illicit activities. Okay. On the other hand, he is also one of the people we have heard the most about, he is known as the bald man.
Who is he? Alexander González eh Pérez. He is a 37- year-old man, father of two children, who was born in San Alberto. He was a wealthy man; his family tells me he always had plenty of money. He lived in Cajicá, owned a mansion worth over 2 billion pesos, had many vehicles, and his family tells me that his business was buying and selling cars and auctions by banking entities. He was involved in that business.
Then they told me, uh, he amassed a great fortune. He was a very proper young man, the family tells me, but at some point he began to have some personal relationships, the family says, that were not very healthy. And those families led to him first becoming involved with a woman, and then after that woman he became involved with Zaida and began to have a world, it seems, very strong, linked to illicit drug trafficking activities.
Furthermore, he doesn’t have any open cases for drug trafficking or anything like that. That’s the rumor going around. The reality of his family is that the family wants to somehow put things in their place. For him, this boy, although he had made mistakes, was not the great boss that he has sometimes shown himself to be or that they say he is.
At this time, what is the most plausible hypothesis in this case? Look, they’re keeping a record of your background. There are three hypotheses in relation to this case, the case of the shepherds. The first one was a settling of accounts in which Zaida was involved for demanding money from him. Okay. Because supposedly the pastor was managing some kind of activity for alias “the bald man”.
That’s the first hypothesis. The second hypothesis is that it was a misunderstanding. Uh, in particular because they were going to attack Alia de Alaba, they were going to kill her and the daughter Angela Natalia, the pastor’s daughter, was dressed the same, that is, the white shirt, the black pants just like Zaida.
Then, Angela Natalia and La Diabla were dressed the same, a mix-up occurred and they ended up killing the pastor and his family. Uh, basically it’s one of those two hypotheses. Well, even though there is a third one, the one that the authority took is the second hypothesis, a confusion. When he gets to kill Zaida, he gets confused and kills the family or Rincón.
So it’s very simple, there’s the first table here, Zaida is there with four other people over there, or a minor, and next to her, right next to her, is the table where the pastors are. The shepherds were looking at their cell phones when Alio arrived and they died. Then the authorities accepted the second version, and the second version is that it was a misunderstanding.
This crime could also be a smokescreen. This, to cover up what? The thing is , I don’t think one can fall into the world, one shouldn’t fall into the world of speculation. Uh, it’s like there’s corruption in the authorities, there’s corruption in different sectors. So, in my particular case, I don’t engage in speculation.
What I’m going to tell you at this moment is that the second hypothesis was the one the authorities accepted, which was a misunderstanding. La Diabla left some information before her assassination. La Diabla eh Zaida, I understand that she presented herself to the authorities. She presented herself to the authorities, who required her to speak about the situation.
She says she has nothing to do with it, and somehow she, well, she more or less gives the impression that it was a smokescreen, something others are doing to her. The thing is, I do n’t have the information to say what she meant, but she did say that she was somehow a scapegoat for another matter, which I know absolutely nothing about.
Is there any information about who killed her? Well, the hypothesis put forward by the authorities is that it was a collection account from people on the coast, that’s the official version, and that they used a collection office based in Cúcuta and one based in Barranquilla. That’s why several of the people captured are in Cúcas and a few come from Barranquilla.
The operation is much larger than people realize. In this crime, authorities reviewed over 80 security cameras and obtained 700 hours of recordings. Aguachica doesn’t have a security system like that based on cameras, does it? So, they had to go to technology companies, tire shops, and warehouses to try to identify what route each person had taken.
Then they established the shepherds’ route, they established Zaida’s route, and they established the slabs’ route. They realized that the route of the shepherds never coincided with the route of the shepherds. That is, the shepherds came from their home in the north of Aguachica, and arrived at that central part where the business is located.
There was never a way for those lines to cross, but there was a very noticeable crossing by the slabs with the displacement of the devil of Said Andrea in Aguachica. For example, they meet at a restaurant on the outskirts of Aguachica, one that overlooks the Ruta del Sol highway, to plan or coordinate how the crime will be carried out.
And the approach they initially make in the funeral home environment, the route they take leads them from an establishment in Aguachica to where the funeral home is located. They circle and walk around that funeral home. There is even a photograph at one point showing men standing about 100 meters from the funeral home, watching. Okay.
So that people can understand a little more about what remains to be discovered. There are two vehicles and two motorcycles, two cars, a Nissan March and a Toyota Corolla, apparently linked because that is what the security camera shows. And there are two motorcycles, a Suzuki and a Yamaha. On the Yamaha they go slabs and on the Suzuki, on the other one goes the person who is called they define markers.
So, the operation by the people, the criminals, is based at least on two motorcycles and those two cars. Those are the ones surrounding that area. But what happens when they seem to realize that Zaida has left the funeral home and walked about six blocks or so to where the restaurant is? He moves and makes contact, and that’s where he gives more support to the idea that it was a misunderstanding that all the lines always converged between aliases, uh, sorry, between Zaida Sánchez and the hitmen and never converged with the pastors. So that’s
the version supported by security camera footage and investigations, even though there is another source. My source is a person who was with Ali, the devil. The devil was with five people, two elderly adults, a minor and a fourth person, plus herself, five. That’s why there are five people at her table.
The person Zaida is with is the one driving the vehicle. He is not the colta, he does not hold any position, he simply has some connection with alias the bald one. That’s the reality for that driver. He has nothing to do with it, but he witnesses the crime. He sees when the sardine enters and makes a shot at the floor or escapes, and then he starts raising them one by one.
The first one shot is the father, Marlon Lora, then the mother. That’s why they remain in the chair and the daughter and son try to react. That’s why Ángela Natalia wants to tear down the floor. When he sees the shootings, he tries to go, but he can’t. And the boy who was the last one they killed, reacts. They might kill him on the spot.
He, sorry, he was left injured at the scene. He later died in Bucaramanga. So, at that moment when the attack happens, Zaida runs a long block to where there is a hospital, she hides in the hospital and she very scared sees that at that moment the person who was driving the vehicle arrives, she realizes that she is going to the hospital, that person leaves on foot and Zaida very desperately says to him, “Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go.
” He’s scared. Then he goes, takes the vehicle, which is an armored truck, it’s a Toyota Sahara, I think that’s the vehicle, and she picks it up, in her desperation, in her fright, uh, the following happened, which is what has never been narrated and that you are going to know for the first time. As Saida is running, he seems to realize that he has killed the wrong person.
This is further evidence that it was a misunderstanding. Then one of the guys on the motorbike points to Zaida, who is running, and tells her that it’s her. He takes a shot, and it’s the bullet hole that remains on the hospital’s facade . That was detected a month later; it wasn’t part of the investigation, but it was detected.
So, Zaida feels pressured by the situation. First, because they are looking for her, it seems to be to kill her, and second, because she is already attracting attention. Who is Santi’s? That day I was in Aguachica, I went to their funeral and they told me about Zaida, they said, “Saida is behind all this .
” So, when I put in the context of her, that she was a loan shark, she was a pretty determined woman to get things done, I realize that maybe there is a person being talked about who is Saida Sanchez. Later, the nickname that someone gives her appears, like “the devil,” but her simple name is Zaida Andrea Sánchez, the mother of a 9-year-old boy.
I’ve always wanted to know her story, to know who she really is, because in life people aren’t just good and bad, they have their nuances. So, I’ve always had this urge to talk. I have managed to understand Alexander’s profile, knowing that behind that person whom everyone sees as a criminal there is a human being with mistakes and successes.
I’m not defending anyone, I want to make that clear, but I would like the truth about those people who are accused of so much to be known. So, I’ll finish the story for you. Zaida is going to the funeral home, she’s burying the bald man because she was in Aguachica, it was for the burial of her partner, with whom she had started a relationship 4 years before, when they tell me, they were imprisoned in the Guachica police station.
Uh, Alexander for a crime, uh, I think it’s related to porteas or something like that, and she for something related to her activity that she carries out, her activity involving the law, that’s where they meet and it seems to be, uh, that it generates a relationship. She has a son, uh, over time, it seems, she has a property in Aguachica, she goes to the outskirts of Aguachica with Alexander and it seems that he is going to leave her and the crime occurs at that moment in Banco Magdalena of uh Alexander. When Alexander is killed,
she is in the area. It seems that she told Alexander, “Give me 100 million because we’re going to do a business in Aguachica.” But from what I see, from the police intelligence work, she was in Guaranda and Tiquicio on the day he died in Banco Magdalena. So, as certain as a source told me that the two of them were together, the truth is that the source links them, that they are both together, and indicates that Zaida had something to do with his death.
But on the other hand, intelligence reports say that she was in Guaranda and slept that night in a town called Tiquicio, inside the Monposina depression, so to speak, near Agua Chica. For those who don’t know much about Colombia. How powerful could this woman, Zaida Alians the Devil, have been? the power that money gives. The power that money gives.
I believe that she committed, and this is my opinion, I do n’t usually comment on it, but by showing herself off a lot on social media and she had a high criminal profile. I think she somehow appeared very powerful on social media, but the reality is different. Perhaps there are already people who have more power than her, who are behind her, and perhaps she made the mistake of showing herself off too much.
If she were a big boss, she shouldn’t have flaunted herself the way she did . So I don’t know if he was a big boss or not. What I do know is that he died fleeing and perhaps not dying in a fight as one would expect from a person who constantly says that he is attacking. So, to sum it up for you, here’s the summary.
Eh oyuyendo Saida dies eh somehow in a defenseless way, defenseless, she didn’t run and they killed her. I was shot a couple of times, if I’m not mistaken. Someone told me that he was shot twice. One specifically is the one that I did n’t have access to, the forensic medical report, but the source is absolutely credible.
Hector, the one from Zaida, where is he right now? Look, that’s the strangest thing that happens. Zaida was born in Gamarra and lives in the César neighborhood. She died in Medellín, specifically in the Naranjal neighborhood, on 70th Street, near the football stadium, so to speak, so that people can locate her, and she was buried in Caucasia, Antioquia.
Caucasia is the hub of the Gulf Clan, they say. Why are they taking her there? She was buried anonymously in a cemetery located between the exit from Caucasia to Planeta Rica. There, in absolute silence, they buried Zaida; her mother buried her. Uh, just like Alexander, they went with a paradox.
Alexander is buried next to the shepherds. Alexander is tomb 64, tomb 65 is another tomb. And 66 is Marlon, 67 is Yurlight, 68 is Ángela Natalia and 69 is Santiago. The ironies of life. The person who caused this whole situation is buried next to the shepherds. It’s a contradiction. Now that you mention it, uh, you also mentioned that you were at the funeral.
What happened that day? What did you see? A comfortable society. The crime of the shepherds was absolutely convenient for Guachica. Having been a reporter for so many years, I have never seen such a large funeral in recent times . Streets and streets full of people crying for the pastors. It was something that somehow generated a very strong drama in Aguachica, Cesar.
So, in the case of the shepherds, it was something that divided the history of Agua Chica into a before and after. In the research you did, what other details did you notice that caught your attention? Many details. Many details. I think that what has died in this investigation is the truth.
Do you understand? Second, criminals also have the right to tell their story. Life isn’t about good guys and bad guys. Everything has its nuances. So, I think it’s a shame, as they say, not to be able to know the story of both this Mrs. Saenda Andrea and this Mr. Alexander, because regardless of what they were, we also have to tell the story of that person.
But for example, in the case of the hypothesis of the pastor as a money launderer or front man , I deeply regret the image they give of pastors because of this reality that I want to tell you about. Look, I was at the house where the pastors live in Villa Paraguay, in Aguachica. There stands the church that he ran.
The church is called Prince of Peace . It is a community that in Agua Chica has at least two headquarters, one in the center a block and a half away where the pastors lived and the other in a neighborhood that at one time was an invasion but has advanced a little, but is still humble, which is the Villa Paraguay neighborhood. Then I started looking at the house where the shepherds lived.
The headquarters of their church is very humble, and the house is even more so. The house is a space that has a main room, two small rooms. and a kitchen. The walls are unplastered, there is no ceiling , no windows; it is a truly humble house. So I ask myself, if this was the front man for some people who had a lot of money, why was he so poor? And many of the people who talk to me about Marlon describe him as a guy dedicated to helping poor people.
Now I spoke exclusively with the pastor’s mother, Angela Barrera, a woman who has suffered greatly and who raised her two children with a sewing machine throughout her life. And he did n’t teach that boy to be a bandit. From what she told me and from what I saw, she taught him good principles and values. And perhaps what one sees in that context without being overly cautious.
Obviously, she was a mother who wanted to raise her children very well, and he somehow honored that. Yes, having been a pastor. I’m not saying he didn’t make mistakes, nor do I want to defend anyone, neither one side nor the other, but it seems to me that in the case of this Mr. Marlon, what he was doing was fighting to move that church forward and help many people with his activities.
He was the one who looked after his mother, and his mother knows who helps that boy they call a bandit today, because I can’t help him. That church is the one that gives him food. So, if he was a guy who also had a great fortune, why didn’t he also have his family? Perhaps it wasn’t what they say it was. What lessons has this entire investigation taught us, Hector? That one as a journalist sometimes makes more of an effort to ask questions.
Yes, one errs on the side of caution, but one must ask, one must go a little further. The bandit isn’t so bandit-like, and the good guy isn’t so good. So it’s about going further , it’s about asking, above all respecting people, because even if someone is a criminal, you have to ask them and give them a chance, and even if someone is a good person, you have to ask them too.
It leaves me with the lesson that we should always look for the nuances. Sometimes doing risky reporting, doing story reporting is deeply risky because behind it there may be people who do n’t like what you say, but sometimes you have to take the risk . And I think I was in Aguachica, I’ve been to Aguachica twice doing reporting.
Reporting has not been easy because prudence is the first thing one must maintain. Well, I’m not a hero at all, but I think it was about finding the protagonists and saying, ‘Come on, tell me.’ It was in Aguachica, it was in Caucas while in the tomb. We’ll give you the clue as to where Zaida is; find out in Medellín.
But I would like to know what choice I would have, let’s ask. And to those who have something to say, say it. Let the bandit speak, but let the good man also tell his story. Everyone who has a truth should tell it . And they can defend it tooth and nail, but it is by speaking that one defends the truths, not by intimidating or killing people.
So, I’m left with the experience of doing very complex reporting. This isn’t about me showing up, looking, I’m so-and-so, tell me, no. I have had to be extremely cautious in investigating. So I think that sometimes you have to take risks, but also tell the people you ask. Hector, thank you for your time and for accepting our invitation.
To you, Operation Crime, I wish you much luck, and let it truly serve as a reflection that journalism is not for showing off, journalism is for bringing people the truth of others who cannot tell it. That’s how it is. I am Héctor Sarasti, chronicler and journalist of the program Testigo directo and of alerta crónica.
We invite you to watch all of Ali la Diabla’s stories on Testigo directo and Alerta Crónica. I am Valentina. For more exclusive content, follow us on all our digital platforms. We’ll see you in the next chapter here at Operation Crime. 
QQ4 Bob Dylan and Keith Richards have been close friends for nearly 40 years. The friendship began on a live television program in November of 1986 in the 11 seconds after Bob Dylan called Keith Richards music derivative on camera. Keith Richard’s response to that assessment, one sentence said without anger, without performance, with the specific directness of a man who has nothing to prove and knows it made Bob Dylan laugh.
Then made Bob Dylan go quiet. then made Bob Dylan say two words that people who know Bob Dylan say he almost never said to anyone. This is the story of those 11 seconds and the 40 years that followed them. The program was a live music interview special broadcast on an American network on the evening of November 3rd, 1986. The format was simple.
Two musicians, a host, an hour of conversation about music and the state of it. The producers had assembled the pairing of Bob Dylan and Keith Richards with the specific calculation of television producers who understand that two people with equally strong and potentially incompatible views about what music is and what it should do will produce better television than two people who agree about everything.
The calculation was correct, though not in the way the producers had anticipated. Bob Dylan was 45 years old in November of 1986. Bob Dylan had released Empire Burlesque the previous year and had been on the road for most of the intervening period as part of the True Confessions tour with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.
Bob Dylan was in November of 1986 in one of the most prolific and restless phases of a career that had consisted almost entirely of prolific and restless phases. A career that had moved through folk, rock, country, gospel, and back again, that had been declared finished at least six times by the music press, and at each time continued with the serene indifference of a river to the opinions of people standing on its banks.
Bob Dylan had been redefining what music could be. Since 1962, Bob Dylan had invented and reinvented himself so many times that reinvention had become his defining characteristic, not in the superficial sense of a performer changing costumes, but in the deeper sense of a musician who had never allowed his work to settle into a form that could be anticipated or categorized from the outside.
Bob Dylan understood influence and originality and the relationship between them better than almost anyone alive in 1986. Bob Dylan had spent 24 years thinking carefully and specifically about where music came from and where music was going and what it meant that those two things were always in constant conversation with each other.
Keith Richards was 42 years old in November of 1986. Keith Richards had been playing guitar professionally since 1962. Keith Richards had built a career on a foundation of American blues and rhythm and blues. A foundation that Keith Richards had studied with the systematic devotion of someone who understood that the tradition he was building on was not incidental to the music he was making, but essential to it.
that you could not understand what Keith Richards did without understanding where Keith Richards had come from and what Keith Richards had been listening to since he was a teenager in Dartford with American Import Records and a secondhand guitar and no teacher except the recordings themselves. Keith Richards had never pretended otherwise. Keith Richards had in fact spent considerable energy across his career making the lineage explicit, naming the artists, citing the recordings, insisting on the acknowledgement of influence that the mainstream music
industry had a long history of suppressing or ignoring or crediting to the wrong people. If anything, Keith Richards was more transparent about his sources than most musicians of his generation. Keith Richards had always said openly that the Rolling Stones came directly from the blues, that Muddy Waters and Robert Johnson and the specific tradition of the Mississippi Delta were not background influences, but foundational ones.
The music Keith Richards made was in direct and sustained conversation with that tradition, something Keith Richards considered not a limitation, but a responsibility and a form of respect. The interview had been running for 8 minutes when the host asked Bob Dylan about the current state of rock and roll.
Bob Dylan answered with the density and the indirection that characterized Bob Dylan’s responses to direct questions, turning the question over, approaching it from an unexpected angle, finding his way to what he actually thought through a series of observations that moved like a river rather than a road. Bob Dylan was not a straightforward interview subject.
Bob Dylan had been asked about rock and roll in hundreds of interviews across 24 years and had developed the habit of treating the question as an invitation to think out loud rather than a request for a prepared position. The producer Gerald Sherman said afterward that in the first 8 minutes of the interview, he had been slightly anxious, not because anything was going wrong, but because nothing was going anywhere in particular yet.
The interview had the feeling of two conversations happening simultaneously. Bob Dylan’s internal one and the external one visible to the cameras. And Gerald Sherman was not certain in those first eight minutes that the two conversations would converge into something. Bob Dylan talked about influence. Bob Dylan talked about originality.
Bob Dylan talked about the difference between music that absorbed a tradition and transformed it and music that absorbed a tradition and reproduced it. And then Bob Dylan made his assessment. And then Bob Dylan said with the precision of a man making a musical assessment rather than a personal judgment that the Rolling Stones work, and Bob Dylan was specific, naming Keith Richards as the guitarist whose approach he was discussing was derivative in a way that Bob Dylan found limiting.
Bob Dylan said it without hostility. Bob Dylan said it as a technical observation about the relationship between source material and the work that came from it. Bob Dylan said that Keith Richards played the blues the way the blues had already been played, rather than using the blues as a starting point for something that had not yet been played.
Keith Richards had been listening to this with the specific attention Keith Richards gave to things being said about music by people who knew music. Keith Richards did not interrupt. Keith Richards did not shift in his chair or display any of the visible signals of a person preparing a defensive response. Keith Richards listened to Bob Dylan’s complete observation all the way to its conclusion without interrupting and without displaying any visible signal of preparing a response.
Then Keith Richards said one sentence. The sentence was not a rebuttal. The sentence did not defend Keith Richards music or argue for its originality or challenge Bob Dylan’s characterization of what the blues meant in the context of rock and roll. The sentence was something else entirely, something that required a specific kind of confidence to say.
The confidence of a person who has spent long enough thinking about the same things as the person they are talking to that they can locate the exact point where their thinking diverges and say something useful about that point rather than simply defending their own position. The sentence acknowledged everything Bob Dylan had said, the assessment, the distinction Bob Dylan was drawing, the specific musical concern underlying the observation, and then turned it 90°.
Keith Richards took Bob Dylan’s own framework, the one Bob Dylan had used to analyze Keith Richards relationship to the blues tradition, and applied it back to Bob Dylan’s work with the same precision Bob Dylan had used to apply it to Keith Richards. Spare aimed. The sentence asked Bob Dylan something about Bob Dylan’s own music, about the relationship between Bob Dylan’s sources and Bob Dylan’s output that Bob Dylan had not been asked on television before.
The sentence did not attack. The sentence illuminated. Bob Dylan laughed. The laugh was not the polite laugh of someone responding to a joke. The laugh was the involuntary laugh of someone who has been genuinely surprised. The specific kind of surprise that a person of exceptional intelligence experiences when someone else’s intelligence exceeds their expectations.
Bob Dylan laughed for 4 seconds. Then Bob Dylan stopped laughing. Then Bob Dylan was quiet for 3 seconds in the way that Bob Dylan was quiet when Bob Dylan was thinking rather than performing thought. Then Bob Dylan said, “You’re right.” The producer in the booth, a man named Gerald Sherman, who had been working in television for 14 years, said afterward that in 14 years of live television production, he had never heard Bob Dylan say those two words in a public forum.
Gerald Sherman said he had worked with Bob Dylan on two previous occasions and had observed Bob Dylan in numerous other contexts and that you’re right was not a phrase that Bob Dylan deployed easily or often because Bob Dylan had spent 24 years being right about music in ways that other people eventually caught up with. And the experience of being right ahead of everyone else does not generally produce a man who says you’re right readily when someone else makes a point.
The host of the program, a journalist named Patricia Wells, who had been interviewing musicians for 12 years, said afterward that the 11 seconds between Bob Dylan’s assessment and Bob Dylan saying, “You’re right,” were the most extraordinary 11 seconds of television she had been present for. Patricia Wells said that what she witnessed in those 11 seconds was not a debate or a confrontation or a celebrity exchange of competing opinions.
Patricia Wells said what she witnessed was one musician recognizing another musician as an equal, which was in the specific context of Bob Dylan in 1986, not something that happened in public very often. The interview continued for another 42 minutes after those 11 seconds. The conversation between Bob Dylan and Keith Richards in the remaining 42 minutes was described by everyone who watched it as fundamentally different from the first 8 minutes.
The host, Patricia Wells, who had been conducting music interviews for 12 years and understood the difference between the performance of conversation and actual conversation, said that at approximately the 9-minute mark, something shifted in the studio. That the formal interview, architecture dissolved, and what replaced it was something less structured and more genuine.
Bob Dylan and Keith Richards talked about influence and originality and the blues and what it meant to build on a tradition without being consumed by it. They talked about specific recordings and specific musicians with the specificity of two people who had spent their entire adult lives thinking about these things and rarely found another person who had thought about them with equivalent care.
They talked about where music came from and where music was going and whether those two questions were actually one question or two. Patricia Wells said afterward that she had asked approximately four questions in the remaining 42 minutes because Bob Dylan and Keith Richards did not require questions. They required only a room and a camera and the shared understanding that what they were saying together was worth recording carefully.
She said it was the best interview she had ever conducted and that she had conducted the smallest part of it. After the program, Bob Dylan and Keith Richards were in the corridor outside the studio when the host Patricia Wells passed them. Patricia Wells said she did not stop because she did not want to interrupt.
She observed them for approximately 30 seconds from a distance. She said they were talking with the ease of people who had known each other for years rather than people who had met for the first time 2 hours earlier. She said that something had shifted between them during the broadcast that the broadcast had made permanent rather than temporary.
She continued down the corridor and did not look back. She said in her account of that evening that she had decided in that moment not to interrupt the conversation because some conversations are more valuable than any question a journalist might ask and that the conversation she had observed for 30 seconds in the corridor outside the studio was one of them.
She had been a music journalist for 12 years. She recognized the difference. Bob Dylan and Keith Richards have maintained their friendship across four decades. They have appeared together at various events, most significantly at the concert for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995, where people who were present described them as inseparable for most of the evening, occupying the same corner of the backstage area and talking with the concentrated attention of people who only have a limited amount of time together and intend to use it
well. Bob Dylan has spoken about Keith Richards in interviews with the specific thoughtful care that Bob Dylan reserves for musicians whose work Bob Dylan considers genuinely important rather than merely culturally prominent. Keith Richards has spoken about Bob Dylan in similar terms with the specific respect of someone who recognizes in another person a commitment to music that goes deeper than career.
Neither Bob Dylan nor Keith Richards has made a public statement specifically about how the friendship began or about the November 1986 interview. Bob Dylan has not mentioned the 11 seconds. Keith Richards has not mentioned the sentence. The interview exists in the archive. The 11 seconds are there. The laugh is there. The two words are there.
What is also there for anyone who watches the interview from its beginning and pays attention to the shift that happens at the 9-minute mark is the specific moment when two people who thought they were appearing on a television program discovered they were actually talking to each other. What Keith Richards said in that one sentence has never been officially reported.
The people who were in the studio that evening, Gerald Sherman, Patricia Wells, the floor crew, the two camera operators, the makeup artist who was watching from the side of the set, have described the sentence in consistent terms. They have described its effect. They have described Bob Dylan’s laugh and Bob Dylan’s silence and Bob Dylan’s two words.
They have not repeated the sentence itself in the specific understanding that the sentence was said between two musicians on a television program and that its power resided in the specific context of that exchange and would not survive removal from it intact. What can be said is this. Keith Richards said something to Bob Dylan about Bob Dylan’s music that used Bob Dylan’s own observation about Keith Richards as its starting point and arrived somewhere that Bob Dylan had not anticipated.
Keith Richards turned Bob Dylan’s assessment 90° and showed Bob Dylan something about the music they had both spent their lives making that Bob Dylan recognized immediately as true. And Bob Dylan said, “You’re right.” Two words said by Bob Dylan in public on live television in 1986 to Keith Richards in response to a single sentence Keith Richards had said about music.
Two words that Gerald Sherman, who had worked with Bob Dylan on two previous occasions, said he had never heard Bob Dylan say in a public forum. Two words that Patricia Wells, who had been interviewing musicians for 12 years, said were the most significant two words she had heard in those 12 years. Not because of their content, but because of who said them and what it cost to say them and what it meant that Keith Richards had produced them in 11 seconds from a conversation that began with Bob Dylan calling Keith Richards’s music derivative. And Keith Richards and
Bob Dylan have been close friends for nearly 40 years. The sentence did its work in 11 seconds on the evening of November 3rd, 1986. The work has been ongoing ever since. If this story moved you, subscribe and leave a comment below. Have you ever said something to someone that turned a potential disagreement into an unexpected and lasting connection? Tell us about it in the comments below.
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Disclaimer : This content may be created by AI for entertainment purposes. Any resemblance to real persons, events, or places is coincidental.
