Why We Must Remember Evelyn Hernández Alongside Laci Peterson in ABC Studio's Murder Has Two Faces

At BoldLatina, our mission has always been clear: to amplify the stories of Latinas. Period. That’s why when I watched the new Hulu/ABC News Studios true-crime docuseries Murder Has Two Faces, episode 1, I felt a mix of heartbreak, anger, and validation. For too long, cases like Evelyn Hernández’s have been forgotten in the shadows, overshadowed by more “newsworthy” stories that fit the media’s preferred narrative.

This 3-part series, hosted by ABC's Good Morning America's Robin Roberts and Grammy-nominated, Emmy winning producer and director, Lisa Cortés, confronts this disparity head-on. The series opens with episode 1 and the chilling parallels between two women whose lives ended in tragedy Evelyn Hernández, a young immigrant mother from El Salvador, and Laci Peterson, a white middle-class woman from Modesto, California. Both were in their 20s, pregnant when they went missing in 2002. Both were later found murdered in the San Francisco Bay. Their partners arrested for their murders. And yet, only one of these cases dominated national headlines and ignited a media frenzy across the nation.

Spoiler alert: it wasn’t Evelyn’s!

The Forgotten Case of Evelyn Hernández

In 2002, Evelyn was just 24 years old, 9-months pregnant and raising her five-year-old son Alexis in the San Francisco Mission district. She vanished days before her due date. Weeks later, her mutilated, decapitated body was found floating in the San Francisco Bay. Alexis was never recovered and her boyfriend released from suspicion.

And then? Silence.

While Evelyn’s family begged for answers, her story was barely a blip in the news cycle. A young, undocumented immigrant mother didn’t command primetime coverage. The public didn’t rally around her. She didn’t receive candlelight vigils broadcast on cable TV. Instead, she was reduced to a name in a police file, a life devalued by a system that decides who deserves empathy and who doesn’t.

Just months later, when Laci Peterson who was pregnant as well, her body was discovered in the same waters, the contrast was impossible to ignore. Laci’s case gripped the nation. News anchors covered every lead, every court date, every intimate detail of her life and relationship. When Scott Peterson was convicted, his trial became a true-crime spectacle watched around the world.

Evelyn, meanwhile, faded further into invisibility. And another thing, 'Evelyn' wasn't the 'other Laci Peterson' as headlined by People magazine, she was 'Evelyn Hernández'. Say her friggin' name and say it loud.

The Forgotten Mexican Roots of Laci Peterson

I still remember watching the nonstop media coverage of Laci Peterson. As someone who was born and raised in the San Francisco/Bay Area, this national story happened just a few dozen miles away. Her pretty smile was everywhere the “perfect suburban mom-to-be” America mourned. What few people realized and made the story even more complex and painful for us as Latinas is that only later do we learn that Laci had Mexican roots. A forgotten detail, or perhaps an inconvenient one. Instead, Laci was framed through a white, middle-class lens, the “perfect suburban mom-to-be,” her Latina heritage erased. Her original last name before she took on her matrimonial name of 'Peterson' was ‘Rocha’ - her Mexican-American father's given last name.

This erasure speaks volumes. Laci, born and raised in the U.S., more acculturated and fitting neatly into dominant cultural ideals, was embraced as America’s daughter. Evelyn, a Salvadoran immigrant, single mother, and undocumented, was cast as “other” her story sidelined. Two Latinas. Two mothers. Yet treated as if they belonged to entirely different worlds.

This is not just media bias, it was blatant cultural erasure.

Missing White Woman Syndrome Isn’t Just a Buzzword

At BoldLatina, we’ve written about this before in our piece Missing Indigenous Women and Media’s Missing White Woman Syndrome. It’s the phenomenon where white, middle-class women are disproportionately spotlighted when they go missing or are murdered while Black, Brown, Indigenous, immigrant and trans women are overlooked, their cases dismissed or forgotten.

Evelyn Hernández is the textbook case. Her life was not valued in the same way, her story not amplified, her disappearance not treated with the urgency it deserved. Murder Has Two Faces forces us to sit with that truth and ask: why do some lives matter more to the media, and by extension, to the public?

And in Laci’s case, it reveals another truth: the media doesn’t just choose which stories to amplify. It chooses which identities to erase. The identities that are white-adjacent and/or digestible by white audience are spotlighted.

My Why and the Power of Seeing Ourselves Represented

Long before I founded BoldLatina, I thought about a career as a forensic scientist. I was naturally investigative and curious, so why not, right? I wanted to solve cases involving Latinas. I remember reading about the Juárez murders in Latina Magazine in the 90s, the only magazine that represented us at the time. The femicide epidemic took place in Cuidad Juárez, Mexico. Hundreds if not thousands of young Mexican women ‘trabajadoras’ of local factories were raped, disappeared and brutally murdered, and many cases were dismissed by local authorities and the corruption at hand. That was my awakening.

It made me question why some lives are deemed worthy of headlines, while others become footnotes. And when I realized how few platforms were telling these stories from our perspective, BoldLatina was born from just being a local San Francisco Latina networking group with an email newsletter. As a media veteran, I knew where I was headed early on. It’s been a steady climb, but today we’re reaching millions across the nation every year by putting our stories at the forefront.

But BoldLatina isn’t just about tragedy. It’s about the full spectrum of Latina existence, our brilliance, resilience, AND joy. Our POWER. Because for every story of loss, there’s one where we are winning. For every silence, a woman daring to speak with courage and boldly.

Why This Story Matters to Us As Latinas

Watching Evelyn’s story told with dignity and care reminded me why I brought BoldLatina to existence. Representation isn’t just about Hollywood roles or beauty campaigns targeting Latinas it’s about visibility in moments of crisis, injustice, and tragedy too. In the past, BoldLatina received criticism from others in the space of media - that we were 'depressing' or too deep or dark. Those folks obviously didn't understand our lived experiences or were Latina at all!

It’s about seeing the 'Evelyn’s' out there and refusing to let them disappear into the silence.

As I watched the 3-part series Hulu's Murder Has Two Faces where stories of other murders were brought to the surface - there was also a sense of pride knowing that Lisa Cortés, a Colombian born Afro-Latina filmmaker, is behind the camera shaping this narrative. Her track record of centering marginalized voices means Evelyn’s story is told not as a footnote to Laci Peterson’s, but as an equally devastating and important case in its own right. And with Robin Roberts of Good Morning America guiding the series, Murder Has Two Faces balances true-crime intrigue with true cultural and racial critique.

This is not just entertainment. It’s accountability.

As I watched, I couldn’t help but think of my own community, of Latinas who continue to fight for recognition in every corner of society. Evelyn or Laci could have been any of us any sister, mother, tía, or amiga. Their stories especially that of Evelyn's reminds us why BoldLatina will always create space for Latina narratives that others forget.

I found myself thinking about how Latina reporters and storytellers are now reclaiming these narratives journalists like Maria Hinojosa, María Elena Salinas and Lourdes Duarte, and a new generation of Latina documentarians who refuse to let these stories die quietly. Murder Has Two Faces reminds us that the stories we amplify shape who is seen as worthy of empathy, justice, and remembrance.

So when you sit down to stream Murder Has Two Faces, don’t just consume it as true crime. Watch it as a call-to-action (CTA). The CTA being to challenge yourself and your circles to think critically about media bias. And most of all, honor Evelyn by remembering her as you read this.

Please note: Evelyn’s case remains active in the San Francisco Police Department’s Cold Case Unit. Anyone with information is urged to call 1-415-575-4444

Resumen en Español

La serie documental Murder Has Two Faces expone cómo Evelyn Hernández, una joven madre salvadoreña, fue invisibilizada en los medios tras su desaparición y asesinato en 2002, mientras que el caso de Laci Peterson recibió atención nacional. Lo que pocos mencionan es que Laci también tenía raíces mexicanas—un detalle borrado por los medios. Esta diferencia refleja el racismo sistémico y la manera selectiva en que se reconocen (o se borran) las identidades latinas. Ver esta docuserie es un acto de memoria y justicia: Evelyn merece ser recordada, y ambas historias nos llaman a cuestionar la forma en que los medios deciden qué vidas importan.