Sebastián Álvarez, también conocido como Mente Enferma, desapareció en 2017 y hasta la fecha, no se sabe su paradero. Existen muchas teorías en relación a qué pasó con este hombre. ¿Fue un crimen, un suicidio, o será que simplemente se esconde?
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TVTranscript
00:00It's time to continue with the mysteries of No Te Duermas.
00:03This time, we're going to talk about a figure
00:07who is considered to be Chile's first influencer.
00:11A person whose name is Sebastián Álvarez,
00:15but many people know him as his nickname,
00:16this nickname that he had, Mente Enferma.
00:19In 2017, he disappeared, and his whereabouts are unknown.
00:23What happened to him?
00:24That's the basis of this podcast, which is Mente Enferma,
00:28the strange disappearance of an influencer
00:31who is part of Emisor Podcasting,
00:33one of its most successful podcasts.
00:37To talk about that, we have one of the journalists
00:39and investigators of this show, Hernán Malgarejo.
00:43Mel.
00:43Mel Garejo, who I've never heard your last name,
00:45but here you are.
00:46Mel Garejo, Hernán, how are you?
00:48Welcome.
00:48How was it for you to stay until now?
00:50I always ask all the guests, because it's something different.
00:53In general, they never invite someone to a show until now.
00:57Yes, well, first time on TV and first time now,
01:02but also the first time I heard my last name,
01:04so we're good.
01:04We're like walking on eggshells for the first time.
01:07Hey, Hernán, we're talking about this Mente Enferma,
01:10someone who disappeared in 2017,
01:14and to this day, there are these doubts
01:16about what happened to him.
01:17How did the need or interest to make a podcast come about,
01:22based on this case?
01:24Because, well, it's a story that has many edges
01:28and that can take you in different ways.
01:32On the one hand, there's the fact that he was the first influencer
01:35in the era of Fotolog, 2005, 2006,
01:37and that awakens memories, unlocks memories
01:40for a whole generation of people
01:43who managed to use that social network,
01:46so there's all that nostalgic side.
01:49On the other hand, there's the side of true crime,
01:51that there's a mystery about a missing person,
01:54and it has all that component of, of course,
01:59mysterious detective, police, police, basically.
02:03Of course, what happened to him?
02:05Did he decide to end his life?
02:07Was it a murder?
02:10Is he hidden, as conspiracy theories say?
02:14And there's also that other side,
02:15which is the most esoteric, mythical side,
02:19which is that he was very involved in paranormal things,
02:25so there's an internet theory that says he's hidden,
02:28that he was kidnapped by aliens,
02:30so it's like a generational myth.
02:32I would say that it's like,
02:34the 80s have the theme of the Virgin,
02:37the virgin of Villa Alemana, I don't know,
02:40I think that a sick mind represents something like that,
02:42but for the generation of Miguel Angel, of course.
02:44Look, I had mentioned it a few minutes ago,
02:46we're seeing some images there,
02:48but for the people who don't know,
02:50who is Sebastián Álvarez,
02:51also better known as a sick mind,
02:53of what this podcast is about?
02:55But who was he?
02:56He was a young man born in the fifth region,
03:03he lived in Villa Alemana too,
03:06in La Calera, Valparaíso, Iña, he moved in that sector.
03:10He came to be, he had a photologue in 2005,
03:14he became very famous in photologue at that time,
03:17when social networks were breaking up,
03:18because he was also dressed as emo, dark,
03:21so he was one of the first to represent that type of urban tribe,
03:27which, let's remember, at that time,
03:29urban tribes were booming.
03:31Boom, Eva's Diary, all that.
03:33Well, he represented that side, more dark.
03:37He wrote very depressing texts in photologue,
03:41so that made a lot of people,
03:43a lot of teenagers who have those feelings,
03:46so exaggerated sometimes, or intense, rather,
03:51to identify with him,
03:54and he even became one of the 10 most visited photologues in the world.
03:59In the world!
04:00Very popular at that time,
04:01when photologue was the most important thing on social networks.
04:05Of course, he was like a kind of grandfather of Instagram or Facebook.
04:09Of Facebook, of course.
04:11He was the most important at that time,
04:13to the point that he even recorded an album with Universal Music,
04:17at a time when international labels were broken
04:22or not betting on Chilean music.
04:24Well, recording an album was number one on FM Hit
04:28and other radios at the time,
04:30so, indeed, at that time it was like a success.
04:35It was a success, but hey, later he had this facet of a hater,
04:38as a user who criticized everything,
04:41he was against, he spoke against homosexuals,
04:43against women or fat people too.
04:46That facet was also very powerful on Twitter.
04:49Of course, later when photologue goes into decline,
04:53it goes into decline, urban tribes cease to be a novelty,
04:58he disappears for a couple of years, a bit of the public light,
05:02until 2011, when many of us found out
05:06that, deep down, this character still existed,
05:09because Cernam had filed a complaint
05:13for harassing overweight women
05:18through a blog and through his Twitter.
05:21And he shared photos of these women.
05:23He took photos without consent and insulted them, of course.
05:30And then a lot of people clicked,
05:35like, hey, this was the guy who two years ago was the famous idol.
05:40What happened to him? Why did he become this fat-phobic person,
05:45super-discriminatory, fat-phobic messages?
05:49It was one of his hate messages, deep down.
05:52He had them all, he was racist, classist, xenophobic, everything.
05:59He was invited to a TV show at that time, on the network,
06:03and what happened?
06:05A lot of people realized that he was the same person,
06:09and the opposite effect happens, because deep down, he becomes powerful.
06:13People start following him because of morbidity,
06:16to see what he's going to say now,
06:19what nonsense he's going to come out with now,
06:21and he starts to become a Twitter figure,
06:25but, of course, negative, now turned into a hater.
06:29But at the same time, of course, he had another side,
06:31that made people want to see him,
06:35because they wanted to see that hater, and not someone else,
06:39or just ignore him.
06:41And it was because he always kept that charismatic and magnetic part
06:47that made him famous in Fotolog, but now, of course, with a negative message.
06:50Hernán is also said to be the first influencer in our country.
06:55He was also a pioneer in making lives,
06:58with the first phones that arrived with cameras,
07:01so I was listening to the podcast.
07:04And he innovated in that, and what did he tell, what did he relate?
07:07I imagine that he fed, perhaps, that morbidity that you say.
07:11What things did he say, for example?
07:12Of course, on Twitter, in addition to expressing hate,
07:16he recorded himself with his phone and did live broadcasts
07:20through Tweetcams, which was the way, at that time,
07:25pre-Instagram, or when Instagram was starting,
07:28but to do these live broadcasts.
07:29There he spoke, he told everything, basically,
07:34of what he was experiencing at that time.
07:36Not only his hate, but also his relationships,
07:39which were very turbulent in general.
07:43He also had a contradiction, because he was homosexual,
07:48but at the same time he hated himself and hated homosexuals.
07:53So he was like homosexual and homophobic, and he had several problems.
07:56He had those contradictions that make him interesting to people.
07:59Of course, and he also had several mental health problems.
08:04So he constantly talked about his depressions, his breakdowns,
08:09and he was also constantly drunk,
08:12and that exacerbated his mental health problems.
08:15So he was a very, very freak character,
08:18and that made his broadcasts,
08:23they were like a morbid theater for people.
08:26So that speaks, it's also a story that speaks very badly
08:29of society, basically.
08:31Of Chilean society, of course.
08:33Because a lot of people were watching this person
08:35self-destruct live, and they were even waiting
08:38for a fatal outcome live.
08:40I mean, a lot of people wrote him,
08:43like, go ahead, commit suicide now, and the guy answered them.
08:47So this deaf interaction was produced,
08:53but it made him grow a lot on Twitter.
08:56In figure skating.
08:57Well, this is also what speaks particularly
08:59is his disappearance, which was in 2017.
09:03How does this situation happen?
09:05Because, well, we have talked about all these changes
09:07that he lived in Fotolog, then he was a musical artist,
09:10then he became a hater, or someone controversial on Twitter.
09:14And then he decides to move away,
09:15he focuses on something totally different,
09:17he becomes a stylist,
09:18he goes to the south of the country with a partner.
09:21Tell us that part, which is where he starts to move away
09:23and ends up disappearing.
09:25Sure.
09:26More than moving away from social media,
09:29because that never left him, he always...
09:31He was always uploading things.
09:32He was always uploading things and doing broadcasts.
09:34That's why we say he was one of the first influencers.
09:38Although he behaved in a totally different way
09:41as an influencer, because no brand would spy on a guy like that.
09:45And he didn't care about losing followers either,
09:48for saying all that brutality.
09:49Now, well, he decides to go to Curiñanco
09:54to move away a little more than anything from the addictions
09:57and the city life that he had,
10:01with high alcohol consumption and drugs.
10:05And he leaves his partner at that time, even,
10:07who was Michael Rowe, who was a...
10:10I mean, he is an American, very mysterious for the rest.
10:14It is not known if he was an ex-marine,
10:17if he arrived in Chile in 2011, that is known.
10:22It is known that he is an artist, that he also has a container
10:27with some of his paintings in Valparaíso,
10:30that he lived from a pension, but it is not known very well
10:33what the pension is, if it is for being an ex-marine or for a reason.
10:35So, he doesn't speak Spanish either,
10:37as he decided not to speak Spanish in Chile.
10:39Of course, he doesn't speak Spanish and he is also an alcoholic.
10:43And that is confirmed by practically all the people
10:47who know him, addicted to orange vodka.
10:50And well, he is practically drunk all day.
10:56Here we are seeing an image that is of Sebastián Mente Enferma
10:59with this couple you were talking about, this ex-couple.
11:01Here also on Instagram, I imagine, right?
11:04He also started using Instagram.
11:05Well, Instagram and Twitter, of course,
11:06were the media that he mainly used
11:10until he lost his track.
11:15Well, he met Michael in 2016 in Valparaíso
11:20and they decided to go to Curiñaco to get away from the world.
11:25Hey!
11:26And of course, and there, in the background,
11:28this disappearance occurs.
11:29Of course, Hernán.
11:31Well, I was listening to the podcast,
11:33I found it super entertaining.
11:34Inuel, it's 30 minutes that catch you
11:36because it's very well told, it has an effect,
11:39it really flies by.
11:40There are four episodes, so they are on broadcast.
11:44If you want to listen to it, I think you will stay here interested.
11:48There it is, there is the complete story.
11:50And in fact, something that caught my attention
11:52and what we were talking about is this couple
11:53that this gringo had, that you mention,
11:56that he had also lost a partner before.
11:59Of course.
11:59Right?
12:00Yes.
12:00That there too, perhaps,
12:03is being, I don't know if suspicious of the disappearance,
12:06but at least it is a curious fact.
12:08Yes, it is that, of course, the issue of the gringo,
12:12of Michael, is one of the main enigmas.
12:15Because, well, they were in Curiñanco,
12:18apparently they had a life of a couple
12:20that was already wearing out.
12:23Michael and Sebastián used to argue
12:28and from one moment to another Sebastián disappears,
12:30the face of the earth.
12:32And he had warned,
12:35he had given some cryptic messages
12:36that he was going to disappear, his loved ones, etc.
12:40But, however, the family, mainly,
12:44has all the suspicions about Michael.
12:47Because he was a person who tried to isolate him,
12:52in a way, from his loved ones.
12:54He didn't like to interact with them.
12:56He had strong fights with Sebastián.
13:00And besides, he didn't make a complaint,
13:04unfortunately, until several days after the disappearance.
13:09And the strangest thing of all is that it began to be investigated
13:13just two years after Sebastián disappeared.
13:16That is, in 2019, just.
13:18Of course, being that, of course, it seemed common sense
13:22that the ex-partner could be involved,
13:26at least he could have more information
13:29about what happened to him.
13:31Hey, there are three edges regarding this possible,
13:34what happened to him.
13:35Some say that he may have committed suicide,
13:38because many times, through his social networks,
13:40he also expressed suicidal intentions.
13:42He also expressed it with his family, some messages.
13:45I also read testimonies from his family and his sister,
13:49who received a WhatsApp message that was almost like a farewell.
13:52Other people also close to him.
13:54Another hypothesis is that someone would have killed him.
13:57Who? It is not known.
13:58And there also arises this edge related to the ex-partner,
14:01with the ex-marine or this former American uniformed.
14:06And the last one, which is already the conspiracy,
14:09which has to do with the fact that he would be alive, but hidden.
14:12Of course.
14:13That he would have kept them hidden from public life
14:15and he prefers to be like this.
14:16Those are the three edges that exist
14:18about what could have happened to him, right?
14:20Of course, and the edge of someone killing him
14:25is maintained because so far the body has not appeared.
14:28So, of course, if he had attempted with his life,
14:31at some point the body would have appeared
14:35after six years at least.
14:37Even in the jungle of Curiñanco, where he disappeared,
14:40because he went to Curiñanco, a town near Valdivia,
14:43where there is a landscape that makes it plausible
14:49that someone could have disappeared,
14:51but after six years the body could have appeared.
14:53So that's why the family keeps insisting
14:55that they investigate if there was a third party.
14:58And that has not been ruled out either.
15:00There is the detail that I had read about
15:02that he left and was followed by the pet he had at home.
15:06And the pet comes back a few days later.
15:08Yes, the pet returns.
15:09Then the pet returns,
15:10then there is all that mystery around what happened
15:12finally with Sebastián Álvarez, mentally ill.
15:17I think we have to look at what this final toxic relationship was.
15:20Of course.
15:21That this bond that generates many doubts around Michael,
15:24this man, with whom he went to live in the south,
15:27he is still alive and seems to be living there in the south.
15:30Yes, he is still alive in the south, in the Curiñanco area.
15:35He never even went there.
15:37He is only missing in alcoholism.
15:40He practically doesn't talk to anyone
15:43and he became like a kind of hermit,
15:48even a bit of a vagabond,
15:49who spends all day lying on the beach.
15:54And people, of course, don't want to get close to him
15:56because he also became super aggressive
15:58and has given very few statements to the justice regarding this issue.
16:02He has not shown himself to be a special collaborator.
16:06And he also has a legal dispute with other people in the area,
16:09whom he accuses of having stolen belongings from him,
16:14because at one point they file a complaint against him
16:19for having become aggressive with his tenants.
16:26They put a restraining order on him,
16:29but apparently the tenants kept their belongings.
16:37So he filed a complaint against them for theft,
16:40but there is a dispute and he doesn't want to leave
16:44because he is waiting to get his belongings back.
16:48Or at least that's what different sources have told us.
16:51So he has become a person of Curiñanco,
16:54a myth that no one can get close to him.
16:57We went to look for him.
16:58Oh, you went to look for him to have his testimony, I imagine.
17:01Of course, we made a first approach,
17:04we went to Curiñanco, we managed to talk to a lot of people
17:07and we were waiting for him, but we were very plural.
17:12In fact, it was Francisco Tapia who is also the one who produces this podcast
17:18and who is the editor of Casa 63, which is one of the most successful fictions in Spanish.
17:23Extremely successful, which even has this international version.
17:26Yes, with Julian Moore.
17:28Of course, Julian Moore.
17:29And Isaac, right?
17:31Oscar Isaac and Julian Moore.
17:34They are the protagonists of the American version.
17:36So, well, he traveled to Curiñanco,
17:39tried to get close to Mike for a few days,
17:43but he didn't show up and finally he spent all this time there.
17:48But he is open for a second season
17:53because he is the key witness or the figure who should know the most about the subject,
17:58but who has not wanted to speak and who is involved in all these conflicts
18:03and in all this alcoholism as well.
18:06Hernán, today this story that is unfolding a little bit with some interviews, right?
18:10With a narrator who is also very entertaining, who is Fransani, Ignacio Fransani.
18:15How was the investigation itself?
18:17Now you told us that this colleague of yours was on the ground.
18:22He was on the ground, but how was it also?
18:24How did all this develop of talking to people, who knew him?
18:28How did they do it?
18:31We were tracking through Twitter or Sebastián's social networks
18:38to the people who seemed closest.
18:41And through them we were actually getting to those who were the closest.
18:46We also got first, well, of course, to his family,
18:51to his sister María José, who kindly gave us the interview
18:55and who is the family spokeswoman regarding the subject.
18:58He also had, in all these contradictions,
19:01an Apollo that was very, very media at the time of Twitter,
19:05which was Valentina Corbalán.
19:07We also talked to her.
19:10We also got to other ex-partners that he had during his years in Viña.
19:17In Curiñanco we met many of his close friends, neighbors.
19:21And there we were building a map of the people closest to him
19:25and we interviewed practically everyone,
19:29except those who, of course, the subject still causes them enough pain
19:33to not want to talk about it, because it is very interesting,
19:38it is a mystery, one sees it from the outside, like this,
19:41and it also has all this paranormal part that we have not talked about yet,
19:45which makes it even more interesting.
19:50But of course, it is a missing person and his relatives
19:53live with the pain of not knowing what happened to him yet.
19:59What happened to him, of course.
20:00I was watching, I even read many interviews
20:03related to the subject, as a result of the fact that we were going to talk about this podcast with you,
20:08and of the family, of course, the sister still has the feeling that there is something to discover,
20:12but the mother and other members of the family
20:14decided to close the chapter, like, no, they fired her,
20:17even going to the south, to close the link.
20:20How is it to do the investigation?
20:22You were telling us, usually when you do a report
20:25or any investigative process, you go to a clue,
20:27then you connect it with another, you are surprised.
20:30Were you surprised while you were looking for answers about this enigma
20:35that remains to this day?
20:36A lot, and especially in the list,
20:41in this paranormal list that there is of the case,
20:44which was given a lot through Twitter,
20:46we started to investigate it more than anything,
20:49because of course, it was a fun component,
20:52but it turns out that we arrived, that there was a group of twitterers
20:54who took the issue of the disappearance really seriously,
20:58and who started, of course, investigating links and clues
21:03as paranormal, conspiranoic,
21:05but that little by little began to derive in an investigation
21:08towards those close to Sebastián
21:11and towards clues, deep down,
21:13much more plausible than what could have happened to him.
21:17And in those twitterers we found, yes,
21:20information that I think is unpublished so far
21:24regarding clues that could,
21:30if not solve the case, lead him to an unexpected place.
21:35But you were talking about something paranormal, that calls my attention.
21:40Of course, what happens is that at one point in his life,
21:44Sebastián became obsessed with a secret society
21:50that emerged in Nazi Germany, called Abril.
21:54It is a secret society created by a woman named Maria Orsic,
22:00when Hitler had just come to power,
22:05and this woman said that she could have contact with higher beings,
22:09and that those higher beings gave her an energy,
22:12and that with that energy she could even make flying saucers fly,
22:17and I don't know, well, it was a very crazy subject.
22:20He became obsessed with that.
22:22And he had a doll, in fact, called Fabiola,
22:25and he said that this doll was the reincarnation of Maria Orsic,
22:31of this woman, and that he talked to her,
22:33a bit like the song of 31 Minutos.
22:35The doll talks to me.
22:37Well, the paranormal subject has to do with that,
22:44and that it returns once Sebastián disappears.
22:47And hey, without spoiling,
22:50because I imagine that all this is going to develop in the podcasts,
22:53how, and regarding the investigation that you yourself have done,
22:58do you have any conclusion?
23:00Do you more or less think that you are approaching something that could have really happened to Sebastián?
23:04Of course, it would be very adventurous to say my hypothesis,
23:08but yes, I think that the clearest thing is that the paranormal has nothing to do with his disappearance,
23:17and that the fact that he is alive and manipulating all this from the shadows,
23:22and sending messages through social networks related to this April society,
23:27which is like the theory that was given on the internet,
23:29I think that ...
23:31You would rule it out.
23:33It is a bit negligible,
23:35that he was kidnapped by these aliens.
23:37So of course, the point is what happened to him,
23:41if he decided to attempt with his life,
23:44and had some kind of help for that.
23:47I mean, there was like a third party who helped him,
23:50or if there was definitely a third party who took his life.
23:55And I think that there is the mystery that continues to be unresolved,
24:01and that the police and the prosecution continue to investigate it.
24:06Hey Hernán, to finish this conversation so entertaining,
24:09we are talking that this podcast is there on emisorpodcasting.com,
24:13Mental Illness, The Strange Disappearance of an Influencer,
24:16so far it goes three chapters, how many do they intend to be?
24:20You also told us a second season, so that people are attentive to this project.
24:24There are four chapters, that is, next week, next Tuesday, the last one is released,
24:30but as it is a mystery that has not been solved,
24:33and we have a lot of lists that we could continue to investigate,
24:38of course, depending on the success of the series, this could be exceeded.
24:45But of course, not for now,
24:46in the end this first season of four chapters is closed,
24:50and of course, there you can listen to it,
24:54either on your favorite streaming platform,
24:56but hopefully on emisorpodcasting.com,
24:59where there is a lot of other content.
25:01Yes, a lot of content, thank you very much,
25:03success in this very interesting project, and to rest.
25:07How was your first time talking on TV and at night?
25:11Very good, I felt very comfortable.
25:14Ah, that's the important thing, how good.
25:15So you already know, thanks Hernán,
25:17you have to go to emisorpodcasting.com to review Mental Illness,
25:23The Strange Disappearance of an Influencer,
25:26already three chapters, next Tuesday, the fourth and last.