Dateline: Where is Eduardo Valseca now? All about the 2007 abduction victim

NBC’s Dateline episode titled, The Ranch recounts the events surrounding the terrifying 2007 abduction of Eduardo Valseca in Mexico. The episode recounts the events of his wife Jayne’s struggle to raise an impossibly huge amount of ransom money and the torture that was inflicted upon Eduardo during his kidnapping by the unknown men.

The synopsis of the Dateline episode reads:

"The Valseca siblings' lives are changed when their father is taken hostage in an orchestrated abduction. Keith Morrison reports."

In the aftermath of the gruesome events, the Valseca family shifted to Washington, D.C., where Jayne, who was suffering from breast cancer, passed away in 2012.

More on this in our story.

Dateline: The Ranch - Who was Eduardo Valseca, and what happened to him? Details explored

As per Dateline, Eduardo Garcia Valseca was the son of Jose Garcia Valseca, a once-famous newspaper mogul from Mexico. However, Eduardo had to make his own money, as most of the money his father had earned was gone. He began a new business of renovating old houses with his wife, Jayne, whom he met in 1992, in Washington, D.C.

With the money they earned through their new business, the couple bought a ranch in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, where they resided with their three children. The peaceful life of the Valsecas was interrupted on a morning in June 2007 when both parents were ambushed by two heavily armed vehicles after they dropped their kids at the Waldorf school that they founded. According to Dateline, Jayne was left in an unknown location while the kidnappers took Eduardo hostage.

Jayne then found a note by the kidnappers that instructed her to use an email account that they created for communicating their demands. She later contacted the federal police of Mexico, called the AFI, to help her in bringing back her husband home.

This was followed by months of physical and mental torture for Eduardo as he was kept in a small cage, beaten, shot on the leg and arm, and even starved. It wasn’t just Eduardo who was going through the torture, as Jayne had her battles to fight. She was trying her best to make the kidnappers drop the ransom amount from $8 million, as the family was unable to pay such a huge amount, while also traveling back and forth to the US for her breast cancer treatment.

Jayne later devised a plan to trick the kidnappers into thinking that the family is leaving Mexico. Fortunately, her plan worked, and the ransom amount was dropped, and two of the ranch employees went to deliver the amount, one of whom was captured by the kidnappers to threaten the Valescas for more money.

After being physically and mentally tortured for seven months, in January of 2008, Eduardo finally returned home, just three days after the ranch employees delivered the ransom money.

Dateline: The Ranch - Where is Eduardo Valseca now? Details explored

After Eduardo came back home, the AFI advised them to leave Mexico as the threats toward their family were increasing. They began living in Washington, D.C., where Eduardo still resides. Although they successfully escaped from the horrifying experience, the family still suffered a huge loss when Jayne passed away due to breast cancer in 2012, which Eduardo described as one of the worst things that had happened to him. He told Dateline:

"That was the worst thing in my life, more than the kidnapping. That was terrible."

As shared in the Dateline episode, it is still unclear who was actually responsible for Eduardo’s kidnapping.

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