Maria Elena Salinas Hosts New Show In English

2024 Author: Steven Freeman | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 08:15

Maria Elena Salinas admits that she was fearful after conducting some of the interviews for her new, 10-part crime series The Real Story, which premieres tonight at 10 pm on Investigation Discovery. I really get into my stories. I'm the kind of person who is affected by everything I hear and see,”shares the award-winning Mexican-American journalist, who also is seen nightly on Noticiero Univisión.

In fact, the night she came home after doing her first interview for The Real Story, Salinas made sure her security system was on in her South Florida home -and checked it room by room to make sure there were no intruders. “The first time I conducted the interviews, it was one of the most alarming stories. It was about a woman who was found dead, decapitated, with her heart ripped out and her body mutilated. Her aunt was stabbed and her uncle was hung [in] the garage,”she recalls. "I was really surprised by the person who committed the crime and the fact that nobody had done anything to investigate that person's past."

Salinas says she is more conscious about her own security now. “One of the advantages of these stories is that we learn a lot about the behavior of human beings and we see the signs so we can be more alert and know how to avoid these situations,” she claims. “Now I'm more careful and have more advice [to share with] my daughters on how to protect themselves.”

The crime stories she covers in her Investigation Discovery newsmagazine have had a personal impact on her. “These are all stories that break your heart. The [cases] include the death of a three-year-old girl or the story of 11 women, most of them Hispanic, who disappeared and nobody cared. Nobody reported it until their remains were found in a remote mountain.” She also uncovers new testimonies of people who survived the shooting in the Orlando gay nightclub Pulse, and interviews subjects close to the shooter Omar Mateen.

Salinas will continue to host Noticiero Univisión and the newsmagazine show Aqui y ahora for the Univision network. Adding an English-language show to her busy lineup makes her proud. "I'm very excited," she says about The Real Story. "It's something I have wanted to do for a long time."