The details of what happened that night come solely from the confessions of the Muñiz cousins and Sergio Simón Benítez González, their supposed lookout. On November 21, shortly after González witnessed Lucas and Coleman passing through the toll booth, the Cherokee pulled out behind them and flashed police strobes on the dashboard...
"They pulled two males out," reads Julio César's statement. "One of them was shirtless and wearing shorts and had long dreadlocks, the other was wearing dark pants and a black shirt." Bojórquez forced "the long-haired one" into the backseat of the Cherokee and the other into the van and started driving to a nearby field, so they'd be out of sight. But as they exited the highway, Coleman tried to escape, forcing the Cherokee's door open and jumping onto the dirt road.
A desperate fistfight erupted. "This guy was getting in some hard shots and beating the hell out of them," the confession reads. Muñiz pulled out the .357 and "put a bullet in the gringo, getting him in the face." Coleman was severely wounded, but not fatally.
At that point, Bojórquez, "furious from the *advertiser censored*-whipping he had gotten," took charge. He jumped behind the wheel of the van while the others loaded the wounded Coleman and Lucas into the back. Soon they came to a stop at a tractor path dividing two cornfields. Bojórquez took the gun, then went to the hinged side doors of the van and fired four or five shots straight inside. The assailants doused the van in gasoline and Bojórquez threw a lit match inside.
It was a tidy description of events. But nearly as soon as the arrests were announced, the case against the men began to unravel...
