Excerpt

Foreword

It was a story that shocked the nation in April of 1989. Police had discovered the mutilated bodies of Texas college student Mark Kilroy and twelve others, along with evidence that the victims had been human sacrifices, ritualistically tortured and murdered. Four members of a satanic drug ring had been captured, but many more were at large. Among them were Adolfo Constanzo, a mysterious Cuban American from Miami who was said to be the gang's ringleader, and Sara Aldrete, a tall and attractive honor student at an American college who, it was said, lived a double life: friendly college girl by day, ritual killer by night. There was talk of Satanism, of cannibalism, of police payoffs, of more bodies buried in shallow graves. Much of this would turn out to be true.

Like most people, I was at once horrified and mesmerized by the news coverage of this story. There is something about the word "Satanism" and the idea of such rituals that make us all lean a little closer to our newspapers, and ask questions.

When I decided to write a book about the tragedy, I knew that I would have to write it fast. The terrible deaths in Matamoros were falling into the folklore of the Mexican countryside so rapidly that the facts had to be retrieved quickly, before they became indistinguishable from legend. I flew to Mexico and Texas. I visited the scenes and talked to the people. I wrung whatever information I could from whatever sources were available, and I ended up, as journalists inevitably do, with an intriguing, but imperfect, body of information. The answers to some of my questions had only been known by people who are now dead. The answers to others are in the minds of people who refused to talk to me. Memories were confused, temperaments were mercurial, and the bureaucracy was sometimes thick. Moreover, the murders had spawned rumors and had reinforced long-held superstitions.

Still, the answers to my questions came gradually forward and I have put them down here in a way that I hope unifies, enlarges, and finally, puts together in a clear and cohesive way all the scattered information that came our way in the press during April and May of 1989.

The legal machinery that will process this case will still be clanking along for months, even years, after this book is written. As I write, none of the suspects has been tried. Hence they are only suspects, and not convicted criminals. I in no way want to suggest that their guilt has been definitely established. Some of the suspects have confessed to crimes, but none of them have been tried in court and found guilty or not guilty. The crimes described in this book are alleged, and my description of them is based on reasonable conclusions derived from the facts I gathered from my own interviews, police reports, and media coverage. (The dialogue within scenes is based on the memories of interview subjects about what was said and who said it.)

Despite the difficulties in gathering and presenting the facts of this case, I believe it is important to do so. I am fascinated by the events in Matamoros and Mexico City. But beyond the details of the crime itself, I am fascinated by the impact that the story made on America's imagination. In April and May of 1989, everybody was talking about it. Americans seemed to have an urgent need to know more about it, and the question is, Why?

If you want to find out how important a story is to any group of newspaper readers, find the degree of identification, divide it by the distance from the reader, and multiply it by its relevance to the reader's life. That observation reflects the fact that the news is not just a blizzard of meaningless information. It is something powerful, something that is meaningful to us, moves us, touches our lives. We get personally involved with the stories we read and hear.

When I was researching this book and sifting through collected newspaper clippings about the massacre in what was being called "the killing fields" of Mexico, I kept this business of identification-distance-relevance in mind. I wondered why the story had been so big. I think that by examining that equation the answer can be found.

Identification? Well, there is Mark Kilroy, of course. American, white, someone's son. In virtually every story written during the first three days after the discovery, the disappearance of Mark Kilroy is rehashed. And of course, there is Sara Aldrete, who was at first reported to be an American citizen, and later a resident alien who attended school in America. Of course, Adolfo Constanzo was also an American citizen, just as much as Mark Kilroy, but he is not someone most newspaper readers easily identified with. So there is an identification factor for Americans, but many of the people involved in the tragedy were Mexicans.

Distance? The events took place near the U.S. border, and it is certainly understandable that they got a lot of coverage in Texas. But why is the story so compelling in Alaska and New Jersey and Kansas? For most Americans it is a story that happened thousands of miles away.

So it seems to me that neither the identification factor nor the distance factor in this story is sufficient to explain the high degree of involvement Americans seem to have with it. It must be relevance. People must think this story has something to do with them.

Certainly drugs are relevant. There isn't a community in America that isn't agonizing over the drug problem. But still, drug stories are legion and you sure don't have to go to Mexico to find one. No, it isn't the drugs that Americans find so relevant. It is Satanism.

The events in Matamoros—real, proved, witnessed—gave a chilling answer to a question that had been haunting America for years. It is the question we ask when we see sensationalist movies, when we read bizarre newspaper articles, when we watch controversial television shows like Geraldo Rivera's special on Satanism. As the evidence crops up all around us, we can't help but wonder: Does this sort of thing really go on?

In Matamoros, an American nightmare came true.

Introduction

By Dr. Tony Zavaleta, Professor of Anthropology, Southmost Texas College; City Commissioner, Brownsville, Texas

Twenty years of experience as an anthropologist on the U.S.-Mexican border has taught me to expect the unusual, even the bizarre. But nothing could have prepared me for the grisly discovery, in April of 1989, that people were being ritually tortured and sacrificed in Matamoros, Mexico, just across the Rio Grande from Brownsville, Texas, where I live, teach, and serve as a city commissioner.

The tragedy that was uncovered by Mexican police touched the lives of many people in this area, in many ways. I found myself personally connected to the story in three ways: as a teacher, as a father, and as an expert on curandismo, the local border culture.

In my sociology class, where I lectured on social norms and deviancy, there had been one student, a rather nondescript young Mexican-American who had always seemed to struggle to pay attention. His name was Serafin Hernandez Garcia. He was a law enforcement major, and as the Matamoros story unfolded in the press, I learned that while this young man sat in my classroom, he was allegedly being groomed for initiation into a sinister cult that demanded blood sacrifices.

Another of my students was a young honor student named Sara Aldrete. Sara was the perfect student, intelligent, dedicated, interested. She was an attractive and friendly young woman who greeted me with a smile every morning of the semester. Now on television and in the newspapers she was being called the "high priestess" of the cult, and police all over North and South America were hunting for her.

As a father, I felt the uneasiness that all parents felt when they heard about Mark Kilroy, the Texas college student who had been kidnapped, murdered, and mutilated by the cult. But perhaps I had a special level of identification. My son Tony was Mark's age. Like Mark, Tony was a student at the University of Texas. Like Mark, Tony was on spring break. Like Mark, Tony had spent much of his spring break in Matamoros. Furthermore, Tony had been in one of my anthropology classes with Sara Aldrete.

After the news of the terrible discovery broke, my son called me up.

"Dad," he said, "I just saw the news. Tell me this isn't happening. Tell me it's not true. Sara can't be involved in this thing. It can't be the same Sara. Is there some mistake?"

"There's no mistake," I told him.

"Dad," he said, "you know I was in Matamoros the night that Mark was kidnapped. I was near the place where they grabbed him. If Sara Aldrete had seen me that night and called me over or offered me a ride, I would have taken it."

My most public connection to the Matamoros cult killings story was in my role as anthropologist, many years documenting that culture, and particularly the border folk medical and religious beliefs. When the story broke, reporters, hungry for details about the culture that they thought had spawned these murders, called me.

Was it somehow related to any pre-Columbian tradition? they asked. Could it possibly be a revival of some ancient Aztec practice on the border?

The questions were disturbing. The intimation that these atrocities could be part of Mexican culture and in some way linked to Aztec practices was revolting to me.

"No," I told the first reporter who called, "I am absolutely certain that what we have here is not of Mexican origin. I seriously doubt that it could be in any way connected to Aztec traditions."

I would be repeating my answer for weeks on television and in newspaper interviews.

I told the reporters that the rites appeared to be some imported Afro-Caribbean tradition, something like Santeria, but not really Santeria, because that religion does not practice human sacrifice. More likely, what went on in secret over in Matamoros was part of Santeria's dark co-tradition of Palo Mayombe, and an aberrant form of it at that. Especially characteristic of Palo Mayombe was the evil cauldron, or nganga, that had been found. The nganga is the powerhouse of the mayombero, or Palo Mayombe priest.

Furthermore, I told them, this was consistent with some of my recent research. In the markets of Mexico City I had found considerable evidence of Caribbean witchcraft. In fact, in recent lectures at two Texas universities I had suggested to my audience that there was an encroachment of Afro-Caribbean culture into northern Mexican witchcraft.

So what happened in Matamoros was not endemic to the culture of the area. Nonetheless, it was a shock to the culture. To the outsider, the distinctions are not so obvious, and the people of this area have been deeply wounded by the dreadful events.

But it is a wound that has already begun to heal.

Many people agree that if the cult had not decided to kill an American spring breaker, the cult would have rolled on, and would probably still be operating. They would have mounted a death toll rivaling the worst mass murderers. Many people that I have spoken to agree that Mark Kilroy's life was not wasted. They believe that by his death, others live.

Recently a curandero, a healer in the border culture, told me he was convinced that in life and death Mark Kilroy played a higher role. His death brought to an end, as the curandero put it, "the evil that has held our communities captive for the past several years."

I can't say for sure, and I don't claim to know about these things, but there are those who believe it to be so. Just as Adolfo Constanzo, the godfather of the cult, called upon the dark forces for his power, there are those in our community who invoke the power of good. Some people call them white witches, or brujos blancos. I've been talking to them a lot recently, and they say that things are better now. An evil has been removed from our border communities. They say that things are going to get better.

A Note About Spanish Names

In Mexico, a person has a given name, followed by his father's surname, and then his mother's surname. Serafin Hernandez Garcia, for example, is the son of a man from the Hernandez family and a woman from the Garcia family. If you wanted to refer to Serafin by his last name, you would call him Hernandez or Hernandez Garcia, but never just Garcia, for that would imply that his father had disowned him or that his father was unknown.



"Criminals killed his body, but they were not able to kill his spirit. He is alive."

—Rev. Juan Nicolau, speaking at a memorial service for Mark Kilroy

"In their religion they believe in reincarnation. They believe their godfather will come back."

—A Mexican prosecutor

 Chapter One

The Student

All Mark Kilroy wanted to do was have a good time on spring break.

It was March and he had labored through six difficult and dedicated months as a junior in the College of Natural Sciences at the University of Texas in Austin. He hadn't been a monk about it by any means. He had chased girls. He had cheered for the Longhorns. He had gotten seduced into games of three-on-three basketball when he could have been studying. And occasionally he had put his books aside and fled to the freedom of Sixth Street, a honky-tonk area of downtown Austin, where he sometimes got drunk on beer.

But on the whole Mark hadn't done much partying, certainly not a lot for a tall, good-looking, fun-loving twenty-one-year-old. By far the thing in his life he gave most attention to during the spring of 1989 was his studies. From September to March, Mark plowed through the sometimes ponderous books with the determination of a donkey. He was carrying eighteen credits and had already gained a reputation as a serious student who usually put schoolwork ahead of his social life. It was important to Mark that he do well. Maturity was gaining on him rapidly. A year earlier he had finally decided what he wanted to do with his life. He wanted to go to medical school. He wanted to be a doctor.

On Friday, March 10, as he stood in his small apartment near the downtown campus, stuffing T-shirts and shorts and sneakers into a garment bag, perhaps he thought: I deserve this. I've studied like a maniac, I deserve a good time.

The good time that Mark had in mind was something he had talked about constantly for weeks. Mark had carried on about spring break like a five-year-old trying to rush Christmas morning. He had squirreled away spending money from his food allowance. A couple of times a week he had discussed spring break on the phone with his high school friend Bradley Moore, a junior at Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas, who was majoring in electrical engineering. And to anyone who would listen, Mark had outlined his plans with such enthusiasm that it seemed that Mark, himself, was hearing it for the first time.

"Here's the plan," he told them.

Mark, Bradley Moore, Bill Huddleston, and Brent Martin would drive down the Texas Gulf Coast to South Padre Island, near Brownsville. None of the other guys were UT students. Brent Martin, twenty, was a sophomore at Alvin community College in Alvin, Texas. (Alvin, next to Santa Fe, Texas, which is the boys' hometown, is best known as the home of baseball star Nolan Ryan.) Bill Huddleston, twenty-one, was a junior at Texas A&M in Galveston, majoring in engineering and business management. So it would be a kind of a reunion. It would be the way it was back in '85 and '86 when the four of them were high school pals in Santa Fe, Texas. Mark had played on the baseball team with Bill Huddleston. He had been on the basketball team with Moore and Martin. This was going to be great. They would drink beer. Soak up rays. Talk sports. Meet girls.

South Padre, famous for its surfing, its fishing, and its warm and sunny winters, is a natural magnet for Texas college students. "Texas Week" in March, when 300,000 young men and women inject about ten million dollars into the local economy, is the biggest week of the year for the restaurants and hotels in the area. Besides its beaches and the presence of the opposite sex in great bathing-suited numbers, South Padre Island is attractive to students because of its nearness to Mexico, where beer is plentiful and nobody asks for an ID.

Though this was to be the first trip to South Padre Island for Martin, Moore, and Huddleston, Mark had been there before. He had gone twice with other friends. But this trip was special. Mark knew that this summer after his junior year would probably be the last one that he and his pals would spend together in Santa Fe. In a way it was their last chance to be kids. After senior year, who knew what would happen? The winds of life would scatter them in all directions. Graduate schools, careers, marriages, and children would all pry loose the bonds of friendship that had been made strong by the less complex issues of adolescence. Certainly they would all see each other again. But Mark was mature enough to know that time had a way of shifting priorities, and if he didn't know it, he perhaps sensed that this spring break with the guys, drenched in that certain exuberance, that mood and texture that is peculiar to young, single males on the loose, would be the last of its kind. So this spring break was special for that. And it was also special, he must have thought as he finished packing, because they were finally going to Mexico. On his other trips to South Padre he had never crossed the border into Mexico. He had always wanted to go, and this time for sure the guys were determined to drive down to Brownsville and cross the bridge into Matamoros.

At two o'clock on Friday afternoon, Bradley Moore showed up. Mark was already packed.

Moore has been badly shaken by Mark's death and except for a few general comments, has chosen not to talk to the press publicly. However, we can easily imagine the exuberance of the moment when he picked up Mark for their trip.

"Let's get you packed and move south," Moore might have said.

Mark would smile. "I'm all packed, turkey."

"You need some help with your things?"

"Hey, get serious." Mark was a strong, athletic young man, and in the brazen way of college kids he probably hoisted the bag with one hand and carried it out.

Mark tossed his bag into Bradley Moore's car and the two young men began the 150-mile drive from Austin to Santa Fe, where they would visit their families and then pick up the other two members of their spring-break squad, who would already be home, visiting families.

It would be the last time Mark's UT friends would see him. One of them, senior Frank Padula, spoke later about Mark to Siva Vaidhyanathan of the Dallas Morning News.

Vaidhyanathan writes:

"Mr. Padula said he saw Mr. Kilroy the day he left on his trip. 'He said to me, "We've got to get together soon, man, we've got to have a good time."'

"Mr. Padula said he told Mr. Kilroy that he had been having trouble with math and had not been very active socially.

"'The last thing he said to me was, "When I get back, I'm going to help you with that math course and you're going to pass it,"' Mr. Padula said. 'I said, "I'd do anything for you, I'll even pay you."

"'Mr. Kilroy responded, "No, just buy me a six-pack,"' Mr. Padula said. 'He had a heart; this guy had a heart.'"

Along the way to Sante Fe with Moore, Mark talked mostly about school. He told Moore how much he was enjoying life at UT and Austin. Mark, who had turned twenty-one on March 1, was in particularly high spirits because he would not have to spend his vacation counting pennies after all. His parents had called and told him they would pay for the trip, as a birthday present.

By eleven that night Mark and Bradley reached Santa Fe. At one A.M. Mark hugged his parents and his nineteen-year-old brother, Keith, good-bye for the last time and the fellows piled into Brent Martin's car. They drove south through the flat plains of East Texas. It was landscape they knew well, one where farms and ranches big enough to contain entire cities stretched to every horizon during the day. But the field of vision on this night was decidedly un-Texan. The darkness closed around them like a glove, and the beams of Martin's headlights were tossed back at them by walls of fog. The world had been reduced to four guys in a car.

While Brent drove, the boys probably talked about the things young men talk about: school, sports, girls. No doubt they traded war stories from the battle of the sexes, and they laughed.

At ten A.M. on Saturday, March 11, weary from the long drive, the four young men arrived at the Sheraton Hotel on South Padre Island.

In the hotel there were other students, mostly from the Southwest, and as Mark walked across the lobby with his friends, perhaps he could sense that he was part of a growing wave of college kids filling the town. Spring break in South Padre was a happening and he was part of it. He might have stretched his long arms and legs to get out the kinks from the long drive.

Too excited to sleep, the boys went out to eat, then they spent much of the morning by the water. "We walked on the beach," Bill Huddleston recalls. And as they walked, perhaps Mark could feel the tension from all those months of studying flow from his body. To Mark, it probably seemed that school was sometimes a pressure cooker, but that someday it would all be worth it.

Despite their lack of sleep the boys were determined to have a big night out. In the afternoon, after checking out the Miss Tanline contest behind the hotel, they tried to nap in their rooms.

"For the next two days it was the same procedure," Huddleston says. "We went to the beach, walked around, saw the Tanline contest, and towards the latter part of the afternoon when the sun was coming down, we'd go back to the room, clean up, hang around, go get something to eat. We'd try to take a nap, but it never worked. We'd be just sort of calm and relaxed, just trying to settle down, fixing to get ready to go out at night."

Spring break was in full swing by this time on South Padre, and the common denominator, it seemed, was beer. In front of the Sailorman's Pub someone stole a van carrying fifteen kegs of Budweiser. (The van and two of the kegs of beer were later recovered.) In another incident, three young men were fined for trying to steal three cases of Miller Lite twelve-ounce cans from the back of a beer truck. A Houston man was injured when he fell two stories from his condominium while trying to steal a keg of beer from an adjoining balcony. And the owners of the Palmetto Inn reported the theft of three kegs of Michelob Light, and four cases of Löwenbräu from a walk-in cooler. So there was, as there always is when kids gather for spring break, a sense of mischief in the air. But if Mark and his friends thought about it at all, they must have thought there was nothing the least bit dangerous about partying on spring break.

On Sunday night, after two full days in South Padre, the boys went to Matamoros for the first time with four girls from the University of Kansas, whom they had met at a drive-in hamburger joint in Port Isabel. Port Isabel, on the way to Brownsville, is south of South Padre Island, just across the Laguna Madre. It was a great night of drinking and carousing, and they went back to the hotel vowing to return to Matamoros the next night.

On Monday night, March 13, the boys went again to Mexico. They parked Martin's car in Brownsville and walked to the International Gateway Bridge, which leads to Mexico.

Brownsville, just across the causeway from Port Isabel, and 135 miles south of Corpus Christi, is the southernmost city in the continental United States. It sits on the Rio Grande in the heart of the area of southern Texas known as the Rio Grande Valley, and it is the county seat of Cameron County. With a population of 115,000, 80 percent of them of Spanish descent, it is the largest city on the southern border. Brownsville, which survives on oil, natural gas, farming, tourism, and shrimping, prides itself on being Texas's "second most historic city," right behind San Antonio. Being a border town, Brownsville is heavily populated with Mexicans and Mexican-Americans. The downtown storefronts are painted a variety of bright colors, more typical of Spanish-speaking cultures than American, and most of the signs on downtown stores are in Spanish.

At the American customs gate leading into Mexico, one of the guards asked Mark two questions. They were the same two questions they ask everybody.

"What country is your citizenship?"

"U.S.A.," Mark answered.

"What is your business in Mexico?"

"Fun," he probably said.

The guard waved him on.

The sidewalks of the International Gateway Bridge were jammed with people. Still, Mark and his friends moved at a faster clip than the cars, which were practically at a standstill. The bridge, which is three blocks long, is the easiest link between the U.S. and Mexico for thousands of people who work in one country and live in the other. With the additional tourists, traffic would be heavy on the bridge all through spring break. When Mark looked over the bridge railing, he was staring at the Rio Grande (or the Rio Bravo, which is what the Mexicans call it), which at that point at that time of year was hardly more than a puddle between the two countries.

They walked into Mexico, four boys full of themselves, looking for girls and beer.

As you come off the International Bridge into Matamoros, you enter a wide, circular plaza. There is a rotary of traffic going from, and coming to, the bridge. The perimeter of the rotary is a sidewalk for the thousands of people who move between Brownsville and Matamoros by foot. And in the middle of the rotary is a small park where tour guides hawk their services and Mexican vendors sell food and Cokes from wagons.

On the other side of the plaza is the Avenido Obregon, with its strip of bars that offer hot Mexican food and cold Mexican beer.

Matamoros, which is described in the popular guidebook Texas (APA Productions, 1986) as "one of the cleanest and most appealing cities on the border," is a hotbed of farmworker activism and political turmoil. The city had recently gone through a period of reform. The red light district has been put out of business. The new police commander, Juan Benitez, was developing a reputation for toughness and honesty. And the authorities were cracking down on immigrant smugglers and dope smugglers. Beyond the tourist district are hundreds of tight, heavily populated blocks of small houses, and beyond the city itself is a checkerboard of farms and ranches along the Rio Bravo.

The boys crossed the wide plaza at the foot of the bridge. Mexican cabdrivers called in English to tourists, urging them to visit the shopping district. Pushcart vendors sold barbecued chicken from smoky grills. Shop owners offered great deals on souvenirs, "For your mama."

Mark must have liked Matamoros. It wasn't like other Mexican border towns where blanket peddlers dog your every step and American franchises call themselves El this and El that. This wasn't like some Mexican pavilion at a World's Fair in Nebraska. This was the real thing.

Still, as he and the others pushed their way through the crowds along the main street, the Avenido Obregon, it would be easy for Mark to feel as if he were still in the U.S.A. Most of the faces around him were American. They were college kids, thousands of young men and women packed, in Bill Huddleston's words, "belly to belly." Like Mark, they were looking for a good time and maybe hoping to meet someone special.

Along the avenue Mexican vendors had erected sandwich signs promising the best possible price on margaritas and beer. Several of the bars had been renamed to appeal to the kids. There was the Hard Rock Cafe, Sergeant Pepper's, even one called Cheers.

They worked their way through the crowd to a bar called Los Sombreros. From there they went to the Hard Rock Cafe, which had been The London Pub until the American kids arrived.

Once inside, Mark could hardly hear himself think. It was a boisterous place, dramatically overcrowded. The music blared. Kids howled and hooted. Mark and the others huddled at the bar, thinking they'd like to meet girls but not sure they could even strike up a conversation in such a madhouse.

It was Mark who got lucky. He fell into a conversation with a group of girls, eventually working it down to one, a young lady named Stephanie, whom he had seen earlier at the Miss Tanline contest, where she had finished third. Stephanie and Mark wedged their way out of the bar and into the street where they could talk better. The frat-party atmosphere extended out onto the sidewalks, where students were drinking beer from cans and wine from plastic glasses, and some kids were openly smoking joints. But at least Mark and Stephanie had gotten away from the music and they could talk.

Mark told Stephanie, perhaps, about Austin and the grueling semester he had just endured. They must have agreed that college was great, but it could damn near kill you.

By two o'clock in the morning everybody was running out of steam. Mark took Stephanie's hand and led her through the thinning crowd back to her friends. He and his pals, all slightly soused, began the four-block walk back to the bridge.

"We crossed over from the club we were in," Huddleston remembers, "and as we were walking back, I was more or less in back and Bradley and Brent were in the middle and Mark was in front. We weren't side by side, but we were still in a kind of group more or less within ten yards of each other. Then Mark came back to me and asked me what was wrong, because I wasn't really in a party mood that night. Mark was like that, he would ask you what was wrong. He was the kind of guy that always put other people before himself. He wanted to know how come I wasn't acting like the other guys. I wanted to, but we had partied and partied and I just was worn out. Physically, I wasn't in a party mood. I told Mark everything was just fine, I was just kind of mellow. So we just started walking back again in our group, and then I had to use the rest room, so I had made up my mind I was going to go behind a tree up ahead near Garcia's. I started walking faster, so I could get ahead of them, and made like a beeline so I could go behind the tree and hopefully meet up with them just past Garcia's, which is exactly what happened. I thought Mark was with Bradley and Brent all this time, but he wasn't. They were walking along, checking out the sights, looking at girls, you know, and so Mark was behind everybody at the time, and I guess around Garcia's was where he met the guy in the truck."

Garcia's is a popular Matamoros restaurant and souvenir store, just across the plaza from the International Gateway Bridge. Next to Garcia's there is a small and narrow parking lot where earlier in the night Mexican vendors had loitered, hoping to wring a few final dollars out of American tourists before they crossed the bridge. It seems that what happened to Mark Kilroy in front of Garcia's is that he heard someone calling to him. We can imagine what happened afterward, based on the statements of Serafin Hernandez Garcia and other suspects.

Mark turned to see who it was. Across the parking lot there was a young Hispanic man leaning against a pickup truck. (This was Hernandez Garcia.) Not wanting to be unfriendly, Mark walked closer.

"What's that?" he asked.

"I said would you like to go for a ride?" the man said.

"Where to?" Mark asked.

"Come here," the man said. "I'll tell you."

Mark, his senses probably dulled by alcohol, walked closer.

When Mark got close, the young man, who had been speaking only English, shouted something in Spanish. Suddenly there were two of them, strong young Mexican men who jumped out of the truck. They grabbed Mark, pinned his arms behind him. They dragged him toward the truck.

"Hey, what the hell are you doing?" Mark shouted.

He kicked at them. He tried to butt them with his head. But they were too strong.

"What do you want? Who do you think I am? You've got the wrong guy."

He tried, perhaps, to fight them off with some of the moves he had learned in karate class at UT, but the alcohol in him and their combined strength would have been just too much. They pushed him into the truck and held him there while one of the men got behind the wheel and sped out of the parking lot.

What the hell was going on? Mark must have thought. Why would somebody kidnap him? His parents didn't have money. These people didn't even know who he was. This was crazy.

"It's okay, don't worry," one of the Hispanic men said.

Was this some sort of prank? Where were Bill and Brent and Bradley?

"What's going on?" he cried. "Just tell me that, what are you going to do with me?"

"Just shut up," he was told.

The truck went a few blocks and then stopped. The driver got out. As near as Mark could probably tell, the driver had just stopped to take a piss. Mark leaned back, as if to accept his capture, then lunged for the door, pushed it open, and threw himself out. He heard the men behind him shouting in Spanish. He stood up and started running. He was an athlete, he could run. I can outrun them, he must have thought. I can outrun them. He ran hard, his feet pounding on the pavement, his heart racing. He ran as fast as he could. But in a moment he must have realized it was not just the young men chasing him. There was a car. God, he must have thought, there are more of them. The car swerved in front of him. Two more young Mexican men got out. They ran at him. They banged into him, knocking his breath away. They held him down and pinned his arms behind his back, then dragged him to the car. His skin must have tingled with fear. He must have wanted to cry, feeling so helpless. The men pushed him into the backseat of the car. One of them tied Mark's hands behind his back.

This is more or less what police believe happened that night, and as the car pulled away, Mark must have screamed at them to tell him what was going on, but they ignored him. The car drove through the dark back streets of Matamoros. Gradually the houses and shops disappeared and were replaced by fields. They were outside the city, driving through farmland. It was bizarre, he must have thought. These Mexicans were young guys, just like his pals. But they were crazy or something. What the hell were they going to do with him?

After a half hour or so the car pulled off the highway and onto a long dirt road. Mark must have peered out at the darkness and seen that they were on a farm. The car pulled to a stop near an old equipment barn. He was taken into the barn, with his arms tied behind his back. His legs were tied and he was gagged. Then the men left him. There was silence. He was trapped in the barn. In the dark. In a foreign country. Probably, he cried.

All night long Mark stayed in the barn. He must have worn his wrists raw struggling to escape. He must have played over and over in his mind all of the possible scenarios that could explain his desperate situation. He must have glanced around, hoping to see reflections from the lights of a police car. He must have listened for the sounds of friends who had found him. There must have been times of deep, sickening panic when he was sure that these strange foreign men were going to kill him. There must have been times when the terror was so great that he told himself no, they just want ransom money for me, or they just want to scare me, or they want me to help them get into America. Something. Anything. He must have felt terror. He must have prayed.

In the morning another man, much older and gentler than the youths who had abducted Mark, came and gave him food. Mark must have considered it a hopeful sign. He tried to make the man help him, but without success. By two o'clock in the afternoon Mark had been moved to an old swinging hammock on the farm, where he lay, still gagged and with his hands and legs still tied behind him. About that time one of the young men and another man, someone Mark had not seen before, came for him.

"Are you going to hurt me?" he asked.

"No," he was told.

Thick, heavy tape was placed over his eyes and his mouth. With his hands still cuffed behind his back, he was led along. The earth beneath his feet was soft. Soon the light just beyond the tape was lost and he knew he'd been taken inside, a barn or a shed or something. The place smelled something awful, as if it were filled with rotting hay and animal carcasses. He was pushed down until his body was flat, his face in the dirt. Endless seconds passed. He heard the new man speaking in Spanish. In a moment he felt a sudden and excruciating burning pain come into his head.

Hopefully, he never quite realized until that moment that he was going to die.