That evening, the young lawyer, a father of two daughters ages seven and ten, was on his way home from work when he noticed that he was being followed by a sport utility vehicle. Worried, Escobedo immediately dialed his father on his cell phone for help.
"Dad, I'm being tailed," the lawyer told Mario César Escobedo Sr. The elder Escobedo, also an attorney who had been assisting his son in his defense of González, would later reveal that he too had been the target of death threats.
In fact, the father and son had been tossing about the idea of abandoning the high-profile case altogether. The threats were escalating and it was becoming clear that they were serious in nature. While the elder Escobedo favored bowing out, his son had been on the fence. Convinced of his client's innocence, the young Escobedo was torn over the prospect of allowing an injustice to occur. Still, he had his family to consider.
"It's a coincidence," the senior Escobedo assured his son during the phone call that night. "Not to worry."
"No, Papá, don't hang up! I'm being followed. Papá, they're following me!"
Panicked, the elder Escobedo held the cell phone to his ear as he raced toward his truck. "I'm coming, I'll be right there with you," he assured his son. "Describe the vehicles to me."
"It's a Grand Cherokee, Papá, covered in mud. Hurry!"
"I'm on my way, son. Stay calm. Keep your wits about you!"
"Papá, hurry, they're pulling out their weapons."
At that moment, Mario Escobedo Sr. heard gunshots, the screeching of tires, and a crash. "Son, answer me. Answer me!" he yelled into the phone. There was no response.
In an interview with Univision, the elder Escobedo recalled how he cried as he raced to the local hospital, only to learn that his son was dead.
"I still didn't know then that my son's own executioners were the agents and comandante of the judicial police of the state," he said. "I thought it was a group of thugs, of assassins who had already made death threats against us for undertaking the defense of Gustavo González Meza."
The following morning, Escobedo learned that members of the state police had indeed shot his son. They claimed that it was a case of mistaken identity and that they never intended to do the lawyer any harm. Officials explained that the officers thought they were chasing an alleged drug dealer who went by the nickname "El Venado," the deer.
An official for the state police told the local Ciudad Juárez newspaper,
El Diario de Juárez,
that his officers had opened fire on Escobedo after he failed to pull over. He then added that the attorney began firing at officers as they approached his vehicle. Crime scene photographs showed that there were at least ten bullet holes in Escobedo's Chevy pickup. It was later reported that the officers who fired at the attorney that night were allegedly under the direction of the commander who had supervised the detention of the two bus drivers then in custody.
The official, Chihuahua district attorney Manuel Ortega, insisted that Escobedo Jr. was in the wrong and that it was the attorney who had opened fire on the agents when they told him to get out of his vehicle.
"Instead of doing as he's told, the driver pulls out a firearm, one which his father had previously given to him, and he fires against the police officers," Ortega said in an interview with Univision. "He fires, the police officers fire back
after that, he drives away and fires again, and the police officers return fire."
The dead lawyer's father quickly pointed out that the officers had been driving an unmarked vehicle, did not identify themselves as state police, and were chasing his son at ten o'clock at night. In addition, the Jeep they were in was not an official state police vehicle but a private vehicle registered to one of the department's commanders, Roberto Alejandro Castro Valles.
Castro was later cleared by a judge of any wrongdoing and, according to news accounts, left the state police for a position with the federal government as a security officer in their anti-corruption ministry in Mexico City.
"There are many inconsistencies to this story," the elder Escobedo said. "The agents were pursuing the attorney's vehicle in a high-speed chase, and the attorney was also talking to his father on his cell phone at the same time. Now, how is it possible for someone to be
driving
at a high speed,
talking
on his cell phone, and
shooting
a gun at the same time? With what hands? With which hand is he firing? At what point?"
In an interview with Univision, District Attorney Ortega demonstrated how he believed the slain lawyer had managed to drive his Jeep with one hand on the wheel, holding a cell phone to his face with his shoulder as he fired on officers with his free hand. Yet his explanation and the accompanying on-camera demonstration were hardly convincing.
Photographs taken for the city's
El Norte
newspaper suggested that members of the state police department may have tampered with evidence after the accident in order to substantiate that they had fired in self-defense.
There were no bullet holes in the unmarked Jeep Grand Cherokee that the officers were driving when the photographer from
El Norte
snapped images of the vehicle at the crime scene. But when the same photographer snapped more pictures of the Jeep as it was parked outside the attorney general's office, there was a bullet hole in a front fender and fresh mud on the tires.
El Norte
contended that someone from the state police department had taken the Jeep to another location and then fired a shot into the fender to make it appear that Escobedo Jr. had been firing at police.
"Their vehicle had fresh mud on its tires, and it had an impact, an orifice from a firearm on its front left fender," the senior Escobedo said upon producing the two sets of photos for Univision. "The mud had dried by then, except on that side where the hole was. There was even water leaking out on that side of the headlight."
The following day, the Chihuahua state attorney general's office issued a press release citing Escobedo's cause of death as a brain injury suffered as a result of an auto accident that occured while the lawyer was fleeing state police officers. Another city newspaper,
El Diario de Juárez,
however, reported a different outcome. Citing the official autopsy report, the paper described the lawyer's death as the result of "a gunshot wound to the head."
There were other inconsistencies in the incident as well. In the days following the lawyer's death, authorities claimed a gunshot residue test performed at the scene was consistent with Escobedo having fired a gun. Those test results would appear to support the police claim that the attorney had fired on the officers that night. But in an interview with Univision conducted that February, the senior Escobedo produced official state documents showing that the gunshot residue test had, in fact, come back with negative results for gunpowder residue meaning that his son hadn't fired a gun that night.
The grieving father said he had also located a witness who was willing to testify that one of the police officers involved in the high-speed chase had gotten out of the Grand Cherokee that night and fired on his son as he sat in the pickup truck after it had already crashed.
To confirm the witness's account, the elder attorney hired a crash reconstruction expert to inspect his son's Chevy pickup. The consultant and several other attorneys examined the vehicle on February 19. According to news accounts, the team concluded that several of the gunshots had struck areas of Escobedo's truck that had been exposed only after it had crashed that night. The finding would suggest that police had fired additional rounds at the vehicle after it had crashed.
Two weeks before the attorney's death, the father-and-son law team had been sitting together in their law offices, relaxing. With his feet propped up on his desk, the younger Escobedo asked his dad,
"Compa,
what do you think about La Foca's defense?" referring to his client, the bus driver, Gustavo González Meza, by his nickname "the Seal."
Recalling the chat, the senior Escobedo said that he told his son,
"Mijo,
to tell you the truth I don't want the case. I have a feeling something bad is going to happen to us."
But the son wanted to go ahead. "Don't be afraid,
jefe
[boss]," he told his father. "But I'll tell you something. If you don't want to continue, I will."
Dozens of community activists and others attended the press conference held by the senior Escobedo after his son's death to denounce police claims about the events surrounding the shooting. Community members screamed,
"ĄAsesinos! ĄAsesinos!"
and
"ĄJusticia! ĄJusticia!"
Others carried huge placards that read,
"No hay justicia en Ciudad Juárez."
"There is no justice in Ciudad Juárez."
Many of the city's residents found it difficult to believe that state agents had actually fired at, and killed, an attorney in a case of mistaken identity. Yet the young Escobedo was no stranger to these men. In fact he regularly visited the
procuraduría
and the court and knew many of the officers by name. It was hard to believe they could mistake him for a criminal. Had the attorney been deliberately silenced by police? Some of the people attending the elder attorney's press conference knew of others in the case who had reportedly been silenced as well.
In fact, members of the Univision crew insist they were being followed while in Juárez and claim to have received suspicious phone calls late one evening to one of their Juárez hotel rooms from a person who failed to identify himself. The caller did not speak, but was breathing heavily into the receiver. After checking with front desk personnel, they learned that the hotel phones were routinely shut off from outside callers promptly at 11 p.m., indicating that the late-night caller was phoning from inside the hotel. Even more frightening was that this person had somehow obtained information about the crew's hotel arrangements, and might have even been eavesdropping on interviews the crew had conducted with lawyer Sergio Dante Almaraz and Miriam García earlier that day.
Amid cries for a full investigation of the attorney's death, authorities announced the suspension of several of the police agents involved in the pursuit albeit with pay. But no charges would ever be filed against any of the police who had been involved. A judge would rule in June 2002 that the officers had killed the attorney in "self-defense."
Escobedo's death had rattled his colleague, Sergio Dante Almaraz, the attorney defending bus driver Víctor García. Dante Almaraz's decision to remain on the case created a rift within his family; his two young sons, both attorneys, questioned their father's decision to intentionally place himself in harm's way.
"My sons asked me to reflect on what I am doing," Dante Almaraz said in an interview with Univision that February. "They say to me, 'Papa, you are risking your life, and by our being with you, you are risking our lives as well.' That does cause me to reflect, but then my sense of ethics and my personal dignity get the best of me. I think to myself, 'Why the hell did I study law?' I wanted to remedy the injustice; I wanted to fight with all my might against the injustice. That's when I stay firm and stay the course.
"I recognize that Mexico is a leading violator of human rights," the lawyer continued. "We in Mexico haven't succeeded in establishing some sort of criteria that will protect the dignity of people who are detained by the authorities. We haven't established a set of rules to protect the human rights of detainees.
"Even delinquents have a right to a fair trial. And fairness dictates that there be an arrest warrant issued by a competent judge and that their families be notified that they are being arrested and informed as to their whereabouts. Otherwise, it is the equivalent of kidnapping, isn't it?
"It's not enough to grab a couple of guys and take them forcibly from their home, beat them for five or six hours, burn their genitals with an electric prod, and make them confess even to the murders of [Mexican war hero Emiliano] Zapata or Pancho Villa. You have to have proof!" the lawyer demanded. "You have to have evidence!"
* * *
It seemed that whoever tried to get to the bottom of the crimes was either threatened, fired, forced to resign, or killed. The murdered attorney was not the only one to run afoul of authorities. A popular radio talk show host was also fired in February 2002 the same month Escobedo died. The talk show host, Samira Izaguirre of Radio Cańón, was luckier; she survived.
The incident occurred after Izaguirre and several members of her station angered officials with their public criticisms of the investigation into the cotton field murders. The host had provided an "open forum" to the families of the bus drivers charged with the murders, as well as to other women in the community who spoke out against the arrests.
Almost immediately after the radio show aired, advertisements began appearing in the local newspapers suggesting Izaguirre was a bar owner and a regular at the city's strip clubs; one ad even linked her romantically to one of the bus drivers in custody. News outlets in both Ciudad Juárez and El Paso followed up with stories accusing the government of placing the advertisements, citing as evidence paid receipts that had been signed by a government staffer.
