[man] I'm not saying it was right to take another person's life, but...
sometimes it has to happen.
Being Mexican, there's a certain way we live our life,
a certain machismo that we use.
I couldn't sit there and watch some guy beat up on a woman.
It's not gonna happen.
But when I seen him coming...
I looked over at him.
Yeah, we're gonna see who...
We're gonna see who kills who, huh?
It's weird to explain.
You'd think you'd be more nervous, but it was more of a...
it's... it's gonna happen.
Almost like getting your first kiss. [chuckles]
[man 1] This is a true story.
I'll start it off like that.
[man 2] I just wanted to rebel. I wanted to cause chaos.
I looked over at him. We're gonna see who kills who.
[woman] I made the choice.
I took his life.
[man 3] It's something that I never intended to do,
I wish I didn't do.
[man 4] I knew I was gonna get out of that car and murder those two men.
[man 3] As he kneeled in front of me, all I remember is pulling the trigger.
[man 5] I'd killed them both.
I'd stabbed them to death.
It was early in the morning when I got the call.
Get in the car and drove way out here.
This was the furthest south
that I'd had any crime scenes in a while.
I'd been in Homicide for about ten years. You never know what you're gonna find.
You never know what, uh... the surprise is gonna be.
[horn blares]
[Kyle] There was a car up against the concrete center barriers.
There was a body of the driver behind the steering wheel.
These drive-by type shootings,
road rage type shootings,
often are difficult to solve.
There were shell casings on the ground,
which changed...
what I had originally thought
of someone being shot at along the roadway.
Someone bothered to come right up to the window
where this person was helplessly behind the wheel
and shoot them again.
Whoever it was really wanted this person dead.
[crackling]
[man] Can you hear me?
All right...
[chuckles]
My name is Mark Sam Arthur,
and I'm, uh, doing a capital life sentence
for capital murder. Uh...
It took place in Houston, Texas.
Well, growing up as a kid, I visited family in Mexico and Chicago.
Uh, but most of my life was spent
in Houston and the surrounding suburbs.
[distant children's voices]
Nowhere near wealthy growing up, but, uh, my mom did the best, you know.
She worked hard to take care of us.
Uh, my mother's Mexican Indian.
She always tried to take good care of me, but I was a bit rebellious.
I've never met my biological father.
He was real abusive. Didn't like me for whatever reason.
He... he hit me with a closed fist.
I used to get picked up,
thrown to the other side of the room, kicked around.
I seen him beat her up.
When I saw it happen in front of the...
That a man or a so-called man would put his hands on a woman like that...
He grabbed her hair and punched her.
I was too little to do anything about it.
The guy I looked up to that I called my father was Homer Milbourn.
He took care of my mom and told her after they got married,
he didn't even want her to work.
He just... He said, "The man takes care of his wife."
In just a few years, he taught me a lot.
[sobbing] Um, I never talked about him since he died, so...
It's weird I break down in front of you. I've never cried since he died.
Uh...
Um, he...
He's the one that actually told me to start respecting my mom
and that I should get my shit together. Um...
[distant siren]
I wound up joining the Maniac Latin Disciple Nation,
which is a member of the Folks Alliance.
We were a brotherhood, a fraternal bond.
Uh, we believed in the growth and betterment of our neighborhoods,
our... our people, uh, our culture.
[distant dog barking]
Mess with one, you mess with all. One love, one hate.
I never was really into using drugs or drinking alcohol.
I just...
wasn't very good at sports or anything like that,
so I'd try to show that I was good at fighting or shooting or...
whatever else it took to establish my dominance.
When I was about 14,
I got real close with a guy named Esequiel Fonseca.
We were both pretty good at, uh, chasing girls and getting into fights
with some of the same rivals, the same... same gangs.
[birds singing]
We were both into breaking into cars, breaking into houses.
Robbed a few people.
Most of the time, it was my idea. I was like, "You wanna come?"
He was like, "Yeah, sure."
Why wouldn't you want to hang around with a guy that, you know...
was always doing something exciting?
I'd sleep over at his place or hang out there for a couple days.
His mom was cool with us
and would give us something to eat or let us hang around,
and everybody looked up to her as a mother figure.
I was real close to her.
She never told his dad
that we were out there getting in trouble and stuff.
I pretty much stayed away from my house because there were too many rules there.
Me and, uh, "Little Zeke," Esequiel,
so we hung out... we hung out pretty well until he went to prison when I was 16.
I wasn't there, so I don't know what happened.
When I came by his house, his mom was beat up pretty bad.
She had a couple plugs of hair missing out of her head,
she'd been burned with a curling iron, black eyes.
I said, "Let me ask, have you been fighting with a man?"
She's like, "Yeah." That's when she told me she got beat up
by her husband, which is Esequiel Fonseca, uh, Senior.
I'm opposed to the physical abuse of women
because I kind of felt bad
that I couldn't help my sister when... at that time.
But now I'm big enough that I can help my friend's mom.
So, I stood up for her when I couldn't stand up for my sister.
I guess I could say I tried to redeem myself.
[horn blares]
I waited around and went ahead and kicked his ass.
I beat him up pretty bad now.
After I beat him up, he told me he was going to kill me.
If you threaten my life, you're surely putting your own at risk.
[distant siren]
I think probably about two weeks went by after Big Zeke made his little threat.
And I made up my mind
that I was gonna go ahead and get him first.
I was in the passenger side.
I had Mason driving the car.
I didn't tell him exactly what I was gonna do.
I know that Big Zeke would come home from work not too long after sunset.
I know the kind of location of the place.
So, I was waiting for him.
Sure enough, not too long after I drove over there, I see him come by.
Here's my chance to make my bones, you know, do what I'm gonna do.
I was mad at him for what he did.
Mad at the way he talked to me, at what he did to my friend's mom.
And, uh, I pulled next to him.
Our windows were side by side with each other.
When I saw the light illuminate through the moon roof,
I got a good look at him. "Yeah, that's him, huh?"
Mason was surprised when I pulled out a handgun.
And I turned a round into... into the handgun...
and, uh, unloaded the clip onto him.
Kept going until there wasn't no bullets left.
Pretty much didn't have no choice but to keep driving.
I didn't want to focus on it. I mean, what's done is done.
It's an "either him or me" type of deal. And he was my enemy, so...
to hell with him.
We all got arrested.
The police in Harris County came by there when they found out I was in custody.
They took me to Harris County.
I knew I was caught red-handed,
so I went ahead and told them everything that I did.
It was a misconception of the newspapers, saying it was a relationship type of deal,
but really it was more... I looked at her more like a home girl.
The Harris County Sheriff Department said that she told me,
"Go ahead and kill Esequiel and we'll split the money."
And I'm... That's not anything that took place.
The reason I offed the guy is he told me he was gonna kill me.
And I just... I didn't like him.
I found out I could make an affidavit
and let them know she had nothing to do with this.
So, I tried my best to...
If you had nothing to do with this,
there's no reason for me to get her involved in my wrongdoings.
[birds singing]
[woman] Good job, dear.
You're a good girl.
I met Mark in 1993, January.
He was 14 at the time.
I was 18.
Interesting young man.
He was still a kid.
But he joined us in... in things that we did,
so he kind of felt like an adult.
Put off the aura of, "I'm a tough guy."
I never met any of his friends
that he talked about.
"Oh, yeah, we're gangsters,
part of a gang."
But we never saw any of them.
So, I didn't quite believe him in that sense.
He thought he was...
I don't know, a gangster.
[dog pants]
Suddenly, out of the blue one day,
I just get this letter in the mail from Mark.
He didn't know my new address.
And somehow he found me.
But I guess if you want something on the inside, you can get it.
He had written that he had gotten into some trouble,
and...
uh, would I write to him?
Would I help him in any way,
write to him, talk to him,
see if I can get him out?
[laughs]
I was very surprised.
Capital murder is a...
is a big...
That's a big crime.
[laughs]
I did write to him. I wrote back.
And then he explained
that he was in love with a woman
that was older than him, named Carmen.
And that he would never be with her again.
And that was the saddest part...
of his life at that time.
The saddest part.
I don't know.
Your first heartache, your first...
your first love...
uh, that never goes away.
[barking]
My name is Jesse Sanchez, Senior,
and my relationship to Mark is I'm his uncle.
His mom is my sister.
Mark didn't get the attention from his mom.
He didn't have a father around,
so he didn't get the attention from his mom either, because she was...
leaving him with babysitters and relatives
because she was in relationship and relationship.
She, uh, pretty much pushed him aside.
So, that, uh, I'm sure, affected Mark.
He didn't believe anybody really loved him or cared for him,
and I'm sure he was looking for acceptance,
in addition to affection outside the... the family.
Carmen used her body for sex, and then the money.
She didn't pull the trigger, but she influenced him
to the point where, uh, she got him to do...
what she wanted him to do.
He felt like... "Well, she's accepting me, she loves me,
so I'm going to do this for her."
And he got manipulated into doing something that...
you... you know, he's paying, uh...
he's paying with his life.
[birds singing]
[dog barking]
[Mark] Once I was sitting in prison, I thought about my friend's mom, Carmen.
It was a misconception of the newspapers, saying it was a relationship type of deal.
I looked at her more like a home girl.
The Harris County Sheriff Department said that she told me,
"Go ahead and kill Esequiel and we'll split the money."
And I'm... That's not anything that took place.
The reason I offed the guy is he told me he was gonna kill me.
And I just... I didn't like him.
[sighs softly]
He... he's not telling the truth.
It's hard to understand why somebody would do that
after spending this many years behind bars
and still saying, "No, she had nothing to do with it."
To me, it's just like, uh...
he's just trying to be...
uh, do the honorable thing and just take the whole rap
and not implicate nobody else.
But it's not...
it's not very honorable to protect somebody that used you
and manipulated you to do something like that.
If he's still saying that today, then...
it's hard to understand why.
[birds singing[
For him to continue to say that it was just him...
uh, it just doesn't make sense.
You know, he needs to...
um...
come clean and tell the truth.
Because loyalty and honorable is no good behind bars.
My name is Patrick McCann. I'm a criminal defense attorney
and I was one of the two counsel
that represented Carmen Fonseca at her trial.
The state tried to portray her
as sort of an evil, seductive mastermind.
Their theory was that she had put Mark up to this
in return for, um,
either sexual favors or...
um, part of the money.
Our theory was that Mark wanted Esequiel dead,
so he could have his woman, his house and his car.
It made no sense whatsoever.
The story that they concocted,
although fun and interesting
and maybe a good subject for a movie,
was not real.
If you genuinely hate the guy...
then there should have been some evidence of that
um, in the family history, and there really wasn't.
I mean, there was evidence that the marriage was not going well.
Um...
But, you know, that...
that sums up probably half the marriages in the country.
And if you knew Carmen, she wasn't...
she may not have been the most sophisticated person,
but she was also, um, not a person who had any violence in her.
I believe Carmen Fonseca was innocent of this crime.
I... I think, clearly, Mark was the driving force.
He decided that this would be his somehow oddly...
sickly romantic gift, um, to Carmen
to give her a new life that he could be part of.
But that was his fantasy, not hers.
[birds singing]
[Nicole] Every birthday, I get artwork.
"Happy Halloween."
Uh, he likes Valentine's Day,
he likes Halloween.
[laughs]
I don't know why he would send this to me.
[laughs]
But it looks like a vampire woman...
biting another woman's breast.
Three hundred and fifty letters.
He writes to me a lot more than I write to him, though.
And I'm sorry about that. It's just...
life does get in the way out here.
He has more time to write than I do.
It tells, basically, the story of his life in prison.
I believe it...
gives a good account of what's going on in there,
only it's from one perspective.
It would be from Mark's perspective.
July 19th of 2001...
he says, "Say, your postcards are fine with me.
Hell, at least you send something
and you write once every week.
Thank you.
My existence would sure really suck
if not for you.
And so don't feel bad, because I know that you love me."
Interesting choice of words.
He's like, "I really appreciate, over the years,
just you sticking by my side."
That was in there.
That was important to me too.
So, over the years,
Mark has written to me
and he has disclosed to me
the events that led up to the murder of Esequiel.
What he told me was that, basically,
he was seeing an older woman named Carmen,
who was married to a man named Esequiel...
and that he had been seeing Carmen for a while,
and that she had gotten pregnant...
by Mark.
Esequiel found out and beat her
to the point where she miscarried at eight months.
So, the interpretation I get out of his letters...
is that he wanted revenge for killing his child.
A life for a life.
My name's Kyle Brown.
I investigated homicides.
My role in this case was as the lead investigator.
During the course of our investigation of the murder of Esequiel Fonseca,
we found that the person who killed him, Mark Arthur,
had a relationship with Esequiel's wife, Carmen.
Esequiel's wife convinced Mark...
that if he would kill her husband,
he would get Esequiel's brand-new car,
he would get to live in the house,
he would get to continue to be her boyfriend, her lover.
He would get access and the ability
to not have Esequiel looking over him
and just be able to continue his little...
life of crime, coming and going, living there in the home.
Her motivation was to get rid of Esequiel
and there was insurance money involved.
They had a detailed plan, they had worked it out together.
And the reason we know this is, uh, Mark Arthur told us.
Somewhere else...
[indistinct conversation]
The officer's here.
[indistinct conversation]
You're good. That's fine.
-I'll get closer. -Okay.
[Kyle] When we interviewed Mark...
Mark immediately told us everything that he had been doing.
Mark told us all about his motivation,
all about the setup of Esequiel Fonseca,
all about being asked to do this crime.
[Kyle] How many times has she asked you to kill him?
[Mark] This is the first time.
She brought up the idea that she wouldn't mind him being killed.
She never actually brought anything to my attention until that day.
He immediately, immediately went to that as his motivation...
that... that she'd asked him to do it. She'd asked him to do it,
and he was going to be rewarded for doing it.
There's no question. As a matter of fact, we, uh...
I referred to this constantly,
throughout years when people would refer to this,
as more of a contract killing...
than any crime of passion.
I was like, "When?" She said, "Now."
I said, "What?" I told her, I said, "When he gets off work?"
She's like, "Yeah, he gets off at 7:00 and takes the Beltway."
"All right, cool."
[Kyle] He was very, very straightforward with us,
and told us about his participation with our victim's wife.
He told us about it being a plan.
He told us about everything to do with their setup
of our victim, of her husband.
Couldn't stop him from talking.
[Mark] He was moving in the car, so I let off a few more shots.
[Kyle] Did you see any blood at the time?
[Mark] I seen the hole in his temple.
I reached in there and I put one leg alongside of the car.
I've got long, skinny legs. I was sitting in between, like a saddle.
I was pushing his ass up.
I got another hand and I was pushing the wallet out.
-Did anybody promise you anything? -No.
[Kyle] He liked to brag.
He liked to talk about how he had done his crimes and, uh...
almost as if it was a badge of honor.
Almost as if it was, um...
that it made him a tough guy.
As a matter of fact, he said it casually. He said, "I've been on my little, um...
I've had my fun and I'm gonna go do a little time now.
And then I'll...
get out."
[indistinct conversation]
[door closes]
[Kyle] I didn't get the impression from him
that he was anybody's rescuer or savior.
I got more the impression that he was the person that came up to people
and took what he wanted from them when he wanted it
at whatever cost it was to them.
[operator] Thank you.
-[Mark] Hey. -[Carmen] Yeah?
[operator] You have a collect call.
[Mark] Let's cut the bullshit. You know I did it.
-[Carmen] What? -[Mark] You know I did it.
You know I did this shit for you.
[Carmen] You say a lot of shit, Mark. And a lot of it has been lies.
[Mark] Don't fuck me around. If you try to fuck me, I'll fuck you with me.
[Carmen] I'm not trying to do anything.
[Mark] I ain't gonna take this bullshit by myself.
I know you can get me the fuck out of here.
[Carmen] How am I gonna get you out?
[Mark] I don't know. Find some fucking way.
[Carmen] You didn't tell me anything. What will I tell them?
I don't know anything.
That's all I told them. I don't know what else to do.
I don't know how else to help you.
You listen to this, he's clearly guilty.
He's clearly trying to implicate her.
She's not having it.
As soon as his hide was on the line...
then he goes from being, you know,
this romantic savior to what he actually is, which is, um...
an animal that no one has ever disciplined or trained.
He turned on that woman...
almost immediately in order to gain some... some better deal.
And that is why she's still in jail today.
[bell rings]
[birds singing]
[Nicole] I think he'll get out, eventually.
But I don't know if he'll ever be sorry for what he's done.
He's just sorry he's in jail.
Without remorse in his heart...
I don't think...
that anyone who's in prison,
much less Mark, should get out.
The mentality he has is still, uh, as a young man, I think,
even from his writings.
And from his writings...
the mentality is,
"I want, therefore I get."
And that's not how life works out here.
Okay? You can't just want something,
somebody gets in your way, and...
Buzz. You know, take care of that and then I get what I want.
It doesn't work that way. He should've learned that long ago.
He was a violent person as a young kid.
He's still violent in... in the prison system.
That doesn't mean that when he gets out, he's suddenly not violent anymore.
And that scares me.
He'd never hurt me.
No.
No, he'd never hurt me.
I don't believe that.
But that doesn't mean he couldn't hurt others around me.
That's scary.
[Mark] I... I did something wrong and I've... and I've been punished for it.
I did the most horrible thing you can do, is take somebody's life.
I can't...
stress enough that I'm not the same person I was.
One good thing about being in prison is you're forced to sit down,
look at yourself, evaluate yourself, like, "Man, if I wanna get out of here,
how do I get out of here?"
One thing is I gotta make some changes.
Because the stuff that I was doing, this is where it got me.
[Jesse] Carmen used her body for sex, and then the money.
She didn't pull the trigger, but she influenced him
to the point where, uh, she got him to do...
what she wanted him to do.
To a certain degree, I... I could say that my family is correct,
because she's somebody I cared about.
Uh...
She was a friend of mine. I mean, um...
of course, there's some emotional ties there.
So, yeah, I would want you to... to feel better.
When I found out that Carmen was hurt,
I wanted to do whatever I could to make sure she wasn't hurt no more.
The way that people outside of my life would see it
is like, "They really had something going on," and it was nothing.
I mean, it's... it's my friend's mom, and I could say we were more friends
than any type of girlfriend or lover or anything like that.
We had sex, but it's...
a couple times, and then after that, it was over with.
As far as... as far as her asking me to go kill him, no, none of that.
I... I... I don't know where that would come from.
[Kyle] How many times has she asked you to kill him?
[Mark] This is the first time.
She brought up the idea that she wouldn't mind him being killed.
But she never actually brought anything to my attention until that day.
I saw her lying there. She's telling me that would be a good night to do it.
I... I did make statements.
I did let them record me and all this,
but I did it under false pretense. I let them...
mislead me into believing that, "If you help us, we're gonna help you,
you might get no more than ten years, you might get probation."
I wish, the moment that I was arrested, I wish I had just shut the hell up and...
whatever happened happened.
These things weren't supposed to go anywhere. They were supposed to be...
uh, it wasn't supposed to be used against her. None of this was...
There wasn't gonna be any punishment towards her.
My talking too much got her screwed over.
I fell for it.
And I... and I ruined people's lives, my own, my family's, uh, Carmen's...
and anybody that cared about either one of us.
[Nicole] What he told me was that, basically,
he had been seeing Carmen for a while
and that she had gotten pregnant...
by Mark.
Esequiel found out
and beat her to the point where she miscarried at eight months.
So...
the interpretation I get out of his letters...
is that he wanted revenge for killing his child.
A life for a life.
So, that way we get the record clear for this.
The thing that got Esequiel Fonseca killed is him threatening my life.
The thing that got him beat up was him beating up my friend's mom.
As far as the possibility of it being because of, uh, her getting pregnant...
I mean, who wouldn't be pissed off about it?
I don't even know if that was my kid, if she was pregnant by me.
If it... if that was my kid, yeah, I'm gonna be mad about that. I mean...
So, I mean, the possibility that might have been my kid is in my head.
I don't know for a fact that was my kid, but if it was, yeah, he deserved it.
That would have got him killed.