Secret Service agents said they found a weapon used to kill Mexico's leading presidential candidate after the alleged assassin had indicated another firearm, police documents show.
The conflicting reports raised fresh doubts whether Luis Donaldo Colosio, killed at a March 23 campaign rally here, was slain by a lone gunman, as investigators currently maintain.Mario Aburto confessed to the crime and has been charged with the murder. Three men hired for crowd control at the rally have been charged with being co-participants in homicide.
Authorities say the three men helped clear a path through a crowd for Aburto to shoot Colosio, the leading contender for the Aug. 21 election as candidate of the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI.
But doubts persist whether Aburto acted alone because no ballistics report has been made available and authorities say only one bullet was found, even though Colosio was hit twice.
In a report of Aburto's interrogation at the Attorney General's office here, Aburto identified a Taurus .38 revolver as the weapon "he used to fire the shots" at Colosio.
The revolver had two bullets missing and two in the cartridge.
The weapon was in a bag during questioning and was identified by Aburto at about 7:30 p.m. on March 23, Jose Perez Canchola, the attorney general for human rights who was present during Aburto's questioning, said Sunday.
But in a police report read to an AP reporter and another foreign news correspondent by police director Federico Benitez, secret service agents returned to the hospital where Colosio was taken at 9:30 p.m. with a bag that they said contained the murder weapon.
Canchola said the report, filed by David Rubi Gomez, a municipal police officer, "raises a lot of doubts about the one gun theory."
Miguel Montes, special prosecutor in the case, has said ballistics tests showed the bullet found matched the Taurus revolver, and that the two shots came from the same gun. The government has not made that report public.