Daniel Villegas was only 16, frightened and vulnerable, when he confessed to a double murder he said he did not commit.
There was no physical evidence tying him to the killings, yet Villegas was convicted and sentenced to life behind bars.
Nearly 20 years would pass before an unlikely ally—with no legal training—helped expose the case’s flaws and secure his freedom. The story is explored in Oxygen’s Dateline: Secrets Uncovered.
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The tragedy began on April 10, 1993, when Jesse Hernandez and three friends—including Armando “Mando” Lazo and Bobby England—walked home from a party through a gang-controlled area of El Paso, Texas.
“I was like, ‘We gotta get home,’” Jesse recalled.
He told investigators that his “heart started racing” when a maroon car from the 1970s pulled alongside the teenagers. The vehicle stopped, then backed up, seemingly taunting the group before finally driving away.
Jesse felt a moment of relief. About 15 minutes later, however, the same car returned. When Mando and Bobby confronted the driver and began shouting, the person behind the wheel opened fire.
Jesse and the fourth teenager ran for safety. When they eventually returned, they found Mando and Bobby mortally wounded.
“I was just like, ‘Am I living a nightmare? It’s just a nightmare. I’m gonna wake up soon,’” Jesse told Dateline correspondent Keith Morrison. “‘I’m gonna wake up right now.’ And the more and more I tried, you know, I didn’t wake up.”
Who is Daniel Villegas?
The shocking, seemingly senseless killings rattled El Paso. In the aftermath, Daniel—who had a few minor offenses on his record—began telling people in the neighborhood that he was responsible.
But friends and relatives who spoke with Dateline: Secrets Uncovered said the claim did not fit the person they knew. They described Daniel as an immature jokester who was not capable of murder.
“I think he was trying to be tough because we were in a tough area,” his mother, Yolanda Villegas, said of the gang-ridden neighborhood where he grew up. “He figured if they feared him, he’d have a better chance of survival.”
Daniel’s boasts soon reached detectives, who brought him in for questioning one evening. By morning, he had confessed to the killings and was under arrest.
Daniel later told Dateline: Secrets Uncovered that he was terrified and had no attorney present when Detective Alfonso Marquez allegedly pressured him into confessing.
According to Daniel, the detective threatened to take him into the desert, handcuff him to a car, beat him and leave him by the highway before taking him to jail. Daniel also claimed Marquez struck him on the back of the head.
Daniel said Marquez then offered him what appeared to be a choice: confess and go to juvenile hall, or refuse and face the electric chair.
Marquez, who has since died, rejected Daniel’s account during a later court hearing. He insisted the confession had not been coerced and denied threatening or striking the teenager.
Was Daniel Villegas Convicted?
Daniel’s first trial, held in 1994, ended with a hung jury. By the time he faced a second trial, his family could no longer afford private representation, leaving him with an overburdened public defender.
His attorney called only one witness. The jury found Daniel guilty, and he was sentenced to life in prison.
Jesse initially believed the verdict meant his nightmare was “finally over” and that the person responsible for killing his friends was behind bars.
More than a decade later, however, Daniel was in such despair that he was contemplating suicide in prison. Then, an unexpected meeting set in motion the events that would eventually transform his life.
Who is John Mimbela?
John Mimbela, a successful building contractor, met Daniel’s parents, Yolanda and Chano, through his wife, Lucy, who had known the family for years.
During one visit, John found the couple devastated. The last legal organization they had approached had declined to take on their son’s case.
John remembered sitting in their home as they cried “tears of desperation.”
Yolanda and Chano maintained that Daniel’s confession was false. They also pointed to his alibi: he had reportedly been babysitting at an apartment with friends on the night of the murders.
The family’s pain stayed with John.
“I felt very, very bad for that family at that moment,” he recalled. “So I told them, ‘Let me take the information they just returned to you, let me look at it and see what I can do.’”
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Although John knew nothing about the law, he began investigating. Every night after work, he studied the trial transcripts and examined the evidence.
John Mimbela Begins Fight to Free Daniel Villegas
After meeting Daniel in prison, John became convinced that he was innocent. That belief launched an expensive, yearslong campaign to overturn the conviction.
An attorney told John that the best available option was a writ of habeas corpus, a legal petition arguing that Daniel was being held unlawfully. The odds of success were extremely low.
While the court considered the petition, John hired a private investigator to revisit the case. He contacted Jesse, who was initially hesitant. But after reading Daniel’s confession, Jesse noticed that crucial details—including the car’s color and the order of the gunshots—did not match his memory of the crime.
Jesse also revealed that Detective Marquez had once tried to push him into confessing. The detective accused Jesse of killing his own friends during a blackout, and Jesse said he came close to signing a confession before his mother learned what was happening and complained to police.
“I kept thinking of Daniel. How could they do this to him? And he was like me, he just wanted out. He just wanted to go home,” Jesse said. “And I’m pretty sure he just did sign whatever they wanted.”
Jesse knew he had to act. “I’ve got to do something,” he said.
John Mimbela Hires Defense Attorney, Recruits Center on Wrongful Convicted
With Jesse’s support, John enlisted the Northwestern University School of Law Center on Wrongful Convictions, which had expertise in false-confession cases. He also brought in defense attorney Joe Spencer, a respected figure in criminal law.
While reviewing the record, Spencer discovered that Daniel had told a juvenile officer shortly after confessing that he was innocent. That statement was not presented to the jury. Neither was a later account in which Daniel recanted his confession.
Spencer also learned that investigators had failed to pursue another possible suspect—someone who had been in the area that night and had previously threatened to kill Mando.
“I really saw an injustice,” Spencer said, pointing out that no physical evidence connected Daniel to the murders. “I really saw a wrong that needed to be righted, and I just wanted to be so much a part of it.”
As the legal process dragged on, John worked to keep Daniel from losing hope.
“I told him, ‘Daniel, I’m never gonna stop fighting for you,’” John recalled. “‘You’re innocent, and I’m not gonna let this happen to you, so don’t give up, ’cause I’m not giving up.’”
John paid for billboards across El Paso and organized demonstrations outside the office of prosecutor Jamie Esparza. Slowly, public sentiment began to shift.
Daniel Villegas Granted a New Trial
The breakthrough came in 2011, when Judge Sam Medrano granted Daniel’s habeas petition and ordered an evidentiary hearing to determine whether he deserved a new trial.
“It was amazing because these evidentiary hearings are very rare,” John said. “So we knew we had to get this hearing if we had a chance of freeing Daniel—and we got it.”
After reviewing the evidence, Medrano spent another year before recommending in August 2012 that the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals grant Daniel a new trial. In his ruling, the judge said he found the detective’s testimony unreliable.
The decision was a major victory, but Daniel still had to wait for the appeals court to rule. In December 2013, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals granted the request for a new trial and overturned his existing conviction.
“That was probably the happiest day of my life,” John said.
On January 14, 2014, after spending almost 20 years in prison, Daniel was released on bail while awaiting a new trial.
Outside the prison, Jesse was waiting for him. He hugged Daniel and apologized for the wrongful conviction. John then drove him away in a red convertible he had purchased especially for the occasion.
Where is Daniel Villegas Now?
After his release, Daniel went to work for John’s construction company. He reunited with his now-grown daughter, found love and welcomed another child while waiting to learn whether prosecutors would try the case again.
Prosecutors ultimately retried him in 2018, this time without using the disputed confession. Daniel was found not guilty. Even afterward, however, Esparza, the original prosecutor, told Morrison he remained “sure” Daniel was responsible for the killings.
“They didn’t see the evidence that I presented in 1995,” Esparza said. “And I think had they seen even just the confession … we might have had another decision.”
When the acquittal was announced, Daniel broke down and fell to his knees.
“When they said not guilty, it was just like that little string that was holding all the nerves just snapped,” he said. “That’s when I went down. It was like everything, all them years just washed away.”
In 2015, Daniel filed a lawsuit against the City of El Paso and several police officers. The case was eventually settled in 2026 for $8 million.
Daniel’s freedom came largely because one determined stranger refused to walk away from his family’s suffering.
“It would be probably the best thing I’ve ever done,” John said. “Every penny, every hour I spent on Daniel’s case was worth it.”
