Ash Kelley

The way that this all works out, I was like, there's some kind of divine intervention here because the fact that he was like, you know what, I'm not going to do that today.

It all worked out.

Yeah.

Not in a tie a bow on it kind of way, but it worked.

Mm-hmm.

So rather than hitting the sirens and forcing Hernandez to pull over, he and his partner jumped in an unmarked Ford Bronco, and they followed Serafine at a safe distance, hoping that he would lead them somewhere or give them a lead on whatever it was this family was up to.

So they ended up following him to the Santa Elena Ranch, which was an old farm about 20 miles outside of Matamoros.

Morales and the other investigators had figured Constanzo's organization had been headquartered somewhere just outside of the city, and later that would be confirmed by a raid and information that they obtained from U.S.

customs officials.

In their report, customs agents estimated that there were up to 24 people smuggling drugs for Constanzo, and they were all coming and going at the ranch, but they wrote that no more than 12 were involved in the kidnappings and the slayings that eventually took place at the ranch.

Oh, Jesus.

So at the time, Morales and the other investigators had no proof of what they suspected was going on between this gang here.

Yeah.

They had only really just learned about the location of the ranch when they followed Serafine.

So rather than risk losing valuable evidence, Morales chose to hang back and stake out the ranch, hoping that they could gather some kind of compelling evidence to justify a search warrant for the property.

This is great detective work.

So the next day, he returned to the ranch, pretending that he was a lost traveler looking for directions back into town.

Wow.

Which, like, brave.

I was just going to say, that's terrifying.