2 Now Deny Killing U.S. Reporter in Mexico

SAN ANTONIO — Two Huichol Indians who earlier admitted to killing American journalist Philip True have changed their story, saying Mexican police tortured confessions from them.

“I didn’t touch him. I didn’t kill him,” Juan Chivarra de la Cruz told the San Antonio Express-News in Saturday’s editions. “I saw him walking by when I was vaccinating my cows. That’s all.”

De la Cruz, 28, and his brother-in-law, Miguel Hernandez de la Cruz, 24, remain jailed in the Mexican state of Jalisco, charged with murdering the Mexico City correspondent.

True disappeared in December while on a 100-mile hike to document the Huichols. His body was found in a shallow grave.

Police say the men confessed to strangling True because he angered them by hiking through Indian land.

Later, the men told reporters and a judge they killed True because he had threatened their families.

Now they say Mexican police forced them to fabricate confessions.

Separate autopsies have also offered conflicting accounts of True’s death. One by the Jalisco state coroner said True was strangled, while a federal autopsy said True died of fluid in his lungs and a blow to the head.