A Minnesota man who helped torture and beat a victim whose body was later dumped in a Dakota County farming culvert last spring has pleaded guilty to murder, court records show.
34-year-old Arturo Morales-Ceras pleaded guilty to one count of second-degree murder in the 2021 death of Manuel Mandujano, according to documents filed Friday in Hennepin County District Court.
His sentencing is set for October 6.
According to the terms of the plea agreement, Morales-Ceras faces a 16½-year prison sentence if he testifies in the trials of his co-defendants in the case. Three others — Ivan Contreras-Sanchez, Edgar Martinez-Montez and Tomasa Martinez — are charged in the case.
Contreras-Sanchez and Martinez-Montez are each charged with two counts of second-degree murder, while Martinez faces one count of kidnapping.
If Morales-Ceras doesn’t testify in the other trials, the plea agreement states, he faces an aggravated sentence of 20 years due to the “particular cruelty” of the crime.
A criminal complaint states that Morales-Ceras and Contreras-Sanchez grabbed the victim from a homeless encampment in Minneapolis near Lake Street East and Fifth Avenue South and forced him into a Chevrolet Malibu Maxx.
They took Mandujano to a home a few blocks away, where Contreras-Sanchez and Morales-Ceras, among others, beat him and interrogated him about working with police. Morales-Ceras told investigators that at one point he drove a nail into the victim’s foot. An autopsy found a nail in Mandujano’s heel that had gone into the bone.
Eventually, Mandujano was taken from the house, wrapped in plastic, and put in the back of the Malibu Maxx. Contreras-Sanchez, Morales-Ceras got in the car with Martinez, who started driving south; the victim died while they were en route. They met up with the fourth suspect, Martinez-Montez, and looked for a place to dump the body.
Authorities eventually discovered Mandujano tied up in a farming culvert on April 26, 2021, the complaint states. The victim’s family told police he was last seen on March 27. Cell phone data traced Contreras-Sanchez to the location of Mandujano’s body the night of March 29.
Contreras-Sanchez was arrested on November 2. His post-Miranda interview with police led authorities to the arrests of Morales-Ceras and Martinez. Martinez-Montez was arrested in February. All but Martinez, who was bailed out by the Minnesota Freedom Fund, remain in custody.
The trial for Contreras-Sanchez and Martinez is set to begin July 18; jury selection in Martinez-Montez’s trial is scheduled to start on September 6.
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