At first, Rafael Picazo did not want to kill him, so he made several tempting proposals to make him renounce his Catholic faith. He offered to enroll him in the regime’s prestigious military school and even send him to the United States. However, Joseph rejected them.
Then, Picazo asked the family for five thousand gold pesos to free him. His father raised the money, but Joseph asked her not to pay the ransom because he had already offered his life to God and “his faith was not for sale.”
Two witnesses to the martyrdom reported that, once in the inn, the soldiers tore the skin off the soles of his feet with a knife. Then they made him walk to the cemetery, while they beat him. They wanted to force him to apostatize from his faith with torture, but they did not succeed.
In the cemetery, the leader of the soldiers ordered him to be stabbed so that the shots could not be heard. With each stab José shouted: “Long live Christ the King!”, “Long live Saint Mary of Guadalupe!” The boss then shot him twice in the head. It was 11:30 pm on February 10, 1928.