Publishing their book Mexico's Roswell: The Chihuahua UFO Crash was pretty exciting for authors Ruben Uriarte and Noe Torres. Promoting it in the U.S. and Mexico, they have continued to gather even more information about the mysterious 1974 midair collision of a small airplane and an unidentified flying object.

Things got more exciting still, however, when the authors were contacted by the History Channel to appear on an episode of UFO Hunters.

"Our hope while promoting the book had been to find more people connected to the case, hopefully an eyewitness or family members of the pilot or passengers (of the airplane)," said Noe Torres, a South Texas librarian and school teacher. "Now those chances are even greater."

Torres and Uriarte will be at Hastings Books at 7 p.m. Sunday to make a presentation on the book's amazing story, delving into the reported crash near the border between Chihuahua, Mexico, and Presidio, Texas, in Big Bend Country.

They say the story actually began in 1992, when what are believed to be U.S. government documents concerning the crash and an intense military recovery effort were leaked to international UFO research experts. Eventually published on the Internet, Uriarte and Torres were the first to investigate the information seriously.

"What was really eerie about it was the level of detail and military precision with which the report was written," Torres said. "It mentions specific locations. Flight paths, military hardware and procedures, aircraft, etc. Its level of detail and accuracy stuck me as sounding highly plausible."

The two traveled to the Chihuahuan village of Coyame, near the supposed crash site. Residents told stories of a ground-shaking explosion that summer night in '74, a debris field, a burned-out pit and a mysterious deep man-made mine shaft at its center. And of how, afterward, Mexican officials warned them never to come near the area.

"They took us to the desert to see where the wreckage was," Torres said. "The burned area is large enough you can see it on Google Earth."

In their appearance on UFO Hunters, Uriarte and Torres revisited the Coyame site. Scientific tests of the metallic fragments showed an unknown substance; they and the shaft also had elevated levels of radiation.

Residents of the area told the authors that Mexican soldiers who first arrived on the scene to clear the wreckage became sick and later died. Soldiers from Fort Bliss in El Paso were said to have been dispatched to complete the operation.

Torres, a teacher and librarian, is a native of Edinburg, Texas. In 2005 he published Ghost Leagues: A History of Minor League Baseball in South Texas in 2005.

Uriarte is a 20-year member of the Mutual UFO Network and a graduate of California State University in Hayward, Calif.