The families of three tourists who went missing in Baja California state last month have identified their bodies, the state prosecutor’s office said Sunday.
brothers Callum (33) and Jake Robinson (30) and their American friend Jack Carter (30) had been on surfing trip along a stretch of coast south of the city of Ensenada, when they on April 27.
Mexican authorities assisted by the the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) found their bodies in a well in the town of Santo Tomas on Friday.
Their parents traveled to Mexico to officially confirm the remains were those of their sons.
Grisly details of the killings
Mexican prosecutors said their remains all had bullet wounds to the heads.
They were found dumped in a remote well some distance from their campsite, close to where their vehicle, which had been burned, was found.
Their bodies were in “an advanced state of decomposition,” chief state prosecutor Maria Elena Andrade Ramírez said earlier.
A fourth body was also found in the well, but it seemed from its state to have been dumped there earlier.
Murdered for tires
Prosecutors believe the missing men were attacked by people who wanted to steal their car, partly because they wanted the tires.
“When (the foreigners) came up and caught them, surely, they resisted,” Andrade Ramírez said, adding the killers would have shot the tourists.
Authorities have detained two men and a woman in connection with the case, which locals said was solved far more quickly than the disappearances of thousands of Mexicans, suggesting that the authorities moved faster due to the foreign nationalities of the victims.
Baja California — known for its inviting beaches, is also one of Mexico’s most violent states because of organized crime cartel activity.
rmt/lo (AFP, AP, Reuters)
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