MEXICO CITY — Thieves killed two Australians and an American during a surf trip in Mexico in order to steal their truck, partly because they wanted the tires, authorities said Sunday.
Baja California state prosecutors have released grisly details of the killings but have yet to officially confirm the identification of the bodies. They said family members of the victims were examining the bodies to see if they could be visually identified.
The corpses were decomposing after the thieves threw them into an isolated well 15 meters deep. If relatives cannot identify them, further tests will be carried out. The well also contained a fourth corpse that had been there for much longer.
“The probability that it is them is very high,” said Attorney General María Elena Andrade Ramírez, stressing that the corpses always seemed identifiable on sight.
The three men disappeared last weekend while on a camping and surfing trip, posting idyllic photos on social media of waves and secluded beaches along a stretch of coast south of the city of ‘Ensenada.
But Andrade Ramírez described the moments of terror that ended the journey of Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and American Jack Carter Rhoad.
She said the killers passed by and saw the foreigners’ van and tents and wanted to steal their tires.
“They probably resisted,” she said of the victims, and the robbers shot them dead.
The thieves then went to what she called “an extremely difficult to access site” and dumped their bodies in a well they apparently knew. She added that investigators were not ruling out the possibility that the same suspects also threw the first body into the well as part of their thefts.
“Maybe they were looking for trucks in that area,” Andrade Ramírez said.
The site where the bodies were discovered, near the municipality of Santo Tomás, was close to the remote seaside area where the missing men’s tents and truck were found along the coast on Thursday. Based on their latest photos, the trip looked perfect. But even experienced local expats wonder whether it is still possible to camp safely along this largely deserted coastline.
The moderator of the local Internet forum Talk Baja, who has lived in the area for nearly two decades, wrote in an editorial Saturday that “the reality is that the dangers of traveling and camping in remote areas now outweigh the benefits.”
Prosecutors in Baja California said they would question three people in the case. On Friday, the office said the three men were arrested for a crime amounting to kidnapping, but that was before the bodies were found. It was unclear whether they could face further charges.
At least one of the suspects is believed to have directly participated in the murders.
Last week, the mother of the missing Australians, Debra Robinson, posted on a local community Facebook page a plea for help to find her sons. Robinson said Callum and Jake had not been heard from since April 27. They had booked accommodation in the nearby town of Rosarito.
Robinson said one of his sons, Callum, was diabetic. She also mentioned that the American accompanying them was named Jack Carter Rhoad, but the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City did not immediately confirm that. The U.S. State Department said it was aware of reports of a missing U.S. citizen in Baja, but gave no further details.
In 2015, two australian surfers, Adam Coleman and Dean Lucas, were killed in western Sinaloa state, across the Gulf of California – also known as the Sea of Cortés – from the Baja Peninsula. Authorities said they were victims of highwaymen. Three suspects were arrested in this case.
