MEXICO CITY (AP) — Thieves killed two Australians and an American on a surfing trip to Mexico to steal their truck, mainly because they wanted the tires, authorities said Sunday.
Prosecutors in the state of Baja California have released gruesome details of the murders but have not yet officially confirmed the identification of the bodies. They said family members of the victims are examining the bodies to see if they can be visually identified.
The bodies were decomposing after the thieves threw them into a remote well 15 meters deep. If family members are unable to identify them, further tests will be carried out. The pit also contained a fourth corpse that had been there much longer.
“The probability of it being them is very high,” said Chief State Prosecutor María Elena Andrade Ramírez, noting that the corpses still appeared to be identifiable to the eye.
The three men disappeared last weekend while camping and surfing, posting on social media idyllic photos 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 trip of brothers Jake and Callum Robinson, from Australia, and American Jack Carter Rhoad.
She said the killers drove by and saw the foreigners’ truck and tents and wanted to steal their tires.
“They certainly resisted,” she said of the victims, and the robbers shot them to death.
The thieves then went to what she called “an extremely difficult place to get to” and dumped their bodies in a well with which they were apparently familiar. She said investigators have not ruled out the possibility that the same suspects also threw the first body into the well as part of their robberies.
“They could be looking for trucks in this area,” said Andrade Ramírez.
The site where the bodies were discovered near the municipality of Santo Tomás was near the remote coastal area where the missing men’s tents and truck were found Thursday along the coast. From the latest photo posts, the trip seemed perfect. But even experienced local expats question whether it’s safer to camp along the largely deserted coastline.
The moderator of the local Talk Baja Internet forum, 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 already outweigh the benefits.”
Baja California prosecutors said they were questioning three people in the case. On Friday, the office said the three were arrested on charges of a crime equivalent to kidnapping, but that was before the bodies were found. It was unclear whether they could face more 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 an appeal for help in finding her children. Robinson said Callum and Jake had not heard from each other 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 who was with them was named Jack Carter Rhoad, but the US Embassy in Mexico City did not immediately confirm this. The U.S. State Department said it was aware of reports of a U.S. citizen missing in Baja, but did not provide 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 Cortez – from the Baja peninsula. Authorities said they were victims of highway robbers. Three suspects were arrested in that case.
