MEXICO CITY — Mexican forensic experts were at a remote location in Baja California on Friday where three bodies were reportedly found, in the same area where two Australians and an American disappeared last weekend.
A state prosecutor’s office official who was not authorized to be named by name said Friday that examiners and emergency personnel were trying to recover evidence found at the scene. But the official declined to say what that evidence was.
The site is close to the municipality of Santo Tomás, south of Ensenada. This is the area where local media reported that three bodies were found.
Mexican media outlets and the local Talk Baja Facebook group cited sources close to the investigation as saying the bodies were found relatively close to where the three foreigners disappeared last weekend during what was apparently a surfing and camping trip.
The surfers’ tents and truck were found Thursday on a remote stretch of coast nearby. Three men – identified by family members as brothers Jake and Callum Robinson, from Australia, and American Jack Carter Rhoad – disappeared in the area on Saturday.
The US State Department said: “We are aware of these reports (of bodies) and are closely monitoring the situation. We have no further comment at this time.”
Baja California prosecutors said Thursday they were questioning three people in the case.
María Elena Andrade Ramírez, the state’s chief prosecutor, did not say whether the three people questioned were considered possible suspects or witnesses in the case. She only said that some were directly linked to the case and others indirectly.
But Andrade Ramírez said the evidence found along with the abandoned tents was linked to the three. The three foreigners are believed to have been surfing and camping along the Baja coast near the coastal city of Ensenada, but did not show up at their planned accommodations over the weekend.
“A work team (of investigators) is at the location where they were last seen, where tents and other evidence were found that could be linked to these three people we have under investigation,” Andrade Ramírez said on Thursday. “There is a lot of important information that we cannot make public.”
“We don’t know what condition they are in,” she said at the time. Although drug cartels are active in the area, she said, “all lines of investigation are open at this time. We can’t rule anything out until we find them.”
On Wednesday, the mother of the missing Australians, Debra Robinson, posted on a local community Facebook page an appeal for help finding her children. Robinson said Callum and Jake had not heard from each other since April 27. They 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 missing U.S. citizen in Baja, but did not provide further details.
Andrade Ramírez said his office is in contact with Australian and US authorities. But she suggested that the time that has passed could make finding the missing trio more difficult.
“Unfortunately, it was only in the last few days that they were reported missing. So this meant that important hours or time were lost,” she said.
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.
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