Three bodies found last week in the Mexican state of Baja California have been identified as those of three tourists from Australia and the United States who had disappeared days earlier, Mexican authorities said Sunday.
The bodies were confirmed to be those of Callum and Jake Robinson, two brothers from Perth, Australia, and Jack Carter Rhoad from San Diego, the Baja California attorney general’s office said in a statement. “The confirmation comes after the victims’ relatives were able to identify them, without the need for genetic testing,” the statement reads.
The Robinsons and Mr. Rhoad were on vacation, surfing and camping along the coast near the Mexican city of Ensenada, when they disappeared on April 27. The Robinsons’ mother said in a social media post Wednesday that they had never shown up at an Airbnb they had booked in another beach town.
Early Friday morning, Mexican authorities recovered the three bodies from a 50-foot-deep water hole near La Bocana Beach. A fourth male body, still unidentified, was also found at the bottom of the hole, which prosecutors said was unrelated to the case.
Each of the bodies later identified as those of the tourists had a gunshot wound to the head, said María Elena Andrade Ramírez, the state’s attorney general.
Three suspects have been arrested in connection with the murders. One has been accused of forced disappearance. Mrs. Andrade Ramírez said that she tried to rob the Robinson brothers and Mr. Carter of the truck in which they were traveling. When they resisted, she said, he shot them and then disposed of their bodies.
“Unfortunately, they were left in an inhospitable place where there was no way to call for help,” Andrade Ramírez said at a news conference on Sunday.
The other two people arrested have been charged with possession of methamphetamine, Andrade Ramírez said. He said there could be more arrests, but there was no indication that any of Mexico’s organized crime gangs had been involved in the killings.
“The hypothesis so far is that they approached with the intention of seizing the truck and attacked the victims,” he said.
Andrade Ramírez said a burned camp had been discovered in a remote, isolated area south of Ensenada, about four miles from where the bodies were found. A single bullet casing and blood stains were found at the scene, and the tourists’ van, also burned, had been abandoned nearby, Andrade Ramírez said.