A burnt pickup, abandoned tents and a mobile phone: that was what searchers had to work with before they found the bodies of three surfers at the bottom of a well in northern Mexico.
Jake and Callum Robinson, Australian brothers aged 30 and 33, and their American friend Jack Carter Rhoad, 30, vanished on 27 April during a surfing trip near Ensenada, in Baja California. Authorities have now confirmed that each man was shot in the head. Their bodies were pulled from a well about 4 metres (15 feet) deep, roughly 6 km (4 miles) from the place where they were attacked in the town of Santo Tomás. The discovery came on a Friday. Relatives travelled to Mexico and identified the men on Sunday, according to a state prosecutor.
What happened on the road? State prosecutor Maria Andrade suggested the attackers wanted the men’s pickup for its tyres and opened fire when the surfers tried to stop them. Investigators believe the three were killed while resisting the theft. A fourth body turned up in the same well, but officials said it had lain there longer and has nothing to do with this case.
Two men and a woman are in custody on suspicion of direct or indirect involvement. One of the men, who has a previous criminal record, faces a charge of “forced disappearance”. The FBI said earlier that it was looking into the case and was in touch with international partners.
A surf town on edge
Baja California is among the most violent states in Mexico, with local drug gangs fighting over territory. Official figures put its 2023 murder rate second only to Guanajuato. National Defence Secretary Luis Cresencio Sandoval said earlier this year that 85 to 90 percent of killings in the state were tied to drug trafficking and organised crime.
Ensenada, about 120 km (75 miles) south of the US border, has a different reputation. Surfers like its breaks, and Californians have driven down for years.
Marchers filled the city’s streets on Sunday with surfboards covered in handwritten slogans. “They only wanted to surf – we demand safe beaches,” one protester said. Another called out: “Australia we are with you.” Later, a group of surfers paddled out to sea for an ocean vigil in memory of the trio.
The men
Callum had been living in the United States and chasing a career as a professional lacrosse player. Jake, a doctor due to start a new job in Victoria, had flown over for what their parents, Deborah and Martin Robinson, called “the trip of lifetime”. “Callum and Jake are beautiful human beings,” the parents said. “We love them so much and this breaks our heart.”
Callum’s lacrosse club at Stevenson University remembered a larger-than-life character nicknamed “big koala”. His girlfriend, Emily Horwath, wrote on Instagram that her heart was “shattered into a million pieces”. Carter Rhoad had proposed to his partner less than a year earlier, and a fundraiser started by friends of his family said the three men had “brought immeasurable joy, love, and kindness” to the world.
Australian Treasurer Jim Chalmers told a Monday news conference that the country was thinking of the Robinson family. Mexico’s foreign ministry said its ambassador to Australia had gone to Baja California to work with Australian consular staff and support the families.
Australian surfers have died on Mexican holidays before. In 2016, Dean Lucas and Adam Coleman were murdered in Sinaloa state after fighting back during an attempted robbery, and their bodies were found weeks later in their burnt-out camper van.
US State Department figures show Mexico is the top destination for American tourists, with more than 30 million visitors in 2022. In that year, 192 Americans died in Mexico, and 46 of those deaths were ruled homicides.
