Two arrested in deaths of couple killed in Belize
Police in Belize have arrested two people in connection with the deaths of a Toronto woman and her American boyfriend.
Police found the bodies of 52-yearold Francesca Matus and her boyfriend, 36-year-old Drew DeVoursney, in a sugar cane field Monday. The couple disappeared after leaving a bar in the northern Belizean town of Corozal on April 25.
Police said they had been strangled. DeVoursney’s body was on top of Matus’s, their wrists were ducttaped, and both were in an “advanced state of decomposition.”
An officer with the Corozal police detachment confirmed Wednesday night that two suspects had been taken into custody.
Speaking to local media outlet 7 News Belize earlier in the day, police Supt. Dennis Arnold acknowledged only one suspect.
“We detained him today,” said Arnold, in an interview posted to the news outlet’s website on Tuesday. “We are looking at some threats that (were) made.”
Arnold said Matus had been threatened before she was killed, but that they weren’t death threats. Matus never reported such threats to police, he said.
But Arnold declined to say whether the suspect was a local, or if he knew Matus and DeVoursney prior to their murder.
“At this point the investigation is still in its infancy stage and we are looking on that angle also,” Arnold said. “At this point we cannot say.”
Police found Matus’s abandoned car Sunday, about15 kilometres from the bar. Arnold wouldn’t confirm whether theft was a possible motive.
“What I could say is that the female had on her jewelry, but to say that theft was a motive, we cannot say at this point,” he said.
Colin McGowan, owner of Soctty’s Bar, where Matus and DeVoursney were last seen, also told 7 News Belize that he witnessed the couple at the bar before they went missing. He said “there were no problems” while they were there and that they were happy and left together.
“They were both very well-liked throughout the whole community. So it hit people hard,” McGowan said. With files from Peter Goffin