A jailed US man has admitted killing five other Americans so he could take over their businesses and other properties in a Panamanian resort area, a government prosecutor said on Saturday.
The man’s wife refused to talk with investigators and asked for legal assistance from the US embassy, the official said.
The embassy was closed on Saturday and US officials could not be located for comment.
The couple, William Dathan Holbert and Laura Michelle Reese, were arrested earlier this week when they tried to enter Nicaragua from Costa Rica and were sent back to Panama in shackles for questioning in the slayings of two Americans and the disappearances of three other US citizens and two Panamanians.
In testimony on Friday, Holbert “acknowledged that he killed five people” — the five missing US citizens, Panamanian Assistant Prosecutor Angel Calderon said in a telephone interview.
“He has explained what he did, how he did it and why he did it,” said Calderon, who added that Holbert denied killing the two missing Panamanians.
Local media reported that a public defender was present for Holbert’s questioning, but didn’t report the lawyer’s name, so no independent comment was available on Calderon’s description of the prisoner’s statements.
The case began when authorities found the bodies of a woman and a man buried behind a hostel run by Holbert in an area of small islands in Bocas del Toro, a Caribbean archipelago popular with tourists.
The woman was identified as Cheryl Lynn Hughes, 53, a native of St Louis, Missouri, who had lived in Panama 10 years and was reported missing by friends and relatives in late March. The man was Bo Icelar, who disappeared in late November last year and was described by a friend as the former owner of a gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Authorities in North Carolina say Holbert had owned a landscaping business in that US state until six years ago, when he divorced his wife, sold the company and filed for bankruptcy. Holbert disappeared soon after and allegedly sold a house he didn’t own and a car he had stolen. Police say he used aliases to elude authorities in at least six states.
Calderon quoted Holbert as saying he established friendships with Icelar and Hughes by posing as a potential investor, then shot each in the head, buried them and took over their money and other properties, but Holbert said his first killings in Panama occurred about three years ago, when he fatally shot a US citizen named Mike Brown, his wife and small son in the head, the prosecutor said.
Holbert said he also had developed a friendship with Brown, describing him as a fugitive sought by US authorities on drug trafficking charges who was living under an assumed name, Calderon said.
“Seeing that he had a lot of money and bank accounts, he shot him in the head,” the prosecutor said.
Calderon said Holbert told investigators about two spots on his property in Bocas del Toro where he buried the Browns and experts are set to examine the site next week to verify the information and exhume the bodies.
Holbert and his wife used false names and citizenship papers while living in Panama. Holbert posted as a Dutch citizen, William Cortez-Reese, and his wife went by the names Jane or Jeane Cortez.
When Holbert and his wife arrived at Panama’s Judicial Investigation Department on Thursday, they refused to answer questions from journalists. Holbert said he would talk only to Panamanian authorities.
“The people in Panama are very friendly and I like living here,” he said.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS