A Mexican lawyer for the family of a TV producer’s wife found dead in Cancun said on Monday that investigators in Mexico have neither the ability nor the willingness to solve the case.
Criticism has mounted that prosecutors in the state of Quintana Roo have been slow to reach a conclusion in the death of Monica Beresford-Redman, the wife of former Survivor producer Bruce Beresford-Redman.
Her body was found in a sewer at a resort where the family was vacationing last month, and her husband — who says she failed to return from a shopping trip — is considered a suspect. Investigators say her body showed signs of asphyxiation and of a blow to the right temple.
“What I think is that there is neither the ability nor the willingness to solve these cases, not just in this [state] attorney general’s office but I think at the national level,” attorney Alejandro Ledezma Alvarez said.
Ledezma Alvarez also criticized the US consulate, saying it violated a “moral commitment” to make sure Bruce Beresford-Redman showed up for questioning in the case.
Prosecutors made him turn in his passport and told him not to leave the country, but his US lawyer said on Sunday that he had returned to the US.
“From the start with the [US] consul, it was more of a moral commitment than a legal one — they promised to have him [Beresford-Redman] show up as often as the prosecutors needed him ... We have to check and see what the position of these consulates is, and limit their involvement,” Ledezma Alvarez said.
A spokesman for the US cmbassy in Mexico City, said he could not comment on what might have been said consular officers overseas are not authorized to take anybody into custody, whether they’re American or not.