QCOSTARICA – Before killing the 12 year-old girl, he raped her, is the accusatory evidence presented Monday against Michael Adrian Salmeron Silva, accused of the massacre last February 16, in Matapalo, Guanacaste.
The evidence was presented to prosecutor’s office to the First Criminal Dristrict Court Specializing in Violence, in Managua, and accepted by judge Maria Fabiola Betancourt.
Salmeron is accused of the murder of the family of five in which the victims were the 12 year-old girl, named Shantal, her brothers aged 8 and 6, Jack and Alison, their mother Yeimmy Jessica Duran Guerra (38) and her husband, Dirk Beauchamp (57).
Two of Jessica’s children survived the attack, a 4-year-old and a seven month old, the younger fathered by Salmeron.
The charges – five counts of murder, one of attempted murder and rape were presented by assistant prosecutor, Sardes Perez in a hearing held Monday at the Complejo Judicial Central de Managua.
Salmeron continues being held in preventive custody and faces up to 99 years in prison if convicted. In Costa Rica the maximum penalty is 50 years.
Salmeron is being tried in his native country because he fled Costa Rica following the slaughter and Nicaragua’s constitution does not permit extradition. It does, however, allow trying its citizens for crimes committed abroad.
Given the situation, Costa Rica’s judiciary expeditiously provided its Nicaraguan counterparts with all the evidence collected a the crime scene.
At the hearing, the judges were told that the 24 year-old Salmeron had been carrying on an affair with Jessica, and had been drinking on the say of the massacre.
According to indictment, supposedly, his first victim was the mother of the children. The man attacked her in the same room she slept with her six year-old daughter. “He stabbed her twice…,” says the statement.
Next was the father, an American, who apparently was stabbed 19 times, in total, during a struggle.
From there, Salmeron proceeded to the room of the minors, whom he also stabbed.
Finally, says the statement, the man took umbrage with the 12 year-old, who at first he struck three times, then raped her, followed by stabbing her nine more times and when she was dead, he put her in th shower to clean her up, where she was found.
Salmeron was arrested in Nicaragua, days following the massacre, after being turned to police by his father. Salmeron had been hiding out in his native town, in the house of his uncle.
His father is said to have taken the action of leading authorities to his son after learning from the press of what he had done in Costa Rica.
