Q COSTA RICA — A maintenance worker hired by Caroline Heaviland to work on her Cabo Velas property is the prime suspect in her murder, according to Michael Soto, acting director of the Organismo de Investigación Judicial (OIJ), who confirmed the information to local media.
The 75-year-old American acupuncturist was found dead on Monday, August 3, inside her home in Santa Cruz, Guanacaste, with blunt force trauma to the head.
What led authorities to the suspect was not a report or a lead: it was a police checkpoint in Liberia. The man was driving the victim’s vehicle when traffic officers stopped him for reckless driving.
A court ordered him to serve 15 days of pretrial detention for that offense. Only later, during the course of the homicide investigation, did investigators find bank cards belonging to Heaviland in his possession.
Who was Caroline Heaviland?
Heaviland had lived in Costa Rica since 2002. For more than two decades, she treated patients as a certified acupuncturist with over 40 years of experience and even operated her own clinic in the Tamarindo area until 2023.
On the day of her death, she was scheduled to travel to California. She had hired a transportation service to pick her up in the early morning and take her to the airport. It was this driver who found her lifeless body in front of her house and alerted the authorities.
A friend, identified as Susan Curtis, posted on social media: “It is with the heaviest of hearts that I share the news that our sweet, amazing, and talented healer Caroline Heaviland passed away last night. She was the victim of a violent crime”.
Those close to the victim revealed to authorities a detail that has now become a line of investigation: weeks before the crime, Heaviland had mentioned a disagreement with a man who did gardening work on her property. The OIJ is analyzing whether this prior conflict is related to the homicide, although no conclusions have been reached so far.
A pattern that repeats itself in Guanacaste and other tourist areas
The Heaviland murder is not an isolated case in the region. In June 2026, Andrea Richter, a 63-year-old German woman who had lived in Costa Rica for five years, was found dead on a farm in 27 de Abril de Santa Cruz, the same geographic area where the acupuncturist was murdered. The is keeping that case open without any arrests.
In February 2026, American surfer Kurt Van Dyke, 66, who had lived in Costa Rica for many years, was found dead in an apartment in Cahuita, in the province of Limón, on the Caribbean coast.
Local authorities confirmed that Van Dyke was found strangled and with multiple stab wounds, following an apparent violent assault at his home.
In September 2025, the double homicide of the Austrian-German couple Manuela Daxer and Rüdiger Schickhaus in Quepos, Central Pacific, shocked the country. The suspects approached the victims feigning interest in buying their property, valued at approximately USD 1 million. Three people were arrested.
Costa Rica ended 2025 with around 900 assaults against foreign tourists, according to data from the OIJ . Most were concentrated in San José, although the Central Pacific region accounted for some 319 cases.