QCOSTARICA – Stephen Paul Sandusky, 61, the American assassinated along with five other people on the 104 hectares (256 acres) farm he owned in Llano Bonito in the Brunka district of Buenos Aires, Puntarenas, had the land for sale for US$1.8 million dollars.
The property is still listed, since April 26, on the Chirripó Bienes Raíces website.
The listing highlights that the land has a house that measures 150 square meters (1,600 square feet), located on the top of a hill with a beautiful view of the valley and where there is excellent cell phone coverage. It details that 70 hectares are dedicated to pastures for livestock and 20 are planted with coffee. The rest is mountain with a great variety with fruit trees. It also has a corral for livestock, a greenhouse for growing vegetables, a pit for the exploitation of material for roads and water from a source that is on the farm.
Precisely, in the vicinity of that property was where on Monday at 2:38 am the bodies of Sandusy, César Mauricio Quesada Cascante (44 years old), his wife Claudia Alina Villarevia Rivera (41), their son Daniel Mauricio Quesada Villarevia (20) and friends Susan Anyelic Zúñiga Rodríguez (40) and Willy Alfredo Borbón Muñoz (38), were found murdered.
The couple, with their son and friends, went to the Sandusky home Sunday morning to help him fix a tractor, since César Mauricio and his son Daniel have a machinery repair shop in the community of La Bonita de Rivas in the canton of Pérez Zeledón, some 53 km away.
“My cousin Cesar invited his wife, son and friends to join him for an outing on Sunday. They were all expected to return around noon, where they had planned a birthday lunch for César’s father (Eladio Quesada Ramírez) but they never showed up. After a while and after numerous phone calls to all of them, Eladio, the youngest son of César and Alina, and Alina’s father decided to go looking for them, thinking that the vehicle had broken down and they could not get help due to the location of the farm.
Read more: Who was the American killed in the Puntarenas massacre?
“Instead, what they found a horrible crime scene. All of them had been brutally murdered and their bodies badly burned. We still don’t understand why, but theft seems to be the main reason at the moment,” Kendra Espinoza, a cousin of César who lives in the United States, wrote on social media. This message was shared by several members of the Quesada family.
‘We walked in and found my son’s body fully burned, the scene with the women around the car, it was hard to find all the bodies burned and wrapped in tires and some with shots,’ Eladio Quesada, the slain 44-year-old’s father, reported AHCR Noticias.
The property can only be accessed by a gravel road, about 4 kilometers from the main road.
Police hypothesis
Wálter Espinoza Espinoza, director of the Organismo de InvestigacionJudicial (OIJ) said on Monday that the main hypothesis of this multiple crime is robbery. This is based on the fact that in the Sandusky home there were “quite a few signs of break-ins”, as well as a broken window and several articles that, apparently, were going to be stolen because they were readied to be carried out, among them a welding machine, a motor trimmer and several agricultural supplies.
Read more: Massacre in Buenos Aires de Puntarenas: Six people killed in a possible robbery
The press office of the OIJ is not providing more details. In a brief statement, it said: “For now the only thing is that the case is still under investigation”.
Since this multiple homicide was known, the versions have always been related to the fact that those responsible arrived at the property of Stephen Sandusky, because a rumor that circulated in the Llano Bonito community that the American had already sold the farm.
However, if that was the case, the transaction has not yet been duly registered in the National Registry. What is known is that the property, which is divided into two farms located in the Volcán district of the canton of Buenos Aires, was mortgaged for US$200,000 four months ago.
Retired judicial investigators, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, made it clear that based on what has transpired in the media, the fact that robbery is a motive as a presumption is a valid theory. However, they warned that the extreme violence observed at the crime scene, such as burning at least two bodies after spraying an accelerating liquid, is outside the profile of the majority of Costa Rican criminals engaged in property crimes.
“For those consulted, the Judicial Police should already have a record of the incoming and outgoing calls to the cell phones of all the deceased persons, especially the Sandusky, as this will allow knowing who possibly visited it during the last days,” said the retired agents.
Stephen Paul Sandusky was divorced and the father of two children. They both reside in the United States. This man arrived in Costa Rica in the late 1990s and during his stay in the country he has made various investments. He was even a victim of the scam that was committed through the financial companies Ofinter and The Brothers. Likewise, he had a restaurant in Dominical de Osa, which closed between 2004 or 2005 and later bought the farm in Llano Bonito.
