QCOSTARICA – People who knew him remember him as a wealthy, noble and good person. Stephen Paul Sandusky, 61, the American assassinated along with five other people on a farm he owned in Llano Bonito in the Brunka district of Buenos Aires, Puntarenas, was a pensioner who invested in a restaurant in Dominical, and later dedicated himself to cattle raising and lately to coffee production.
Divorced and father of two children living in the United States, Sandusky came to Costa Rica in the late nineties and is one of the more than 6,200 victims of a millionaire scam attributed to Osvaldo Villalobos, whose companies Ofinter and “The Brothers”, that was discovered in 2002, attracted investors by promising them the payment of juicy interest.
Sandusky, who arrived in the area of Pérez Zeledón, Buenos Aires and Osa in 2000, had a restaurant in Dominical de Osa, which closed between 2004 or 2005. In court rulings, there are claims made by some employees for severance pay and bonuses. In the proceedings, Sandusky alleged that he had fired the workers because they stole from him.
Then he decided to buy the property in Llano Bonito in Buenos Aires because he wanted to live in peace, said lawyer Jorge Enrique Infante on Monday, who represented him legally in various court proceedings.
“He was a very noble, kind, and generous person. He told me that he wanted to learn agriculture and that is why he bought the farm. He started with cattle and then he realized that he had a small profit. Years ago we stopped having a professional relationship but about a year ago I ran into him in a supermarket and we were talking. Yes, he told me that they robbed him a lot”.
In August 2006, the guard of the property that Sandusky had in Llano Bonito was shot dead by a former police officer named Saldaña. According to what is extracted from the judicial process, the American appeared as a witness in that process, given that the victim, Édgar Humberto Rojas Blanco, called him by phone to tell him that he had hidden in the shrub by the side of the river, a cañal in Spanish, because Saldaña had threatened to shoot him.
Rojas had denounced Saldaña at the Buenos Aires Prosecutor’s Office for the theft of zinc sheets and perling. Saldaña was sentenced on November 26, 2006, to 12 years in prison for the murder.
Other people, on social networks, also said that the American was a good person, that he spent a lot of time on his farm that it is in a fairly isolated area and which can only be reached in a four-wheel-drive vehicle on a gravel road with several small streams.
The Organismo de Investigacion Judicial (OIJ) is speculating that the motive behind the murder of the six people – Sandusky, his 44-year-old mechanic who was on the property Sunday morning to repair farm machinery, identified by his last names Quesada Cascante, his wife Villarevia Rivera, 41 and their 20-year-old son, Quesada Villarevia, as well as friends of the couple, a woman with the surname Zúñiga Rodríguez, 40, years old and a man identified as Borbón Muñoz, 38 years old – would be robbery.
However, investigators have not released any information on what was taken, if anything, from the property and reasons for the extreme violence used in the attack, that included several of the victims short and set on fire.