In late-2018 I remember seeing on my personal Facebook timeline friends of freaking out that about an upswing of murders of tourists in the popular destination country of Costa Rica. People were canceling and redirecting flights and swearing off of ever going to Costa Rica. Now my sister traveled to Costa Rica in the summer of 2018 to study aboard and only had great things to say about the country. She loved the jungles, her service projects, and how nice the locals seemed to her and her group. I honestly brushed off my Facebook’s “friends” concerns, thinking they were isolated incidents. But recently I saw an article exposing the sudden increase in homicides in Costa Rica. In fact, in just 16 days the country witnessed 32 murders! Totally insane, especially considering the pandemic would drive peer to peer homicide down. It made me think back to those Facebook posts from 2018, and I reread them questioning were those posts reflective of isolated instances, or was it the start of a pattern of murder. Today’s crime story looks at a collection of crimes in Costa Rica in 2018 to see if we can make sense out of the situation. Thus, I present the crime story of Costa Rica’s Murdered Tourists.
We begin every episode with a look at the country’s legal system. Costa Rica has a remarkably interesting legal system, one that closely follows the civil law system and the Positivist Roman school of thought, but not quite. Experts classify the system as a Romano-Germanic style of law, something unfamiliar to me. But, according to the CIA World Factbook, the civil law model sees crime as an offense against the state rather than against an individual. Therefore, the state assumes the role of the investigator as well as the Judge. The Positivist Roman model looks towards the natural sciences for the source of criminal intentions. It suggests that human behavior results from biological, social, psychological, and economic influences. Therefore, the Costa Rican legal system incorporates both of these concepts. In practical terms, the “why” a person committed a crime becomes deeply ingrained in their legal system. Costa Rica has a democratic system with the framework of a presidential, representative democratic republic. It has a multi-party system all of which makes the system similar to that of the United States.
Today, Costa Rica has a population of about 5 million people and lies between Panama and Nicaragua with the Caribbean Sea to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west. Spanish serves as the official language but large portions of the population speak English. Costa Rica a rich and vibrant culture that blends indigenous heritage and Spanish colonial influence, with a dash of Jamaican, Chinese, and other immigrant cultures lending character and customs. Religion plays an important role in Costa Rica, with a majority of the inhabits being Catholic, Catholicism is the state religion but the people of Costa Rica can practice any religion they choose. Costa Rica proudly notes that no military has existed since 1949 and the people take great pride in the biodiversity that exists in their land and eco-tourism has emerged as a valuable industry. Expats name Costa Rica the best place to live and about 3 million people visit the country a year, a third being from the United States. Notwithstanding our crime story, Costa Rica has a strong reputation as one of the safest countries in Central America, particularly for tourists.
Our first crime story will look at the disappearance and murder of Thomas Jeffrey Cook, a 62-year-old Vermont native. Described as a hippie not much information or even sources exist about the murder but the story seems important to examine. Thomas, a retiree, looked to move to Jaco, Costa Rica. He had a relationship with Yaritza Hurtado-Palma, although some sources indicate that the two were just friends and that she even helped him find women in Costa Rica to take back to his place, so you can interpret the relationship as you like.
In July or perhaps August 2018, Thomas withdrew cash from a bank and planned to pay a debt to Yaritza for either a house or apartment. No one seems to know the last day anyone saw Thomas but his family as well as Yaritza reported him missed on August 23. Six weeks later authorities found the body of a gagged man buried in a mass grave outside of Jaco. Wearing shorts and a shirt with hands and feet bound investigators determined that Thomas died two to four weeks early. The autopsy confirmed that obvious that murder had occurred but due to the condition of the body and the time elapsed the exact form of death could not be determined.
Yaritza may have had a fling or flattered the much older Thomas but she also had a romantic relationship with a man by the last name of Campos-Baciana. (I could not find his first name.) Campos belonged to a gang, allegedly. Police investigated him and his alleged gang in relation to the sale of drugs and through investigation and other tactics conducted of some 20 raids. On March 4, 2020, arrested gang members for the sale of drugs as well as for committing several homicides, including the murder of Thomas Cook. Likely due to the pandemic no further information exists but I will certainly keep an eye on the news and hope that justice happens for Thomas Cook.
The second crime story discusses the murder of Venezuelan and American national Carla Stefaniak, a 35-year-old real-estate broker/ Instagram model living in Miami, Florida. In 2000, Carla’s family moved from Venezuela to Tampa Bay and Carla moved to Miami in 2012. Carla’s best friend April Burton married Carla’s brother and the two remained remarkably close. For Carla’s upcoming 36th birthday they decided to travel to Costa Rica. It is unclear if the trip was just April and Carla or there were other friends, different articles implied different things.
Carla had an excellent time on her vacation and posted on her Instagram “future resident of Costa Rica” and that she would miss the country when she had to return to Florida. So much fun that Carla decided to stay an extra day and explore the capital city. Carla dropped April off at the airport in the rental car and after saying their goodbyes turned in the rental car. She then took an Uber to explore San Jose before being dropped off at her Air BnB apartment. Carla arranged for the same Uber driver to pick her up the following morning at 8:30 am to take her to the airport. Carla checked in to her Air BnB at the Villa Buena Vista resort located in the San Jose suburb of Escaz. She communicated with her family via FaceTime calls and WhatsApp messages, telling April that the villa was a bit sketchy. Later that evening a storm knocked out the power at the villa and in her last message Carla told a friend she was going to go ask the security guard for a drink of water. She sent the message at about 9 pm. It is not known if the power went off before or after this time.
The next day on November 28th, 2018, friends and family flooded Carla’s phone with happy birthday wishes. Carla did not respond and her family quickly became concerned as she always had her phone by her side. Carla had checked in for her flight the previous evening but she never boarded the plane. Her family in Florida called the authorities and an investigation ensued. Her father, brother, and a friend of Carla’s flew to Costa Rica and went to the villa that Carla stayed at to try to get answers. The security guard working the villa that evening stated that he saw Carla get into a gray car with her luggage at 5 am the next morning. When policed contacted the Uber driver he reported that he arrived at the villa at 8:30 am and villa staff stated that Carla had already left so he left. Authorities cleared the Uber driver of suspicion but the American FBI arrived to help assist the Costa Rican police.
The FBI turned investigated the room Carla stayed in and became suspicious when it appeared to be incredibly clean, almost too clean. Someone had gone to great lengths to clean it up the villa. But after luminal testing and bringing in blood sniffing dogs, it became apparent that something had happened in the villa. On December 3, and just a mere 1,000 feet from the villa authorities found a body, which was later determined to be Carla’s. Carla had sustained multiple stab wounds, she was sexually assaulted, and her cause of death was blunt force trauma to the head. A Costa Rican medical examiner noted that a stab wound to the palm of her hand indicated that she tried to defend herself from what prosecutors described as a sexually motivated attack.
Days later police arrested a Nicaraguan national named Bismarck Espinoza Martinez who came under suspicion as he had told police that he saw Carla get into a gray car at 5 am, he was the security guard working that night. The one who shook Carla’s father’s hands and told him about the grey car. From what I know about the case and the evidence my assumption posits that Carla went to get a drink of water from the security guard as she told her friends. When Carla found Martinez for the water, he indicated that he wanted to have sex with her which Carla declined. But Martinez decided to rape and murder her instead. As previously noted, Carla fought back hard as Martinez killed and raped her making it a bloody scene. Then he wrapped her body in plastic bags, dragged her outside where she would remain, and spent the rest of the night cleaning the villa so the maids would not suspect anything. The storm and power outage provided cover for him as likely no one would be outside to see the crime and the coverup. Authorities found Martinez’s DNA under Carla’s nails. Opportunity, motive, and physical evidence sealed Martinez’s fate and in February 2020 the judge sentenced him to 16 years in prison. Carla’s family had asked for 60 years and members of her family sued Air BnB in federal court; the case is currently in arbitration.
The final crime story in this episode looks at the disappearance of William Sean Creighton, William also went by the name Tony 5dimes and just as Tony in his day-to-day life. Tony owned a sportsbook business, named 5dimes, and took bets on sports games. In the 1990’s he made about $15,000 a day and by the mid-2000’s he made over a $1 million a day. In the 1990s the bookie business saw a revolution and many moved their business overseas to avoid legal problems from the American government. Tony did just that moving to Costa Rica where he married a Costa Rican National named Laura and they had two children together.
In September 2018, Tony left his office and headed home for the night. Police pulled him over in the town of Heredia. The police knew of Tony, he was extremely wealthy and powerful. Even though Tony kept his real name secret, never flaunted his wealth, dressed casually, drove himself, and kept his real name off company records in Costa Rica for anonymity. Nonetheless, the police knew him and knew he had money and power. Reports indicate that the police had no reason to pull him over yet they waited for him in hopes of getting some money, they were dirty cops. After the cops stopped Tony, a pickup truck pulled up alongside him and four men jumped out, grabbed him, and drove off. Before leaving they crashed Tony’s car into a ditch to make it look like an accident. After hours of driving, Tony, now about 200 miles from the abduction site, was removed from the truck and taken into a house owned by an elderly lady. Which it was later discovered the elderly lady turned out to be one of the kidnapper’s grandmothers.
At around 3 am his wife, Laura, received a phone call from an unidentified number. The kidnappers wanted $5 million in ransom to release Tony and they want the money via Bitcoin. She paid the ransom but Tony did not appear. The next day she hired retired FBI agents and alerted the Costa Rican federal police, known as the OIJ. Police found the address where Laura had ultimately transferred the bitcoin currency and sped off to the address. The home belonged to a 25-year-old computer engineer named Jordan Morales Vega but police arrived at the address, they found the home empty and they later learned that Tony and Jordan had flown to Cuba. The OIJ started looking into Tony’s background. In 2016 the American government had started to pay close attention to Tony 5dimes due to a connection with laundering schemes discovered in various transactions. They found an IP address associated with 5dimes, Tony’s company linked to suspicious accounts on Amazon. Tony had his American citizenship rescinded because of this which made him a target to criminals and cartels because America no longer supported him.
On the 20th of October 2018 reports circulated citing anonymous sources that OIJ authorities had located Tony’s aka Sean Creighton’s body in Cuba. But the OIJ did not physically see Tony’s body in Cuba. They just had “reliable” information that it was his body. Of course, this is where the rumors started which stated that his kidnappers had tortured him as well as rumors that Tony remained alive. Soon thereafter Spanish authorities arrested Jordan Vega, his mother, and his girlfriend in Spain. Apparently, Vega had extended family in Spain.
Nearly a year later, on September 5, 2019, OIJ investigators searched a cemetery near a harbor, and remains matched dental records of Tony. Tony’s body was found…in Costa Rica. They only identify this body in Costa Rica as Tony based solely on dental records. The Costa Rica prosecutor’s office was skeptical if the body was Tony’s bases only on identification through dental records and DNA testing was requested. As of this date, authorities have not released DNA results, therefore it cannot be truly verified if the body in Costa Rica is Tony’s. On September 15, 2020, Tony’s widow Laura announced that Tony’s company 5dimes was exiting the The US, a market it had served illegally offshore from Costa Rica for more than two decades. Customers in the US were furious. The dirty cops that stopped Tony received probation and the other kidnappers received six months in prison. In April 2019, Jordan Vega, his mother, and his girlfriend were extradited back to Costa Rica from Spain but I found no further information about their trial or sentence.
Thomas, Carla, and Tony were not the only foreigners in 2018 to experience horrible deaths and crime in Costa Rica. In August of 2018, a 31-year-old Spanish woman was found strangled to death near Tortuguero National Park and days later a 25-year-old Mexican tourist was drowned to death at El Carmen beach in Santa Teresa. In the summer of 2018, a 19-year-old Canadian tourist was robbed and raped after a local tried to offer her a ride from San Jose to Puerto Viejo. An Argentinian tourist reported being the victim of rape in Samara in 2018. Gianfranco Pescosolido, an Italian ex-pat was murdered in La Sabana Park as a result of a failed robbery in mid-December of 2018. In addition, this,s a December 31st, 2017 domestic aircraft (Nature Air) crashed leaving 10 American tourists dead, while 4 died in a careless rafting accident in October 2018. Many others were the victims of theft and robberies in different areas of the country. The brutal deaths of 2018 were a huge concern to Costa Rican authorities at the time. Security minister Michael Soto told a media outlet in 2018, “There has already been damage done to the country’s image.”
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