Many others simply say that he seemed aloof. No travel is risk-free during COVID-19. An enemy. Charges against Armando Llanes and Nelson Antonio Krusty Lpez Dangla had been dropped. As I'd already read in the papers, Dangla's police statement alleged that at 10:00 a.m. on the day of the murder, he was standing outside the Costa Azul hotel when Volz stopped in a low, white car with another man in the passenger seat and told him to come to Sol Fashion at 1:00 p.m., where Volz allegedly came out of the shop, handed him two black garbage bags full of what felt like clothes, and told him to put them in the car. Wedged between Costa Rica and Honduras, Nicaragua is a good all-round destination. Little town, big hell It's like San Juan doesn't exist for me anymore., As his lawyer had told me, Chamorro recanted the statement that Volz had offered him $5,000 to go to Sol Fashion. Middle-class by U.S. standards, Volz's parents say that they've spent their life savings defending their son. In the file were the original charges against Volz and Armando Llanes for the rape and sodomy of Jimnez, as well as murder charges against Volz, Llanes, Chamorro, and Dangla. I didn't pay to have Doris killed; I had nothing to do with her death. Until then, Volz would remain at a friend's house in an undisclosed location. I believe in her justice. Chamorro said, God knows I was not there. The judge told the court she'd have a verdict in two hours. It's a town that is hurt, he explained. He's rich! Until his bio was removed from the Century 21 Web site several weeks after the murder, he was listed as associate manager of the company's San Juan office, and had also made a name for himself publishing a glossy new bilingual lifestyle magazine called EP (short for El Puente, or The Bridge). I was led into a spartan office; Volz was waiting at the desk. Last seen alive in front of her shop at 11:30 that morning, Jimnez was found shortly after 2:00 p.m. when the building's watchman, noticing that the boutique was closed, let himself in with a key. The official police report states that the perpetrators undressed her to rape and sodomize her, then put her clothes back on because of a sentimental attachment, and finally hog-tied her the way she was found. Therefore the only witness tying Volz to the crime scene was Krusty Dangla. He went looking for more kids. Gatherings like this are ubiquitous in Central America; I passed it off as a religious event, a Purisima procession of a statue of the Virgin. I'm broke now. Chamorro was never called; the statement he would later recant did not factor into the trial in any significant way. Volz spent time during court breaks calmly talking to his lawyers; after the first day, he wore a heavy coat against the cold. Nicaragua Tourism: Best of Nicaragua Essential Nicaragua Stay A mix of the charming, modern, and tried and true. Where you come from, the text reads, does not determine where you can go. Doris Jimnez appears on page 59, standing in the countryside in a traditional skirt, the wind in her hair. He's laughing out there. I've lost a lot. With a murder rate that is eight times the global . Outside the warden's office, seven or eight of them were already waiting their turn to see Volz. Eric had said to me, 'Dad, do not come over here; there are guys with clubs.' He talked about the competitiveness of the real estate market. In testimony that made everyone in the courtroom laugh even the judge the excitable and often confused Dangla again and again couldn't follow simple directions to hold the microphone up to his mouth. 2022 Hyatt Place Managua 815 Managua, Nicaragua from $144/night Yemaya Reefs Colibri Boutique Hotel 402 Little Corn Island, Nicaragua from $101/night 2022 Verdad Nicaragua 250 San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua from $90/night [4] She was asphyxiated from manual neck compression, and ligature strangulation due to the necklace she was wearing. 'Little town, big hell.' This region had its king and both he and his. There was one last person I wanted to see: Rosita Chamorro. Let's say I come to San Juan and I don't know there's an eco-stove project going on, he said in December. If you don't know what is there to do in Nicaragua, you're in luck - this country has something for everyone. While Volz, as one friend puts it, had the world by a string, Jimnez, according to everyone, was the prettiest girl in town. Holmann expanded the invitation to include Krusty Dangla's lawyer, Cesar Baltodano, and commissioner Yamil Gutirrez, of the Rivas police. Chamorro seemed much affected by prison life, often to the point of tears. A frightened Estrada testified that she cut Volz's hair. In 2004, Volz joined his father for a ten-day trip to Iraq, photographing country singer Chely Wright's tour as she entertained the troops. As it was, the trial was postponed until February 14, with a designated trial judge, Dr. Ivette Toruo Blanco, officiating. I'm deeply sorry that she's gone. Chamorro was stoic. After the murder , Tercero fled New York to Nicaragua . Two of the gunmen were killed and a tourist from Utah was injured. All these occurrences have raised alarm for tourists and backpackers. Volz's team would eventually include Jacqueline Becerra, a lawyer with the multinational firm Greenberg Traurig and president-elect of the Federal Bar Association's South Florida chapter; Simon Strong, of Holder International, a company specializing in risk management; Melissa Campbell, a music-industry publicist and family friend; private security from multinational Corporate Security Consultants (CSC); and Ramn Rojas, a prominent Nicaraguan lawyer who successfully defended Daniel Ortega in a civil case in 2001. At the far end of the yard, I suddenly realized that I was surrounded by inmates, no guards in sight. I used to see Eric surfing., In other words, Roque didn't want to talk about it. The family of Carla Stefaniak said they were able to see the body late Tuesday night, one week after they last heard from the 36-year-old woman while she was on vacation. Judge Toruo pronounced both defendants guilty. On March 16, her family commemorated her birthday at the San Juan cemetery. When they first started El Puente and money was tight, Volz shared a house with Thompson and his local girlfriend, Arelis Castro Lpez, now his wife. Castillo left at 2:00. TOURIST VISA REQUIRED: No (90 days or fewer). I had only two real questions left: Would the judge find a way to convict Chamorro even though she would have to let Volz go? A campaign and a movement have emerged.. Then there were the crime-scene photos: Jimnez's body, bound at the ankles and wrists; her mouth, forced open so wide from being stuffed that it seemed frozen in a perpetual scream. Eric Volz in a visiting room in the Modelo National Penitentiary, outside the Nicaraguan town of Tipitapa, March 27, 2007. Volz left the court as he arrived, protected by a Nicaraguan detail of Corporate Security Consultants bodyguards, including a Caucasian man carrying an AR-15 machine gun. A half-dozen dusty boys, their hands and faces pressed to the windows, waited for me to get out so they could guard my car for a tip. At the Rivas exit on the morning of February 14, police searched my truck for weapons. Agreeing to try to arrange a tte--tte between Jimnez's mother and Volz's defense lawyers, Baltodano invited Mercedes Alvarado to lunch at the Gran Diamante restaurant, near Rivas on Lake Nicaragua. I realized that hanging out in the mountains and staying in shape was great, but I wasn't really doing much., Volz's climbing friends would be among the first to come to his defense after his arrest. He was training to win his fourth medal in track and field the week he died. Entering the Modelo grounds, I saw industrial penitentiary buildings in need of paint. Here and there are the signs of development tarmac-long clear-cuts and completed gated communities along with modest truck-shed fincas with chickens and pigs in the yard, the municipal dump crowded with turkey vultures, and long swaths of forest resplendent with parakeets, butterflies, and monkeys. But what made this case so dramatic was the fourth suspect: Jimnez's ex-boyfriend, a 28-year-old expat from Nashville, Tennessee, named Eric Stanley Volz. I can't decide justice for another person. What about his friend Krusty Dangla? Of vendetta.. Collectively they want to fill their heart with somebody who's the culprit. We were arrested together, he went free. Meanwhile, the first international TV crews, from Dateline and the Today show, had arrived in Nicaragua. Early on the morning of Tuesday, March 27, I sat in a rental car in the parkinglot of the Modelo National Penitentiary, just outside the town of Tipitapa, 30 minutes east of Managua. The water is warm and clean, the sand soft. YOUNG BUSINESSWOMAN VICTIM OF JEALOUS GRINGO, blazed the Diario. A 33-year-old Nicaraguan man whom Gutirrez met a day earlier, is the main suspect in the sexually motivated murder. The third man, 20-year-old Armando Llanes, had been casually dating Jimnez, her friends said. Many who sold four and five years ago realized less than 5 percent of what the same properties sell for now. Her dream, from when she was 15 years old, says her aunt Mara Elena Alvarado, was to have a shop. Jimnez studied business administration at the UPOLI University in nearby Rivas, taking computer and English classes. Cabezas alleges that Baltodano told Alvarado that if she would make a public written statement attesting to Volz's innocence, a cash settlement of $1,000,000 would be placed in her bank account, to which Cabezas, as her lawyer, would be entitled to 20 percent. But the judge had tossed out all but three of Volz's witnesses as redundant, allowing him only Nick Purdy, the consultant; Ricardo Castillo, the journalist; and Rossy Estrada, the hairstylist. Once the guards approved my papers, I walked past long cement buildings, the barred windows revealing prisoners in hammocks, clothes and towels hanging everywhere. An 18-year old suspect was charged. I wasn't your normal expat. In Nicaragua at least 322 people have . What's most important about Eric is that he lacked a community; it seemed to me like he was one of those people here to make money. His Century 21 money poured in, and eventually it grew beyond a local newsletter and became the international EP magazine.. He was being held in the Granada penitentiary, a facility off the highway that houses 800 prisoners on small grounds. I'm a guy who makes a salary, Jan Volz said. This is the story you haven't heard. A mariachi band played a haunting traditional song, Very Pretty Doris, as her relatives tearfully decorated her grave with plastic flowers and ribbons. The judge threw out Purdy's testimony, because he was in Virginia during the phone call. Eric was working to get beyond those divisive cultural and political relations. So I could see how they could see me being an arrogant person. Local opinion convicted Eric Volz immediately. Walk carefully, he said. Jimnez's mother held out hers for us all to hear the shouts of the mob confronting the riot police, which sounded as chaotic as it should. Volz's cell-phone records precisely match his account of what happened next: that he left Managua and drove to San Juan. Where is that sanitation going to drain? Travel; Money; Search input. It was an audacious crime. Nine days after I arrived, on Tuesday, November 21, I walked down the hill into town in the evening to buy a few cans of beer. Some of these sales are contested. He was dropped from suspicion when he produced a statement from his university registrar accounting for his whereabouts during some of the time of the murder. Down on the street when Roque and I left the Dolce Vita, four young men in blue shirts, all bouncers from the Otangani disco, at the edge of town, were passing out photocopies of Jimnez's picture. Twenty percent of tourism in San Juan depends on surfing. For himself, he'd like to open a surf shop. La Perla was once a dangerous slum controlled by rival drug gang and considered Puerto Rico's biggest distribution point for heroin. Speculation had become so rampant by 2004 that Internet investors who'd previously never left the States were visiting regularly on real estate tours, getting the hard sell while enjoying the delights of the bay, the 70-cent beers, the heady idea of financial windfall, the sight of all the pretty girls. The 35 million U.S. tourists who visit Mexico dwarf the number of their compatriots (1.5 million) who go to nearby destinations such as Jamaica. I passed Chamorro's mother in the hall as I left. Check if you need one below. Consider arrangements to depart the country quickly. Only one document cast suspicion on his alibi: a rental agreement from Hertz. It wouldn't be until after the trial that Chamorro's lawyer told me the statement had been coerced. They came in and out of the doorway of the Sol Fashion boutique in their neat blue uniforms, taking notes. In official physical exams recorded in the files, the police say that both Chamorro and Dangla bore fingernail scratches on their arms. You know, he told me, this sort of thing exists everywhere in the world. One Wednesday night late in January, a block from Big Wave Dave's, a celebrated local hustler and avowed user stabbed a prominent expat twice in the stomach with a pair of barber's scissors, the culmination of a long-running feud. Court adjourned at 1:00 p.m. Alvarado, dressed in black, rushed outside to lead a mob of a hundred San Juan residents, calling the police whores of the gringo for keeping them back. In August Costa Rica was in the spotlight when two female tourists were killed within a week. When a local beauty turned up dead in Nicaragua's San Juan del Sur, the dream of paradise became a nightmare for one expat American surfer. The original El Puente was Thompson's idea, his ticket to moving here full-time. 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