Early comments they made about the legal system were used by the Nicaraguan media to ill effect, and local coverage was so one-sided with the people of San Juan relying on the Diario and an incensed Mercedes Alvarado for most of their information that Volz's parents would finally pay to run his side of the story as an ad. Volz's family quickly disseminated detailed accounts of his alibi that at least ten witnesses placed him two hours away in Managua the whole time on a Web site for supporters called FriendsofEricVolz.com. One day I'll leave here Watch yourself., When the guards called time, Chamorro and I exchanged a hug. DorisIvaniaAlvarado Jimnez, 25, a pretty, popular San Juan native, was reported to have been raped, sodomized, and strangled with a ferocity that spoke of specific hatred. 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. We also learned that, between the two forensic examinations, Jimnez's body had been partially embalmed, at her mother's request. The last tourist to be reported killed was a 39-year-old man from Denver, Colorado, who police say was thrown from an SUV and run over in San Juan in February 2020. Visitors to Nicaragua are able to enjoy the natural beauty of dozens of volcanoes, rivers, and lakes, as well as two oceans. It was utter chaos, Jan Volz told me this spring. I'm a warrior, Volz told me. ACCUSED of murder, railroaded through the Nicaraguan courts and wrongly convicted, Eric Volz can be forgiven for not having immediately recognized that his ordeal would become the foundation for. The cameras rolled; it would certainly play out well on local television, which it soon did. He was training to win his fourth medal in track and field the week he died. There's days that I feel confident, I feel good, I get exercise, I get to go out in the yard. At roughly 2:45, Volz received a call informing him of Jimnez's death; more calls would quickly come in confirming it. Gringo, chele, norteamericano for us Nicaraguans it's all the same thing.. I understood what they said, but I only produced English.. 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. One Saturday night in early December, Roque and I had a drink on the rooftop of the La Dolce Vita Hotel, getting started on what usually wound up at four in the morning in the low-key and hidden L'Mche's Bar. In August Costa Rica was in the spotlight when two female tourists were killed within a week. But he quickly found his footing. The magazine, as he wrote in his first publisher's letter, would be devoted to everything from the explosion of surf culture to local anxiety over the oncoming waves of foreigners, construction, and the almighty dollar. Professional, bilingual, and printed on expensive paper, the premiere edition appeared in July 2006, boasting a 20,000-copy run, a viable presence in five countries, and a look to rival Vogue. The proceedings opened with efforts by the prosecution, led by Isolda Ibarra Arguello, to establish the time of the crime. MAJESTIC TURKEY BY CULTURE TRIP I want justice, too. Victims Identified. Eric is innocent I'm not trying to buy his innocence., Meanwhile, they kept up their vigil. The prosecutor asked for the maximum penalty for both men, 30 years. Central America, between the Caribbean Sea (East), the Pacific Ocean (West), Honduras (North) and Costa Rica (South). It really began to mean something about freedom, learning my limits, learning to trust myself, he told me. The spot was deserted. 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 A Canadian filmmaker was killed in January 2015 to the south of the district. The Nicaraguan criminal-justice system does not yet test for DNA, and I found no fingerprint evidence against any of the defendants. I don't need a million dollars, she would cry in every subsequent radio and print interview. Do you think this could happen to anyone? I asked him. It was 5:40 am on a rainy Tuesday, March 30th. Police arrested him shortly after the ceremony. Volz was calm and collected. 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. On December 1st, a tourist was murdered in a New Orleans hotel room as his wife hid in the bathroom. And how violent would the mob get? Check with your travel company or . 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. There is a lot of jealousy here. La Perla was once a dangerous slum controlled by rival drug gang and considered Puerto Rico's biggest distribution point for heroin. Jimnez's uncle pointed his finger at the sky and said, This is justice for our small town, for Nicaragua, and for all of Central America! As Volz and Chamorro were hustled into waiting police trucks, the crowd hung off the walls of the surrounding buildings, whistling and shouting that one word: Justice!. At 4:38 p.m. the first call outside Managua appears on the log, the following 11 calls tracing the trajectory of someone driving quickly, arriving in the San Juan cellular area at 6:34. Students have been at the forefront of the anti-government protests. Los Aos Ochentas, as the Sandinista contra war of the 1980s is carefully referred to here, is long over, though the memories of it remain. The third man, 20-year-old Armando Llanes, had been casually dating Jimnez, her friends said. It's better that it's both of them., Outside on the street, the mob was jubilant. Nicaragua is a World Bank and International Monetary Fund designated heavily indebted poor country, with little legal ability to control its economic future: Everything is for sale. 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. These awful swindles took place around the international airport and in the cities of Rivas, Granada, and Masaya. Some have mentioned 'karma' I say bullshit. Blood typing had found both A and O on the sheets used to hog-tie Jimnez; Jimnez and Volz were type A, Chamorro type O. If you decide to travel to Nicaragua: Read the Department of State's COVID-19 page before planning any international travel, and read the Embassy COVID-19 page for country-specific COVID-19 information. I didn't pay to have Doris killed; I had nothing to do with her death. He went looking for more kids. According to friends, Volz is a diversely talented individualist, a traveler and outdoor enthusiast. Middle-class by U.S. standards, Volz's parents say that they've spent their life savings defending their son. CNN At least 273 people have died and 2,000 have been injured in the unrest that's rocked Nicaragua since April, according to the human rights arm of the Organization of American States (OAS). My truck made me lots of friends in Central America, and among my more regular passengers out to Playa Madera were Roque and Rex Calderon, the half-dozen members of their entourage, and everyone's surfboard. 16 July 2018. I passed Chamorro's mother in the hall as I left. A friend? Chamorro laughed. Entering the Modelo grounds, I saw industrial penitentiary buildings in need of paint. What he found inside has threatened to boil resentments between locals and expats into open hostility: the woman's body, hog-tied with bedsheets, asphyxiated with wadded-up paper and rags. I have my version. Volz and Jimnez began dating; Jimnez moved in, too. Into the fray of this fevered market came Eric Volz. In early February, after repeatedly and persistently being turned away, I was finally given access to the Doris Jimnez murder-case file in the Rivas courthouse by Judge Toruo herself. He met Iraqis, interviewed soldiers, and flew in Blackhawks. A couple punches flew out of the side, Volz told me. They came in and out of the doorway of the Sol Fashion boutique in their neat blue uniforms, taking notes. At the Rivas exit on the morning of February 14, police searched my truck for weapons. The next day, February 15, Rojas presented the defense. 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. 71-year-old . The day before the trial, the Volz family asked visitors to their Web site to pray for the safety of all involved in and surrounding the trial: Eric, witnesses, press, attorneys, bystanders, security, police; Health of one of Eric's key defense team who is sick with the flu; Judge; Doris's mother & family; That the trial is swift and that Eric will be free on Friday!. It's not hard to see why there's an air of expat guilt about what's going on here. He had a view you don't see as much in mountain towns, Chris McNamara, a Tahoe climber who made bouldering films with Volz, wrote me in an e-mail. I have to admit that all the rumors, coupled with the Diario articles, the number of people who said they didn't know or like Volz, and the certainty of Jimnez's family and friends, had led me to have little doubt of his guilt. 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. She said Ricardo Castillo wasn't credible; she said Dangla was. A few men in the surfer crowd, I noticed, had turned to hustling, befriending tourists and intimidating them into paying for the night's drinks or staging phony drug deals in which the tourists got burned. They hit me and hit me. Does he think Volz is guilty? Earnest and crew-cut, with fluent Nicaraguan-accented Spanish, Thompson, 32, now directs the upscale Pelican Eyes resort's A. Jean Brugger Foundation, which provides educational opportunities to students. I don't know if I dodged them or if they just missed me. Then Rojas asked how he had gotten the marks on his shoulder. 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. In the total 15 hours of the trial, less than 40 minutes would be spent on Chamorro. Over the summer, 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, reports The Costa Rica Star. However, Nicaragua was hit with renewed political trouble in 2018, and it was hit hard. Consensus among the embassy staff and the other two foreign reporters present was that the prosecution's case was too weak to have been brought in the first place. San Juan Del Sur, Nicaragua, is a fishing-and-tourist town of colorfully painted wooden homes laid out on lazy Pacific-coast streets where bicycles outnumber vehicles, where kids set up goal. The town didn't know him; that's why they were so quick to condemn him., Have you heard the expression 'Pueblo pequeo, infierno grande'? he asked. He was being held in the Granada penitentiary, a facility off the highway that houses 800 prisoners on small grounds. 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. According to Costa Rican news site QCOSTARICA.com, a 31-year-old Spanish woman was found strangled. So I could see how they could see me being an arrogant person. I never felt good about this guy. Volz, for his part, says Jimnez was never close to her mother. Point by point, he went through the prosecution's evidence, highlighting the changes in the original charges, the scratches on Dangla, the conflicting findings about sodomy and rape, the shoddy police-lab work, which included Volz's incorrect blood typing as well as the failure to collect testable material from under Jimnez's fingernails, though her fingers showed signs of defensive injuries. Top Things to Do in Nicaragua Places to Visit in Nicaragua Popular things to do City Tours Private Sightseeing Tours Hiking Tours Day Trips Half-day Tours Full-day Tours Bus Tours Night Tours Self-guided Tours Nature and Wildlife Tours 4WD Tours Ziplining Eco Tours Historical Tours Sporting Events Transfers & Ground Transport Top Picks 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. Fish leap from the water in schools. Black-armored special-operations police blocked the door, while six armed national police were stationed at different points in the room. Hello world! 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. While many developments can't be seen from the gatehouses where guards stop prying visitors, this one is too big to hide. It wasn't like I moved to San Juan del Sur and was just, Oh my God, a Latina sexy. There are the impressive colonial cities of Granada and Leon, the island of Ometepe and the Mombacho volcano for hiking and trekking, the coffee farm region of Jinotega and Matagalpa in the mountainous regions, while the gorgeous surf beaches of the Pacific Coast go without saying. Upon arrival, he was pronounced dead.. I can't decide justice for another person. What about his friend Krusty Dangla? But that reputation has largely . 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