Tourist Deaths Cast Cloud in Costa Rica

Emily Eagan had told her family, “I have found paradise.”

Instead, eight days ago, she and a friend met violent deaths that now threaten the paradise she loved, reawakening old prejudices and resentments yet at the same time uniting this long-neglected community, which is determined to find answers.

Puerto Viejo could be a tropical setting for an Agatha Christie mystery, the sort of intimate resort where Hercule Poirot would ask a few perceptive questions, gather all the suspects under a single thatched roof and unmask the murderer.

But in real life, police are still looking for two suspects in the deaths of Eagan and her friend, Emily Howell, both American, and the investigation has moved from among the dirt roads and palm fronds of this Caribbean beach town to the offices and laboratories of San Jose, Costa Rica’s capital and now the headquarters of a nationwide manhunt.

People here are left to worry about the future and to ponder the events that ended with the bullet-riddled bodies of the two 19-year-old college students tossed on a roadside and their rental car burned 84 miles away, on the highway to San Jose.

Police are searching for a craftsman who frequently visited from the Pacific Coast town of Puntarenas and was seen with the women late on the day they disappeared. They are also looking for a San Jose college student who fits the description of a man that two tow-truck drivers said forced them at gunpoint to burn the rental car.

The killings, which occurred two weeks after the murder of a hotel owner in a bungled burglary attempt, have resulted in a U.S. State Department travel warning for this area.

And in Puerto Viejo, genuine sadness at the young women’s deaths is mixed with resentment that the killings were committed here, tarnishing the community’s image. Those emotions were evident as townspeople silently greeted the Eagan family when they visited Saturday.

Bouquets and signs reading “Our deepest feelings and heartfelt condolences” were accompanied by others that demanded, “Media, tell the truth.”

That truth is a complex tale that 10 detectives and 20 technicians assigned to the case have yet to unravel.

Part of it began in 1978, before the victims were born. That was the year a blight destroyed the cacao crop, forcing this once-isolated region to turn to tourism in order to survive.

More than two decades later, 170 small businesses have grown up in Puerto Viejo and neighboring Cahuita. They offer the sort of low-impact tourism that is Costa Rica’s pride: single-story hotels invisible from the beach and open-air restaurants so tranquil that hummingbirds build nests in their rafters.

Tourism Crucial to Region’s Livelihood

Locals say about half the region’s estimated 100,000 visitors a year are foreigners, a mix of Europeans and young Americans like Eagan and Howell, more attracted by isolated beaches than by the cable TV available at the international hotels on the Pacific Coast.

They represent about 8% of Costa Rica’s international visitors. Still, they are as important to the local economy as the big hotels--which bring in the bulk of the $900 million in annual tourism revenue--are to the rest of the country.

Tourism is classified as this nation’s second-most important source of export earnings after computer components. Costa Rica’s image as “the Switzerland of Central America,” an oasis of democracy and stability in an isthmus ravaged by war in the 1980s and by crime in the 1990s, has been essential to attracting both tourists and international high-technology investors.

The Eagans, who have repeatedly insisted that they do not blame Costa Rica for their daughter’s death, have said that the country’s reputation as a safe place was a factor in her decision to come here to join friends from Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio.

Years before she made that decision, community leaders here had been struggling to keep their town safe. By opening up to outsiders, this close-knit Afro-Caribbean and indigenous region had saved its livelihood. But it had begun a process that eroded its small-town security.

Discotheques sprang up, their windowless walls contrasting with the region’s open Caribbean architecture. Soon, there were rumors that drugs were being sold in some bars, smuggled in from the nearby port at Limon or across the Panamanian border, a few miles from here.

Local business owners pleaded for more police protection.

“We have been asking for help for six years, and we have been ignored,” Edwin Patterson, president of the Puerto Viejo Tourism Chamber, said during a break from a marathon of meetings at which community leaders were seeking solutions. “If they had paid attention to us, we would not have these problems today.”

The community began talking to regional police authorities and has taken complaints to the Cabinet minister responsible for public safety, said Enrique Joseph, president of the nearby Cahuita Tourism Chamber. But it got no results.

“The difference is this,” said Patterson, pointing to his skin, which is several shades darker than the average in Costa Rica but typical of this region.

Still, even without the added police protection, Puerto Viejo is a safe enough place that Eagan, Howell and their friend, Shauna Sellers, 20, could become contented habitual visitors.

“I’m going to stay here and build a house--I’m going to dig ditches,” Eagan’s father, Charles, of Ann Arbor, Mich., recalled her telling him. “She was so proud of that. We wanted to see why our daughter loved this so much.”

2 Victims Spent Weekends With Friend

On Saturday, Eagan, his wife, Shirley, and their daughter, Sarah, sat in the cabin Emily had rented in the town she loved so much. Since her arrival in Costa Rica on Feb. 22, she had become known as an animal lover who collected many of the stray dogs that abound here.

After she arrived to join Howell and Sellers, who had come in January, the three spent every weekend here, local people said. Sellers, who was on a college photography assignment, had bought property locally, according to police. That was where Eagan planned to build a house.

According to Sellers’ statement to police, she stayed at the cabin a week ago Sunday when Howell and Eagan left to go out about 10 p.m. in a car they had rented in San Jose. Witnesses saw them in town as late as midnight with a craftsman known as David.

Their bodies were found the next afternoon. Eagan was partially clothed and had three gunshot wounds in her head and one in a shoulder. Howell had been shot once in the back and twice in the head and was naked.

Police found no semen in their bodies but have not completely discounted the possibility of rape, said Jorge Rojas, director of the judicial investigative police, who are in charge of the case. The results of tests for narcotics were not yet available, he said.

Investigators spoke with two tow-truck drivers who said they had seen the rental car overturned on the highway after 2 a.m. Monday and had stopped to tow it. Three men were in the car, they said. One man was armed and forced them to burn the car several miles away, Rojas said.

“We are close” to wrapping up the investigation, he said Sunday.

On Saturday, 24 police officers arrived in Puerto Viejo. They will be followed by eight motorcycles and four patrol cars, said Walter Navarro, director of public forces.

Joseph said that community businesses were told that they had to lodge and feed the officers or that these reinforcements would be withdrawn from the area.

Navarro responded, “That is false.”

The new force is permanent, he added, but the individual officers will be rotated every two weeks.

*

Researcher Auriana Koutnik in San Jose contributed to this report.