Details into the killing of a US man, his wife and three of the woman’s children in Matapalo de Santa Cruz, Guanacaste, began to emerge late Tuesday and Wednesday morning.

Officials identified the victims as 57-year-old US citizen, Dirk Beauchamp, his 38-year-old Costa Rican wife, Yemmi Duran, and three children aged 13, 8 and 6.

The female victim had previously been misreported as being a Nicaraguan national.

Officials have identified the suspect in the crime as Adrian Salmeron Silva, a Nicaraguan national who is believed to have possibly fled Costa Rica for his native country.   Salmeron and the female victim were involved in an affair, according to those close to the family. The suspect remains on the run.

Police on Tuesday morning discovered the entire family of five brutally murdered in their home, which it was recently revealed, they shared with the suspect. All of the victims had suffered multiple stab wounds and blows from a machete, officials said.

Two other children, girls aged 3 years and a 7-month-old infant were also harmed in the attack.  Both are expected to survive but the 3-year-old girl has been paralyzed in half her body after suffering a stab wound to the head, officials reported Wednesday morning.

 

Murder suspect lived with victims in violent home

Neighbors and those close to the family told the daily La Nacion on Tuesday that the suspect and the

female victim were involved in an extramarital affair, and that the suspect actually lived together with the woman in a makeshift dwelling behind the family home.

According to the Judicial Investigative Police (OIJ), the suspect is in fact the father of one of the woman’s younger children.

Those interviewed said that Beauchamp suffered constant abuse from his Costa Rican wife, and had even filed domestic violence charges against the woman.

Neighbors and those close to the family said that the woman would routinely assault her husband, who was apparently in ill health, and steal cash from the man.

Residents said that Beauchamp arrived in the area about 13 years ago, and appeared to be well off financially. However, according to neighbors, the man’s wife began to blow through the family’s finances, spending large sums of money in area bars and nightclubs. Residents say that the woman and her lover, now suspected of killing the family, would often times return to the home drunk and assault Beauchamp.

Meanwhile, according to one neighbor, the family’s financial situation deteriorated so badly that non-profit groups were helping to provide the family with food and school supplies for their children.

A brother of the deceased woman told tabloid daily Diario Extra on Wednesday that his sister met her husband while working as a prostitute at The Hotel Del Rey in San Jose’s red light district.  The couple had been married about 10 years, according to reports late Wednesday.