Belize: Murdered Couple Were Robbed, Strangled

A Canadian woman and her American boyfriend were murdered before their bodies were left in a sugarcane field, police in Belize have confirmed. An autopsy found that Francesca Matus, 52, and 36-year-old Drew DeVoursney were strangled, the CBC reports. The bodies were found Monday, almost a week after they were last seen. A police spokesman tells the Canadian Press that the bodies were "nowhere close to" Matus' vehicle, which was abandoned in another field. Police say the bodies were in an "advanced state of decomposition" and both Matus and DeVoursney had their wrists duct-taped.

The couple were last seen leaving a bar around 15 miles away last Tuesday night. "We believe they had a lot of money in their possession and someone tried to rob them," a police official tells the National Post. Friends tells the Toronto Star that Matus, the mother of 22-year-old twin sons, spent every winter in Belize and had never run into problems before. They say she was "very organized" and definitely wouldn't flash her wealth. DeVoursney, who had been with Matus for a few months, was a former US Marine from Georgia. A friend who served with him in Iraq says a GoFundMe campaign started to fund the search will now be used to hire a private investigator. (More Belize stories.)