Author Description

Guatemala, 8th July, 1978. The decomposing bodies of a man and woman were found in the sea, both bound and held under water by weights. A post mortem showed they drowned, unquestionably murdered. Surprisingly, the Guatemalan Police were not involved. The corpses were buried unidentified. Some time later, the worried families of a young British doctor, Christopher FARMER and his girlfriend Peta FRAMPTON, who were on a touring holiday, reported them missing to the Greater Manchester Police in England. A Senior Detective (the Author) commenced enquiries. From the last letter from Peta, it was known that they were passengers on a boat, the Justin B, owned by an American man Silas Duane BOSTON. The Manchester Detective learned of the finding of unidentified bodies. Suspecting they might be those of the missing pair, he sent Dental records to Guatemala, requesting exhumations. Positive identifications resulted. The American man was the obvious suspect. He had previously been suspected, by U.S. Law Enforcement, of murdering his wife who disappeared in 1968, but nothing could be proved. Due to the question of legal jurisdiction, the Manchester Police referred the case to the U.S. but the requested investigation that followed there, including a Police interview of BOSTON, stalled and the case went "cold". Thirty eight years later, in 2016, the Manchester Police were asked to re-open the case but their Cold Case Unit were unable to locate the original documents and no Officer then serving knew anything about the case. Fortunately the murdered doctor's mother, aged 91 years, recalled the name of the original Investigating Detective who had retired in 1987. He was traced, and asked what he recalled about the case. He remembered a great deal but not only that, he still possessed a complete copy of the original (lost) file! The Cold Case Unit collected the copy file the next day and, after completely reviewing everything, the documents were (again) sent to the U.S. requesting a r