Belize Police Arrest Two Connected to DeVoursney-Matus Murder

MURDER IN BELIZE: Victim's mom says 2 detained
WSB News
by: Matt Johnson
Updated: May 4, 2017

BELIZE - Police in Belize have detained two people in connection with the murder of an Atlanta man and his Canadian girlfriend, the victim’s mother tells Channel 2's Matt Johnson.

Drew DeVoursney's mother says she received an email telling her about the new developments around 2:30 p.m. Wednesday.

His mother says the news is a positive step although it's unclear why her son was murdered.
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CRIME
American Killed in Belize with Girlfriend Left College to Enlist in Marines After 9/11: Mom
PEOPLE
BY ADAM CARLSON
POSTED ON MAY 4, 2017

In tears, Char told the Toronto Star on Tuesday that she had long feared the news that Drew was dead.

“But that was when he was in Iraq and Afghanistan,” she said. “Now he’s coming home in a way I’ve always dreaded.”

Drew DeVoursney was in his last year at Montreat College in North Carolina, on an academic and soccer scholarship, when the twin towers fell in the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Feeling compelled to serve, he dropped out of Montreat and enlisted in the Marines, ultimately serving two tours in Afghanistan before returning for two more years as a contractor, his mom, Char DeVoursney, told PEOPLE.

“That says something about him,” she said of her son, a 6-foot-6-inch 36-year-old she always called her “adventure boy.”

“He wasn’t going to stay still somewhere. … He just kept pursuing the next thing he wanted to do, and he was really good at it.”

Drew’s post-military life took him across the country and outside of it, Char said. He worked stints in Charleston, South Carolina, and on solar panel farms in California — with a period in between learning how to work on oil rigs in Texas — before heading to Belize in December. He had had purchased four acres of land in the Central American country about four years ago and he planned to teach diving.

He lived in Belize’s Corozal District, bordering the southeastern tip of Mexico, Char said.

And that’s where he vanished, until nearly a week later, on Monday afternoon, when his dead body was reportedly found in a local village along with the body of his 52-year-old girlfriend, Francesca Matus.

Police said they were both strangled, according to multiple news outlets.

“You can imagine me worrying about him doing the military thing,” Char told PEOPLE of her son’s disappearance and death. “This was much more worrisome, going through this process of not knowing.”
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