Prosecutors to argue Australian brothers were killed in ‘robbery gone wrong' while surfing in Mexico
The bodies of Callum Robinson, 33, his brother Jake, 30, and their American friend Jack Carter Rhoad, 30 were found dumped in a well with gunshot wounds to the head in early May last year near Santo Tomas, in Baja California, one of Mexico's most violent states.
About a week earlier, on April 27, the trio had travelled south from Ensenada to a remote beach, Punta San José, which is popular with local surfers during the summer months.
The friends set up camp that afternoon in the area, which has limited electricity and phone signal, and the state attorney-general's office says they were robbed the same day, by a criminal gang that wanted the tyres on their pick-up truck. The vehicle was also later found burnt-out in Santo Tomás.
Three Mexican men – identified as Jesús Gerardo, aka 'El Kekas', Irineo Francisco, and Ángel Jesús – have been arrested over the deaths and charged with aggravated homicide and robbery, robbery with violence and car theft.
The attorney-general's office says the men do not have any affiliation with local drug cartels. They will appear before a judge in Baja California State Court in Ensenada on Thursday.
A spokesperson for the attorney-general said there was sufficient evidence to proceed with legal action against all three men on the homicide and robbery charges, as well as on a charge of forced disappearance, which is similar to kidnapping.
Chief prosecutor Miguel Ángel Gaxiola Rodríguez told the ABC that he would pursue the theory that the deaths were a robbery gone wrong when the men appear in court.
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ABC News
2 hours ago
- ABC News
Inside the classrooms full of misogyny and abuse
Sydney Pead: Teenagers influenced by the so-called manosphere are bringing the misogyny they absorb online into the classroom. It's forcing some female teachers to leave the profession entirely. Today, the ABC's Siobhan Marin on her Compass investigation into where these disturbing ideas are coming from and how we can pull teen boys out of the rabbit hole. And a warning, this episode includes some confronting accounts of behaviour in our schools. I'm Sydney Pead. On Gadigal land in Sydney, this is ABC News Daily. Sydney Pead: Siobhan, for a long time now, we've been hearing about the manosphere and how this online content is impacting teens, especially teenage boys. And while it all starts online, it's ending up in classrooms where teachers are at the coalface. And you've been investigating this and hearing some horrific stories from teachers. What have you found? Siobhan Marin: Well, in the last year or two, I started coming across more and more anecdotes from teachers who were saying that they were experiencing quite extreme misogyny in the classroom. This is not taking their authority seriously. This is making sexualised moaning sounds. This is calling them all number of names under the sun. So I wanted to dig into this issue. And as such, I've been able to speak with teachers, both primary and high school around the country. And the answer is, it's shocking. One in particular said she was reading a creative writing essay from a year nine student and it described an act of gang rape against her. You know, another teacher, she was substituting in a class. It was a year 11 class. A boy asked to go to the bathroom. And then at this point, there were actually phones in the classroom. And a girl says, Miss, he's just posted on Snapchat. He's wanking over you. And that teacher just said to me, I felt so paralysed. I'd never felt scared in a situation before. But you hear those words in your workplace and you're still meant to have a level of composure. Sydney Pead: You spoke to a teacher called Meg. Can you just describe her experience? Siobhan Marin: Yeah, so Meg is the primary school teacher who's been called unfathomable names by kids as young as kindergarten. She's had kids sort of refer to their genitalia and sex acts. Meg, teacher: I definitely felt kind of a bit scared, like a bit like, how do you know that? How at 10 do you feel so confident to be able to say that to an adult in a school context? Siobhan Marin: It's really overwhelming. And yeah, if it's coming from a kindergartner, that's one thing. But if it's coming from a 10 or 11 or 12 year old boy who's already gone through puberty, that can actually be quite intimidating, even if you're in primary school. Sydney Pead: So confronting and just so hard to imagine dealing with that in your workplace from children. And as you say, it's not your normal teenage backchat, right? So how are teachers dealing with it? Siobhan Marin: We are seeing teachers decide to quit, some of whom have only been in the profession for a few years. I spoke to a former teacher, Holly Cooper. She found that there were certain boys in her classroom who completely wanted to undermine her. Holly Cooper, former teacher: I remember the distinct moment that I thought, this is different. I was teaching a year eight class; geography and a boy in the class said to me, what do you think about third wave feminism? Do you agree that it's a failure? Siobhan Marin: And they were sort of throwing these questions, just wanting to break her. Things like, hey, miss, the gender pay gap doesn't exist. Right. Sort of baiting her for a response. Holly Cooper, former teacher: And then it just ended up being a thing of like, will you prove it? So I said, OK, so apart from everything else that I was doing with all of the marking and the lesson planning and everything, I was trawling through, you know, all of this data just to prove a point because it was just going to be, well, miss, she's just making up lies, basically, like women are running the world. Like we know that this is true. Sydney Pead: And these are sort of direct talking points that we see from these online manosphere influencers, aren't they? Siobhan Marin: Yes, exactly. And in that instance, it was a few years ago and Holly worked out that these boys watching videos from an extreme far right sort of commentator, Milo Yiannopoulos, who used to be very popular on YouTube and other platforms. But sadly, a lot of boys and young men are being told through these influencers that either gender equality shouldn't exist or that it's tipped the other way and women have all the power. Sydney Pead: As well as that, it's impacting the teenage girls, these boys' peers, like they're in the firing line for this sort of behaviour as well. Siobhan Marin: So I spoke with a high school student that we're calling Sarah. We've changed her name, her voice and de-identified her. But she said that in her school there was a Snapchat group that boys in her grade were sexualising girls, rating them, comparing their different bodily parts and also taking photos of girls in the classroom. 'Sarah', high school student: They would take photos of girls' arses when they would go up to ask a teacher a question or write something on the board and they would have their phones underneath the table. It just made me very, very angry to know that they thought that was OK and that they thought they'd be able to get away with it. Sydney Pead: OK, Siobhan, let's look at how these boys are falling down this rabbit hole, which is leading to this behaviour in schools. You spoke with a 26-year-old man, Jefferson, and he knows exactly how this happens because he used to be just like this. Tell me about that. Siobhan Marin: Yeah, exactly. Jefferson opened up about his own experience as a teenager. He felt super self-conscious, as a lot of teens do, and he found himself looking online for advice. Jefferson: Like how to talk to girls, how to be desirable, how to make people want you and stuff like that. And you find these male influencers who say that they do want to help. Siobhan Marin: And sometimes the advice can be helpful initially, like eat healthy, clean your room, go to the gym. But then soon the algorithm starts changing and you get sent different messages. Jefferson: And it goes down those rabbit holes and it starts going into like, it's not your fault. It's like it's other people's fault. It's society's fault. It's women's fault. And then it's also your own fault, because if women don't want you, then it's because you're a beta, you're not manly enough. You're too much of a nice guy. Siobhan Marin: Jefferson said it really started shifting his views about women and his relationships with women. He was just seeing them as opportunities to have a romantic partnership and not just, you know, recognising them as a human or a potential friendship. Sydney Pead: And you've also been speaking with a youth educator, Daniel Principe. He spends a lot of time with teens and he's not surprised that we're seeing what's happening online exported into the classroom, right? Siobhan Marin: Yeah, exactly. So Daniel's work is really important because he's going into schools and he's sort of saying, hey, boys, are you being served this content? Daniel Principe, youth educator: Who has seen something on socials where a man or a group of men are telling a woman or a group of women, get back in the kitchen, go make me a sandwich. Who's seen that in their social media? Siobhan Marin: They all put their hands up. You know, the year eights, the year 11s and 12s that I got to film with. They're seeing really problematic stuff. They're not necessarily searching for it. And yeah, sometimes some of the kids might be like, oh, it's just a laugh or, you know, I know it's stupid, but there are other boys that it might implant in them in a different way. Research around the world has shown that if you log onto a social media site as a teenager, you're quite likely to be sent problematic content, you know, quickly. Daniel Principe, youth educator: I don't think we should be surprised if these attitudes then leak out in what some boys do, because that is the diet that they've been served up. These toxic voices who sadly the algorithms obviously send more content to. Siobhan Marin: And the problem there is that adults and parents aren't seeing the same content because we're not being delivered that same algorithm. These billion and trillion dollar industries, big tech, are weaponising this content and targeting young men, teenage boys, because they can make money off it. They can grab their attention, keep them there for longer, send them down a rabbit hole and ultimately profit. And it's an issue that's obviously playing out across the world where we're seeing it spoken about a lot from the e-safety commissioner here in Australia. But I think many governments and societies don't know what to do, don't know how to rein in big tech in this regard. And we can't necessarily blame them for being given all of this material, being bombarded with problematic narratives about masculinity and the opposite sex. But obviously we want parents and societies and schools and politicians to be providing a safety net and critical media literacy so that when the boys do see this type of content, they can straight away think, oh, well, I know that this is just stupid and they're trying to weaponise beliefs and profit off of me. Sydney Pead: Teenage boys in particular can be so vulnerable to this kind of thing because, as you say, if they're suffering from low self-esteem or, you know, they're looking for guidance, they're really susceptible to this sort of messaging. Siobhan Marin: Exactly. Exactly. And it's such a complex issue. Sarah, the high school student that we spoke to, makes the point that, yeah, when it comes to gender-based violence or discrimination, it's not all men, but it's enough men. And so we need to focus on who are overwhelmingly vulnerable. Overwhelmingly the victims, which is women. But then also, you know, there are another perspective that we cannot alienate boys and make them feel bad about masculinity. Not the problematic aspects that they might be sold on social media, but masculinity in general. We can't make them feel bad about that because if we do, we risk them going further into the manosphere and looking for that validation that these really toxic content creators are offering to teenage boys and young men. Sydney Pead: Well, Jefferson, who we heard from, he managed to pull himself out of this rabbit hole. So how did he do that? Siobhan Marin: For Jefferson, it was his sister who played a really big role. Thankfully, they had a close relationship and he was talking to her about relationships and why don't these girls like me and maybe I need to be less of a nice guy. And his sister just said blatantly, that's dumb. Jefferson: She would just catch me saying really stupid shit. Like if I spewed back the talking points that I was given, she wouldn't give ground, essentially. I'd used to go to her for dating advice, I guess. And I'd say things like, maybe I should just be a little more mean. It's just like, what are you talking about? Siobhan Marin: And so he started having this unravelling of such beliefs. And in the process, you know, it came around to see that these content creators who were spreading misogynistic sort of stuff were making him feel terrible. This misogynistic movement online is filled with hate. That's how it flourishes through telling young boys that they've got a clear enemy, which is women and society at large. Jefferson: You have a lot of people out there who probably love you. A lot of people out there who probably want to see you become a better person. And hate's just not the way. Hate's just not the way to do it. Sydney Pead: Okay. So Siobhan, after all your conversations, what is your message to parents? What do they need to understand about what their children are going through and how hard it is to stop this cycle? Siobhan Marin: Oh, it was really sobering. I think it's just checking in on your kids and having a frank dialogue and saying, look, I'm not here to judge you. I just want to know what you're seeing online, what you're exposed to and what sort of messages your friends are saying in the schoolyard as well. Do you hear these kind of things? Do you hear misogynistic jokes or rape jokes? And how do they make you feel? I think the kids need these multiple touch points and reminders of how they can navigate this complex world that they didn't be asked to be born into. They didn't ask for social media to have such dominance in their lives. Perhaps things will change with the social media ban, but we know that kids are very resourceful. It's not a simple answer. And I think big tech has a lot of responsibility to carry. But, you know, it's going to be human to human interaction that really supports boys and girls in dealing with this sort of content and the ideology that is spreading. Sydney Pead: Siobhan Marin is a presenter on Compass and host of the Quick Smart podcast. You can watch her Compass episode on ABC iView. This episode was produced by Kara Jensen-Mackinnon and Adair Sheppard. Audio production by Sam Dunn. Our supervising producer is David Coady. I'm Sydney Pead. ABC News Daily will be back again tomorrow. Thanks for listening.
Perth Now
12 hours ago
- Perth Now
Motive emerges for murder of Perth brothers in Mexico
The Mexican prosecutor leading the case against four people accused of killing Perth brothers Jake and Callum Robinson has ruled out any connection to cartel activity, saying it was more likely a botched robbery. Miguel Ángel Gaxiola Rodríguez says there is still no evidence linking the brutal murders to organised crime, the ABC reported. This is despite the horrific killings occurring in an area notorious for cartel activity and violence. Instead, Mr Gaxiola Rodríguez believes the most likely reason for the murders was tyre theft. Jake and Callum Robinson had been camping in a remote part of northern Mexico with their American friend Carter Rhoad when they were each shot in the head in April 2024. Their bodies were then callously dumped in a 15-metre-deep well in Baja California. A fourth, unrelated body was also found in the same location. Mr Gaxiola Rodriguez told the ABC: 'It appears the perpetrators identified an opportunity for robbery when they encountered the foreigners in a highly isolated location. 'These individuals exploited the circumstances to perpetrate the robbery, resulting in the fatal shooting of the three foreigners.' Four people are now facing charges over the killings: Jesús Gerardo, known as 'El Kekas'; his then-girlfriend Ari Gisell; Ángel Jesús; and Irineo Francisco. Mexican laws prevent the publication of the group's surnames. Jake Robinson and Callum Robinson. Missing in Mexico. Credit: Unknown / Instagram Since their arrests, a court was told Gerardo — who was the first to be taken into custody — had allegedly confessed to his then-partner, showing her the allegedly stolen tyres and then allegedly telling her: 'I up three gringos'. All the defendants are due to appear in court next week, where they will face charges of aggravated homicide — which carries a maximum penalty of 60 years, violent robbery, and grand theft auto, with the three men also facing an addition count of forced disappearance. 'We have compelling evidence, including witness statements, and we have found the vehicle,' Mr Gaxiola Rodríguez said. 'The objective is to ensure that the accused are brought to trial and convicted of the homicide and robbery.'
9 News
13 hours ago
- 9 News
California farmworker who fell from roof during chaotic ICE raid dies
Your web browser is no longer supported. To improve your experience update it here A farmworker who fell from a greenhouse roof during a chaotic ICE raid this week at a California cannabis facility died on Saturday of his injuries. Jaime Alanis, 57, is the first person to die in one of the Trump administration's anti-immigration operations. Yesenia Duran, Alanis' niece, confirmed his death to The Associated Press. Duran has posted on the fundraising site GoFundMe to say her uncle was his family's only provider and he had been sending his earnings back to a wife and daughter in Mexico. Jaime Alanis, 57, is the first person to die in one of the Trump administration's anti-immigration operations. (Supplied) The United Food Workers said Alanis worked at the farm for 10 years. 'These violent and cruel federal actions terrorize American communities, disrupt the American food supply chain, threaten lives and separate families,' the union said recently in a statement on the social platform X. The UFW reported Alanis' death prematurely late on Friday, but the Ventura County Medical Center later issued a statement authorised by the family saying he was still on life support. The Department of Homeland Security said it executed criminal search warrants Thursday at Glass House Farms facilities in Camarillo and Carpinteria. Garcia called family to say he was hiding and possibly was fleeing agents before he fell about nine meters from the roof and broke his neck, according to information from family, hospital and government sources. Agents arrested some 200 people suspected of being in the country illegally and identified at least 10 immigrant children on the sites, DHS said in a statement. Garcia called family to say he was hiding and possibly was fleeing agents before he fell about nine meters from the roof and broke his neck, according to information from family, hospital and government sources. (Supplied) Alanis was not among them, the agency said. 'This man was not in and has not been in CBP or ICE custody,' DHS Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement. 'Although he was not being pursued by law enforcement, this individual climbed up to the roof of a greenhouse and fell 30 feet. CBP immediately called a medivac to the scene to get him care as quickly as possible.' Four US citizens were arrested during the incident for allegedly 'assaulting or resisting officers,' according to DHS, and authorities were offering a $76,000 (US$50,000) reward for information leading to the arrest of a person suspected of firing a gun at federal agents. During the raid crowds of people gathered outside the facility in Camarillo to seek information about their relatives and protest immigration enforcement. Authorities clad in military-style helmets and uniforms faced off with the demonstrators, and people ultimately retreated amid acrid green and white billowing smoke. Glass House, a licensed California cannabis grower, said in a statement that immigration agents had valid warrants. The company said workers were detained and it is helping provide them with legal representation. The farm also grows tomatoes and cucumbers. 'Glass House has never knowingly violated applicable hiring practices and does not and has never employed minors,' it said. The business is owned by Graham Farrar, a generous donor to California Democrats including Gov. Gavin Newsom, a vocal critic of Republican President Donald Trump. USA immigration World Donald Trump CONTACT US
