The owner of the luxury hotel La Mansion Inn of Manuel Antonio, Harry Bodaan, has received a six-month extension of his house arrest, accused of the murder of anesthesiologist Dra. Maria Luisa Cedeno Quesada at his hotel in July. The doctor’s family has commented, “This is a very painful crime, terribly atrocious and terribly violent. What the family wants is justice – that is swift and final.”

The extension of Bodaan’s house arrest also includes confiscation of his passport, and prohibition of contact with others accused in the case. Bodaan is a Dutch citizen, and was arrested for the doctor’s murder along with a Nicaraguan male dancer named Herrera Martinez and a systems analyst named Miranda Izquierdo. Bodaan was granted house arrest due to his age (69), as well as his chronic illnesses of Parkinsons Disease and hypertension. He was also recovering from knee surgery at the time of the murder, a detail which led investigators to believe he might have made the acquaintance of the anesthesiologist because of his surgery. That theory was later disproved.

The Organizmo de Investigacion Judicial (OIJ) determined that there was ample forensic evidence to hold all three suspects for six more months, the two younger men in preventive detention, and Bodaan at a small house on the grounds of Mansion Inn. One of the more macabre details of the crime scene was that forensic experts discovered that the body of Dra. Cedeno had been both bathed and moved, probably in an attempt to destroy evidence. There were forensic clues that the body had been bathed in the hotel room’s bathtub, then later placed on the bed and covered with a sheet. Authorities noted, “The crime scene was manipulated totally, obviously to conceal the identities of those involved.”

There were also bite marks on the victim’s body which had been filled with her own saliva so as to disguise the DNA of the person who had actually bitten her. Bite marks were found on both her cheek and chest. Bite marks are usually indicative of a crime of passion, yet all three of the accused are rumored to be gay, making that conclusion suspect. The doctor’s family allege that she did not know any of the three accused, had only seen them passing her in the hall. Cedeno did take a bottle of wine and two glasses back to her room on the night of her murder.

The cause of death for Dra. Cedeno was a fatal head contusion, but her body was covered in bruises, scratches, bite marks, and there were signs that she had been sexually assaulted. Authorities are not yet releasing the full autopsy report, awaiting more study in preparation for the trials of the three accused.

Rivero Sanchez of radio’s Nuestra Voz summed up the community’s outrage at this incident as follows, “These are situations that we tragically continue to see with increasing frequency in Costa Rica. We need to bring a halt to this violence against women – we cannot continue tolerating these horrendous attacks and murders of our female population.

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