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On July 26, 2010, an American couple was arrested when trying to enter Nicaragua from Costa Rica over land; according to reports in local and international media.
They were William Dathan Holbert (b. September 12, 1979), also known as Wild Bill, described by Wikipedia as a self-confessed murderer from Hendersonville, North Carolina,and his ex-wife, Laura Michelle Reese.
They have been held in custody in Panama until a recent court hearing in which they were both delivered long sentences for their crimes of murdering five expatriates and burying them on their property in Bocas del Toro, Panama in 2010, according to AP reports.
Holbert’s bio on Wikipedia reads,
“Prosecutors allege Holbert, a former associate of the U.S. National Alliance, confessed to killing five people in Panama and one person in Costa Rica to get their money and properties. Prosecutors say Holbert befriended the victims, shot them in the head, buried their bodies, and then stole their homes and businesses.”
Holbert received a sentence of 47 years, and Reese of 26 years for murdering four adults and one child.
Panamanian authorities determined that in 2007 Holbert killed U.S.-national Mike Brown, his wife and young son. It appears Brown may have been using an alias so no details on his background have been forthcoming.
Then in 2010, Holbert killed Cheryl Lynn Hughes, St. Louis, Missouri native, and owner of a small hotel in Panama, and Bo Icelar, former gallery owner from Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Holbert’s story caught the eye of writer Nick Foster who captured the saga of the U.S. outlaw all the way from his bankruptcy in North Carolina to a high-speed chase in Wyoming to his resettlement under the pseudonym William Adolfo Cortez in Bocas del Toro, Panama where he and Reese hosted an expat social venue at their hotel, The Jolly Roger Social Club.
His book, The Jolly Roger Social Club: A True Story of a Killer in Paradise (c. 2016, Henry Holt), includes chilling recounts of Foster’s face-to-face interview with the imprisoned Holbert who exhibited no remorse for his killings.
Recouting his interview in an article for UK’s Telegraph, Foster says, “Holbert soon assumed the mode of ‘Wild Bill’ the popular bartender, spinning yarns about growing up in North Carolina. He breezily insisted that his murders were a kind of collateral damage in his big scheme of stealing his victims’ homes and assets.”
According to Wikipedia, during his imprisonment, Holbert took on a victim identity, and operated and chaired “Los Reos Unificados” – a syndicated Christian prisoner rights organization -on the national level in the Republic of Panama. Holbert also operates “Panama Human Rights,” an international human rights organization for prisoners.
In 2010, after Panamanian police received a tip-off about Holbert and Reese and discovered the bodies on their property, they alerted border officials which enabled police to capture them as they attempted to flee from Costa Rica into Nicaragua.
Holbert had been involved with stealing cars in the U.S. and selling them, according to media reports, causing him to flee the U.S. and assume a Dutch identity under the surname Cortez.
