Tiffany, 29, says the pair was enjoying an afternoon of riding jet skis around Falcon Lake on the Texas-Mexico border when three men riding speedboats came out of nowhere to attack them, shooting David in the head, according to The Associated Press.

He fell face-down into the water, and though she tried to pull him out, she claims one of the assailants threatened her with a gun before she was able to rescue him.

there's something fishy in this story. i know the mexican authorities are corrupt, but this is not the open ocean, it's a big lake...and yet no body has been found and no jet ski. supposedly he was wearing a life jacket. the wife was unscathed in a hail of bullets? she says nice clean single execution-style head shot to him. why? for what? simply vanished. i'm not convinced yet.

(CNN) -- Mexican authorities are searching for an American boater reported to have been killed by pirates on a lake that straddles the U.S.-Mexico border, but have not yet found his remains, a state police commander said Tuesday.

Rolando Flores, lead investigator for the Tamaulipas state police, told CNN that Mexican troops and sailors are taking part in the search, but described the area as "a conflict zone."

"The zone where it happened is in control of organized criminals," Flores said. "That's their territory. The area is inhabited by them, ranchers and steers."

The wife of the missing man, 30-year-old David Hartley, reported that gunmen in three boats approached them Thursday and shot her husband, who fell off his personal watercraft into Lake Falcon. In a CNN interview Tuesday afternoon, Hartley's mother, Pam Hartley, choked back tears as she pleaded with Mexican authorities to allow American volunteers to join the effort.

"What I hear is that Mexico will not let us go over there," she said. "They don't have the resources to do a thorough search. So if that's the case, please let us cross the border and start searching for him."

Ruben Dario Rios, spokesman for the Tamaulipas attorney general's office, said the operation was still going on. But until the family files an official complaint with Mexican authorities, "everything is being done informally."

Hartley's wife, Tiffany, is expected to file a complaint at the attorney general's office in Miguel Aleman on Wednesday, he told CNN en Espanol.

Lake Falcon is about 200 miles south of San Antonio, Texas, and about 70 miles west of the Hartleys' home in McAllen. Flores said he has been in touch with sheriff's deputies across the border in Zapata County, but said U.S. officials have not yet requested a formal investigation and that investigators had no way of knowing whether the reported incident actually took place.

"We've received the GPS coordinates from the United States of where this alleged incident happened, and we have not located a body," Flores said. But he added, "We understand the magnitude of this case."

Tiffany Hartley reported that she and her husband were riding personal watercraft Thursday on the Mexican side of the lake when they were attacked. Hartley was shot and fell into the water, she told sheriff's deputies in Zapata County, Texas.

"He was thrown off the Jet Ski and I couldn't pick him up to get him on mine," Hartley told a sheriff's dispatcher in a 911 call released by the agency.

Later, she told CNN affiliate KRGV that she saw her husband was shot in the head and also had a gun pointed at her.

"When I was pulling him up, I just kept hearing God say -- you gotta go, you gotta go. And I looked back at the other boats to see where they were. And they were heading back to me," she told KRGV. "So I let David back in the water."

Tamaulipas has made headlines recently as a hotbed for drug cartel violence, and Zapata County Sheriff Sigifredo Gonzalez Jr. said he believes the attackers were pirates linked to the cartels. There have been at least four cases of gunmen in Mexican waters robbing or threatening boaters on Lake Falcon since April, according to the Texas Department of Public Safety.

The department has warned Americans to stay on the U.S. side of the lake since May. But Pam Hartley said her son and daughter-in-law "know where to go and where not to go."

"He never would have taken Tiffany anywhere where she would have been in danger. Never," she said.

The couple's relatives have publicly called on Mexico to step up its efforts to find Hartley, and speaking on the CBS "Early Show" on Tuesday, Tiffany Hartley dismissed suggestions from Mexican authorities that they could not verify the shooting.

"I can understand why they would be asking the questions," she said. But she added, "They haven't been looking, either, as far as we know." She suggested that the still-unidentified killers may still have her husband's body, "and that's why maybe they can't find him."

And Pam Hartley said any suggestion that her daughter-in-law's account was inaccurate is "insane."

"The way Tiffany told it is what happened," Pam Hartley said. "I don't know if they're trying to steer things in a different direction because they don't have to look, or because they don't think it happened. But it did happen, and it happened the way she said it did. And we need to go over there and search for him."

Speaking to KRGV, Tiffany Hartley said she felt awful people might doubt what she said happened to her husband.

"He was my life. He did everything for me. He took care of me. He provided for me. He loved me unconditionally. He was my rock," she told the CNN affiliate, her voice cracking with emotion.

The couple had lived in McAllen and in Mexico for the past three years, said Jenny Mishler, a high-school classmate of both Hartleys. Until about seven months ago, David Hartley had worked for an oil company in the Mexican city of Reynosa, she said, and the Hartleys were planning to move back to northern Colorado -- where they grew up -- this week.

"Their sightseeing trip to Falcon Lake was sort of their last trip there," she said.

Mishler said she and other friends and relatives are planning a rally outside the Mexican Consulate in Denver on Friday in hopes of getting a better response to requests for help from the Mexican government.

"Our whole focus here is to bring them home, or at least to have the Mexican Consulate help us search for him," she said.

The Hartley's congressman, Texas Democrat Henry Cuellar, said he has asked federal agencies to press for support for the search from their Mexican counterparts -- but "so much of it depends on them."

"We want to work with them," Cuellar told CNN en Espanol. "If they need help, we can send some agents."

Lesley Lopez, a Cuellar spokeswoman, said the congressman's office had asked the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents whether a surveillance drone could be used to search for Hartley's remains, but was told that infrared cameras were unlikely to spot anything due to the length of time that has passed.

here is a map showing Falcon Lake.
also personal photos of the couple.
and the memorial service they have already held, in Texas. why not wait a little longer in case a body is found?
is there money here somewhere?

his mother has made public appeals to obama and hillary clinton to help find her son's body.

how poignant, the grieving widow sitting on his riderless bike looking sad. why don't i buy it?

click to enlarge.

if the IP was legit, someone from the House of Representatives in DC was printing this thread.
please join in and give us your opinion.


i guess i'll be going to the federal pen now.

(10-06-2010, 08:37 AM)Lady Cop Wrote: if the IP was legit, someone from the House of Representatives in DC was printing this thread.

That's very cool! Someone from the House Of Representitives in Mock borders on mind blowing.

I saw that chick interviewed yesterday morning on the Today Show. I don't like that I'm so skeptical & I do know that people experience grief differently but...

Maybe I feel this way because I would want to be left alone with my grief, the last thing I would be wanting is to get before the world & talk about it yet, people do it all the time.

her in-laws are 100% behind her and believe in her. this is cynical, but so were Lacy Peterson's family in re: scott.
i think the in-laws are behind the push to find him.
and i feel it's strange to hold a memorial service this soon when there is no reason not to wait. does she need a death declaration/certificate?
there are too many problems with this story. he was shot in the head while bullets all missed her as she bravely tried to pull his body onto her jetski. and yet his ski and body have vanished.
i could be very wrong in my suspicions. the truth will come out at some point.

this SHOULD be a productive search. unless the pirates took his body for some inexplicable reason. if this were some drug deal problem, they would leave body to be found as a warning. so if not, it's simply a random murder of a tourist. for no apparent reason.

The Zapata County Sheriff's Office has just confirmed that Mexican military forces will be patrolling Falcon Lake today with helicopters, boats and jet skis to look for the body of 30-year-old David Hartley.

hmmmm...i'd be camped on their doorstep with my formal complaint in hand if that's what they require.

Mexico City

Six days after Mexican pirates on Falcon Lake allegedly shot an American tourist, Mexican officials said they expected Tiffany Hartley, the wife of the deceased, to formally file a complaint with Mexican authorities today.

But the prosecutor’s office in the border state of Tamaulipas said Wednesday morning that it was waiting to receive that complaint, which is needed before a formal investigation can begin into the alleged Sept. 30 killing of David Hartley.

“The official complaint is missing.... Everything was ‘they said this, they said that’ but there hasn’t been a formal claim,” says Ruben Dario, a spokesman for the prosecutor's office.

Mr. Dario said Wednesday morning that Mexican officials expected Ms. Hartley to visit the municipality of Miguel Aleman and lodge a complaint in person.

The prosecutor's office said that a search began Sept. 30 for Hartley's still-missing body when the state was first contacted by the sheriff’s office in Zapata, Texas.

It was unclear Wednesday why Hartley would wait nearly a week before filing a formal complaint into the alleged killing, and still has not, though it comes amid tit-for-tat accusations that Mexican authorities are not searching hard enough and that Hartley is withholding details about the incident.

still no body. maybe the public, including me, is far too skeptical about EVERYTHING. i wish they would find him so he can be autopsied. which will only prove he's dead, by a bullet. there is a witness who says she was very distraught after it happened. OK i'll buy that. but if the mexican side flushes out the alleged banditos, they may get more info than they thought.


During a Wednesday evening press conference in Zapata, the families of both Tiffany and David remained united in their support for her.

Tiffany Hartley maintains her version of what happened.

She called the skeptism "hurtful" and fired back against her critics.

"I know the truth and he knows the truth but he's not here to her to defend me," she said about her missing husband David.

Tiffany said David's company recently moved them from Reynosa to McAllen out of concerns for their safety.

They were planning to move back to Colorado shortly before the deadly attack.

On Wednesday, Tiffany Hartley returned to Falcon Lake for the first time since the incident.

Family members laid a wreath in the waters of the lake, which is located on the Rio Grande between the United States and Mexico.

Tiffany Hartley said she would come back to Falcon Lake to remember David but would no longer be able to enjoy it after the ordeal.

David's mother Pam Hartley sobbed during the press conference. She said the family is not satisfied with search efforts by Mexican officials.

"As long as David isn't here, nothing is being done," Pam Hartley said amid tears.

An eyewitness has come forward in the case of the American who was allegedly attacked by Mexican pirates to claim he saw the man's panicked wife as she fled to the American side of the lake.

"I saw the Jet Ski come around an island," the witness told "Good Morning America." "There was something wrong actually. The way I saw her come around it looked like something terribly wrong happened. I mean, she was jittery, frantic. ... She was crying, sobbing."

As a safety precaution, the witness spoke in shadow and with voice alteration to avoid identification because he said he feared for his life.

What the witness did not see -- what apparently no one but the alleged victims and attackers saw -- was what exactly happened on the Mexican side of Falcon Lake

oh. she thinks he's dead. what was her first clue? the bullet hole she says she saw in his head?

*sigh* i am willing to admit i could be being very unfair to her. she just does not ring true to me when i've seen her speak.



NEW YORK (CBS/AP) Tiffany Hartley, the wife of missing American David Hartley who was reportedly shot near the U.S.-Mexican border last week, said to CBS News' "The Early Show" on Thursday that she doesn't believe her husband is alive.

"Unfortunately I don't think he is alive at this time, since we're almost a week since he's been gone," She told the morning show. "I do believe that possibly they do have him and they're hiding him. And if they would just give us back his body, then we can move on."

Tiffany said she and her husband's family are just trying to survive as they wait, hoping for news that his body has been found.

"It's not easy to kind of be in the spotlight right now, especially when we're trying to grieve for David and get him home and trying to plan all the services here and in Colorado," she said. "We're just in survival mode."

She needs to stop talking to the media. Jesus Christ. I don't like feeling suspicious of the "grieving widow" but, she just won't shut up. If my man were murdered right before my eyes & I had to leave him there, there is no way in hell I'd be making the rounds of the morning news programs. Shut the fuck up & get a family spokesperson.

Does that sound critical?

maybe that's part of why i have questioned her veracity. i'm waiting to see her show up on oprah on the grieving widow tour.
IF in fact nobody was searching for the body until yesterday, that lends a little more cred to the story. i'm still not 100% convinced, even though i know the area can be dangerous. WHY would they shoot an innocent tourist on a jetski and create an international incident that brings heat on them? and shoot at her with automatic weapons and MISS? the drug cartels go after their own, and leave headless bodies laying around.

and why go into a hot danger zone??

i also still question the need for a memorial/funeral service within a few days of incident and with no body. what was the rush?
if i have to retract my suspicions, that's OK.

note: she was on ISSUES with JVM this evening and sounded more credible.

a life vest with a possible drop of blood on it has been found in lake. it could be David's & it will be sent to a lab.
the wife has said she is willing to take a polygraph. (edit...no she didn't say that exactly.) it seems to me it would interfere with all her TV appearances, she's been on more programs than someone flogging a book.
Texas Sheriff says he believes her version of events. i'll buy that until more comes out. he also has sent word to the mexican gang in that area that he wants a body, and that he cannot arrest or prosecute in mexico, so just provide the body.
or what? why should they? unless it's to quiet the international attention and heat on them.

I'm trying to keep an open mind, I know that sometimes truth can be stranger than fiction. Are those heathens known for keeping the bodies of people they murder?

(10-08-2010, 12:22 PM)Duchess Wrote:

I'm trying to keep an open mind, I know that sometimes truth can be stranger than fiction. Are those heathens known for keeping the bodies of people they murder?

quite the contrary. no reason to keep them. and they are usually left headless as a warning/lesson. that's one reason i am skeptical.

A crowd of 110 people are gathered in front of the Mexican Consulate in Denver to ask that nation's government to work harder to find missing Coloradan David Hartley.

The crowd, many wearing red t-shirts marked "Bring David Home" gathered at Four Mile Park, then walked to the consulate carrying signs bearing slogans like "Justice for David."

BROWNSVILLE — The Mexican Ministry of Foreign Relations said Mexico had opened a federal investigation and bolstered its search to find missing U.S. citizen David Michael Hartley and “categorically rejects claims to the effect that Mexican authorities are not doing enough.”

Friday's statement, from the Mexican embassy in Washington, D.C., came eight days after Hartley, 30, was reportedly ambushed during a trip on personal watercraft to photograph Mexican ruins visible from the surface of the binational Falcon Lake.

“The search and rescue for Mr. Hartley started the day of the incident, and intensified this week with additional officers from the Army, the Federal Police, and from state and municipal forces, which cover the area where the incident took place,” the statement read. “The operation includes the thorough inspection of the region by air, land, as well as the banks of the Rio Grande.

sure, why not name a couple local criminals? round up the usual suspects.
Sheriff says he knows squat about it.

REYNOSA - A Tamaulipas state police investigator confirmed Saturday they're looking for two suspects in the murder of David Hartley on Falcon Lake.

State police Commander Juan Carlos Ballasteros says Juan Pedro Saldivar Farias, known as "27", and his brother Jose Manuel, known as "31", are suspects in a string of murders, kidnappings, armed robberies and fires.

saw on the news where there was sheriff dash-cam evidence of them several hours before going to the lake because they were pulled over for expired tags. They were pulling the trailer with the jet skis on them... of course that doesn't mean she didn't have Juan and Pedro hiding in the bushes to off him.

Criminal or not, having the memorial service so quickly was at minimum tactless and weird. I mean, c'mon, they're still looking for a body for chrissake!

Hahaha! I spelled representatives wrong & not one of you bitches jumped all over my shit. Slackers.