A Santa Barbara man was indicted by a federal jury on Wednesday for taking his two young children to Mexico and killing them.
Matthew Taylor Coleman, 40, allegedly killed his 2-year-old son and 10-month-old daughter last month. The indictment filed Wednesday charged Coleman with two counts of foreign first-degree murder of U.S. nationals. Coleman could receive the death penalty if convicted.
In an affidavit submitted to a federal court in Los Angeles last month, an FBI special agent said Coleman was inspired to transport his children over the U.S.-Mexico border and murder them by “Qanon and Illuminati conspiracy theories.”
“[He] was receiving visions and signs revealing that his wife possessed serpent DNA and had passed it on to his children,” the agent wrote of Coleman, the owner of a popular Santa Barbara surf school.
The Office of the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of California said in a statement on Wednesday that an investigation was launched by state and federal authorities after Coleman’s wife contacted Santa Barbara police to report her husband and children missing.
The next day, she used a computer application to find that Coleman’s phone had been in Rosarito in the Mexican state of Baja California one day prior.
Coleman was apprehended by federal authorities after reentering the United States. The bodies of his children were discovered by Mexican authorities on the side of a road near Rosarito. They had reportedly been shot with a spear fishing gun.
The attorney general’s office will decide at a later date whether it intends to pursue the maximum penalty for Coleman’s alleged crimes—death, or life in prison.
