‘Our world stopped’: Parents of slain Australian surfers ask for maximum sentence

Ensenada: The devastated parents of Jake and Callum Robinson said their world “stopped” when their sons were shot dead in Mexico two years ago, as they made an emotional plea for the three accused killers to be locked up forever.

Martin Robinson held his wife Debra as she told the court on the final day of the murder trial that “our lives will never be the same without them, but our love for them will never fade”.

“Callum and Jake were our only children,” Debra said. “Their loss has taken from us not only the sons we loved, but the future we imagined with them.

“The day Callum and Jake were murdered, our world stopped … We never want another family to experience the devastation and suffering that has been inflicted on ours.”

The Robinsons have attended every day of the trial in Ensenada, on Mexico’s Pacific Coast, which began in early September. After five weeks, judge Raúl Hernández Arellano is set to rule on the guilt of the three accused murderers on Friday afternoon (Mexico time).

The brothers and their American friend Carter Rhoad disappeared in late April 2024 while camping in a remote surfing spot in Baja California, a region also known for drug cartels and gang violence. Their bodies were discovered days later down a well. They had been shot.

Prosecutors alleged the three tourists were killed in a robbery gone wrong. Last year, the then girlfriend of the alleged ringleader was sentenced to 20 years in prison for instigating the theft that allegedly led to the killings.

At Thursday’s hearing, which lasted just more than six hours and finished at 7.30pm (Ensenada time), both sides delivered their closing arguments and made the case to preserve or exclude evidence presented at the trial.

The three accused men sat in a row behind their lawyers, wearing orange prison jumpsuits with their ankles shackled. They were just metres from the Robinsons, as they have been throughout the trial. The accused remained silent at Thursday’s hearing and declined an opportunity to address the court.

The court heard that the Robinson brothers had pleaded for mercy in the moments before they were killed – a piece of evidence Debra Robinson addressed in her statement to the judge.

She said her sons showed “kindness and trust, even in their final hours”, and yet were still “treated with such cruelty”.

“To know that their pleas were ignored is something we will carry for the rest of our lives,” she said. “It is also especially painful to know that their pleas for mercy were laughed at later.”

Callum was a talented lacrosse player who had played professionally in the US, an avid surfer and a coach. Jake was a “compassionate and dedicated doctor”, Debra told the court, and she thought he would be there to take care of his parents as they grew older.

“Callum and Jake’s lives mattered,” she said. “Their futures mattered. They were loved deeply and had so much more left to give to their families, friends and communities.”

Debra asked for the maximum sentence to be imposed on the accused killers. She and Martin are due to leave Mexico on Friday afternoon after the verdict, and return to Perth next week. If found guilty, the defendants are unlikely to be sentenced immediately.

The court also heard from Natalie Weirtz, who described Rhoad, her fiancée, as her soulmate and the love of her life. Rhoad was “vibrant, adventurous and full of life”, she said, and spent his time volunteering, fighting homelessness and helping vulnerable people get the help they deserved.

“In the two years since Carter’s death, all I can do is face the daily battle not to let evil take over any more than it has,” Weirtz said via video link. “Three lives and futures have been stolen from young men with pure hearts.”

In closing arguments, prosecutors detailed the physical evidence and testimony from key witnesses, including Ari Gisell, the then girlfriend of Jesús Gerardo García (also called “El Kekas”) and a witness who allegedly heard the gunshots.

Gisell testified at an earlier hearing in 2024 that El Kekas confessed to the crime. “I f—ed up three gringos … I killed them,” she said El Kekas had told her.

The defence argued the evidence tying the three men to the crime was insufficient, circumstantial or did not follow legal protocols. They asked for Gisell’s evidence to be dismissed because it was given during an earlier investigation into the men’s disappearance, not the current charges.

A lawyer for one of the accused argued there was no evidence linking his client to the bodies or connecting him with bullets found at the crime scene. “This was a very deficient investigation,” he said.

There is no jury, and the case will be decided by a single judge. He pushed back the verdict from 10am to 12pm Friday (Ensenada time) due to the late conclusion of closing arguments.

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