The mysterious death or foolishness?

It was planned as a day of recreation for the young couple but turned into tragedy. A 30-year-old man dead, his body lost -- possibly forever.

As his grieving widow waits for answers, suspicion is cast on her. Then an investigator is murdered as he looks into the crime.

Today, nearly six months later, some of the puzzle pieces are falling into place regarding what happened to Americans David and Tiffany Hartley that September day on Falcon Lake, which straddles the U.S.-Mexico border.

Even with the new information, however, authorities caution that the full picture of what happened that day, leading to David Hartley's death, may never be known.

"It didn't happen in the United States," said Zapata County, Texas, Sheriff Sigifredo Gonzalez.

And Mexican authorities, he told CNN, have "somewhat of a zero solvency rate, and a zero conviction rate."

"So unfortunately, this case may remain open forever, even though the information and the evidence may be there," according to Gonzalez.


Tiffany Hartley has told police that she and her husband were on Sea-Doo personal watercraft on the lake on September 30, to visit a half-submerged church, when they were ambushed by assailants who shot David Hartley in the head.

She said she was unable to haul his body onto her watercraft before being forced to flee.

Early on, authorities surmised the couple had stumbled into a drug transaction, as the area is widely known as a Mexican drug cartel's stomping ground.

Tiffany Hartley's story was greeted with skepticism by some who believed that something more sinister was at work.

But Gonzalez's support of her never wavered.

"I still believe Tiffany," he said.

Gonzalez says what she told him in interviews after the shooting called to mind two similar incidents in April and May of last year -- incidents she had no way of knowing about.

Before David Hartley's killing, there were four reports of American fishermen running into Mexican pirates on Falcon Lake, authorities said. In each case, the fishermen were warned to stay off the Mexican side of the lake and sent on their way.

"Everything she's telling me has happened before in the other events, the other cases," Gonzalez said.

Doubts about Tiffany Hartley's story were somewhat lifted after the gruesome murder of Rolando Armando Flores Villegas, who was leading the Mexican investigation into her husband's death. His head was delivered in a suitcase to a Mexican military post shortly after David Hartley's death.

Mexican investigator beheaded

Gonzalez said he doesn't believe that the Hartleys were involved with drugs or that Tiffany Hartley was somehow involved in her husband's death to collect insurance money -- some of the theories that have been bandied about by those who doubt her story.

"There is no evidence to indicate any of that," he said.

source :cnn