The arraignment date has been delayed to Sept. 9 for Matthew Coleman, the Santa Barbara man accused of killing his two children in Mexico.
Coleman, 40, has been held in federal custody since his arrest in early August. He has been charged with the foreign murder of two U.S. nationals under federal law.
He allegedly confessed to federal authorities that he drove his two children, Kaleo, 3, and Roxy, 1, to Mexico and killed them with a spearfishing gun.
According to court documents, Coleman has waived his right to a preliminary hearing. He is being represented by the federal public defender’s office and has not yet entered a plea to the charges.
“These kinds of delays are pretty common,” said Ciaran McEvoy, a public information officer for the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
As Noozhawk previously reported, Coleman left Santa Barbara with the children on Aug. 7 in a Mercedes Sprinter camping van and drove to the town of Rosarito south of Tijuana, according to the FBI.
His wife, Abby, reported Coleman and the children missing later that day, saying that he did not tell her where he was going and was not answering her text messages. She initially indicated that she didn’t think the children were in danger.
Two days later, at the urging of Santa Barbara Police investigators, Coleman’s wife tracked him to Mexico using his phone. He was intercepted at the border by FBI agents as he returned to the United States, and the children were not in the van at the time.
That same morning, the bodies of two young children were discovered by Mexican authorities at a ranch near Rosarito. Photos of the children revealed that they had suffered large puncture wounds, according to the affidavit accompanying the criminal complaint.
The victims appeared to match photos of the missing children that previously had been provided to investigators.
Coleman was taken into custody after crossing from Tijuana into the United States at the San Ysidro Port of Entry.
The FBI affidavit states that “he believed his children were going to grow into monsters so he had to kill them.”
Coleman further stated that he “was receiving visions and signs revealing that his wife possessed serpent DNA and had passed it on to his children,” according to the affidavit.
Coleman and his wife are founders of the Lovewater Surf School in Santa Barbara.
Friends of Abby Coleman started a GoFundMe campaign, which had raised $103,000 as of Friday.
A Noozhawk reader said there was an impromptu memorial, with a sign and flowers, for the children at Shoreline Park in Santa Barbara on Friday.
— Noozhawk managing editor Giana Magnoli can be reached at gmagnoli@noozhawk.com. Follow Noozhawk on Twitter: @noozhawk, @NoozhawkNews and @NoozhawkBiz. Connect with Noozhawk on Facebook.
