Tahnee Shanks: ‘Vital clue’ in missing mum case in Mexico
The family of a missing Queensland mum say a speck of blood on her daughter’s finger from the night her parents vanished together with revealing texts in the weeks prior paint a dire picture.
Whitsunday
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More text messages have emerged in the Tahnee Shanks missing person case and her family believes they could be important to the police investigation into her disappearance in Mexico.
The WhatsApp messages are believed to be from the missing Whitsunday mum to a mother’s group friend in Merida where she was living before she vanished one month ago during a mini-vacation with her family.
Both Ms Shanks and her estranged partner Jorge Luis Aguirre Astudillo, aged 32, have been missing since May 2 after their daughter Adelynn, 2, was dumped alone at a church in a dangerous part of Cancun at night.
Mexican police have two theories – one is domestic violence and the other is that they were allegedly caught up in “retaliation” for Mr Aguirre Astudillo’s shady dealings and links to criminals.
In a group of messages that have emerged, Ms Shanks tells her friend Mr Aguirre Astudillo is drunk and yelling with texts visible between other voice messages in screenshots of the exchange – a practice more common than text when using WhatsApp in Mexico.
Ms Shank’s Mexican friend, who asked to remain anonymous, tells her to lock herself in a room and not to play Mr Aguirre Astudillo’s games while he is drunk.
“I will, don’t worry, babe,” Ms Shanks replied.
“I’ve locked myself in Addy’s room. Avoiding conflict.
“He is still yelling ‘get out of my house’ but Addy was awake so I put her to bed and stayed here.”
In another grouping of messages, Ms Shanks mentions her plan to stop relying on any financial support from Mr Aguirre Astudillo ahead of her return to Australia with her daughter Adelynn on June 22 after nine years living in Mexico.
“I can’t be part of it anymore. I’ve asked my dad for more money to be able to pay rent and live until I come home,” she wrote.
“Because I just can’t be under his control anymore. He uses it against me and is very verbally abusive.
“I don’t want to wait until it gets physical.
“I need to calm down too but I can’t be around him anymore.”
Law enforcement in Quintana Roo – the state where the pair was last seen alive on a toll road in their Toyota Tundra – have been using the state’s 2000 surveillance cameras, mobile phone data and licence recognition technology to piece together their bewildering last movements in Cancun on May 2.
Both of Adelynn’s parents remain listed as missing persons but Quintana Roo general attorney Óscar Montes de Oca Rosales says investigators are looking at two lines of inquiry.
The first is that Ms Shanks has suffered domestic violence and Mr Aguirre Astudillo is now in hiding or on the run.
The second is “that Jorge is a criminal with links to Mexico’s notorious cartel and the couple’s disappearance is payback for Jorge’s dirty dealing”, 60 Minutes reported on Sunday night.
“It could be just retaliation for the criminal groups that he was involved with,” Mr Montes de Oca Rosales said.
“According to the law, we consider them as alive and that’s the way we look for them until something is shown to be different.
“What I can say is well maybe they were being followed and that’s why they turned around and took the secondary road.
“(Jorge) had been threatened before and he even had hired a bodyguard … and he was afraid for his life.”
This publication also last week reported another strange and concerning text from Ms Shanks to the same friend.
“I know this is gunna sound weird but keep (his) name. Jorge Luis Aguirre Astudillo! Just in case anything happens to me they can go after him,” she said in a text.
“Not that anything will! But I just want to keep that as a backup.”
The couple’s mysterious turn on a Mexican toll road and an eight-hour window could be central to finding Ms Shanks and working out what has happened to her.
Ms Shanks has not been seen since she was captured on a toll highway heading back to the Yucatán city where she was living on the country’s eastern peninsula.
A camera snapped her in a white Toyota Tundra at a police checkpoint on the toll road between Cancun and Merida before they turned around.
There is footage showing the Tundra leaving a hotel in Cancun about 11.30am on May 2 and passing through a toll road checkpoint before they turned around.
Tahnee’s brother Daniel Shanks, from Conway Beach, said his sister and Mr Aguirre Astudillo must have returned to Cancun via a different route because their return trip was not clocked on the toll road footage.
“There’s an eight-hour period from them going through that toll and Adelynn being dropped off in Cancun at that church,” he said.
“Then her phone stopped pinging pretty soon after that.”
On Sunday night, Channel 9’s 60 Minutes program said Tahnee had been cleared of criminal links but “Jorge is an alleged fraudster who is accused of selling fake holiday packages”.
When asked whether Jorge was a cartel member, Mr de Oca Rosales said that was their suspicion.
“Apparently and according to what we have seen, he could be,” he said.
Mr Shanks says another text message from his sister suggesting Mr Aguirre Astudillo was caught up in other activities also concerned him.
The text from Tahnee to her friend reads: “He made up some story that he was being threatened and fearing for his life and he was all drunk and shot and made out he was on the run because he apparently almost killed a guy and blah blah blah. It’s all bullshot (sic).”
The friend who received the text said Ms Shanks told her Mr Aguirre Astudillo then went into hiding in Puerto Morelos – the same place where the couple’s Toyota was found burned out 45 minutes after Adelynn was left alone at the Cancun church.
Mr Shanks says the messages have been passed onto Mexican authorities and he believes they could be important to his sister’s case.
“Those messages (suggest) she was verbally abused by Jorge and locked herself in Addy’s bedroom on this particular night,” he said.
“She was concerned this verbal abuse would turn physical.
“The trouble is everything about this case is hearsay and there is no concrete evidence to back anything up.”
Photograph of Adelynn may contain a ‘vital clue’
When Ms Shanks’s brother Ben and mother Leanne collected little Adelynn from Cancun in a mercy dash to get her back to Australia, she was in fresh clothes.
The family wants to know what happened to the little girl’s outfit from the day she was found and whether it has been examined as evidence in the disappearance of her parents.
Daniel Shanks said this was because the family believed photos that went viral on social media showing his niece outside the church that night might contain “a vital clue”.
“A detail we feel is critical to the investigation is a photograph taken of Addy outside the church which has gone viral contains a vital clue,” Daniel Shanks said.
“Mexican and Australian authorities have been made aware by the family and no response has been received and as far as we know, no action has been taken.
“The clue in the photo was discovered by family and friends of Tahnee as we relentlessly search for details into Tahnee’s disappearance.
“If you zoom into the original picture you can see Adelynn has a spot of blood on her tiny finger.
“We have asked investigators if this was reported or documented when Addy was taken into custody and if the clothes she was wearing have been DNA tested.
“No response has been received.
“Family members inspected Addy’s hand and found no blemishes or signs of injury.
“Where are Addy’s clothes?”
Mr Shanks, who has offered a $1 million peso (A$70,000) reward, acknowledges the lack of response could mean Tahnee is dead but that could be better than the alternatives running through his mind.
While they wait for answers, Mr Shanks says his sleeping hours are filled with nightmares he deems worse than the possibility his sister could be dead.
“We need closure. If she’s dead, we need a body,” he said.
“I just can’t leave it like this because all I can think of is that something worse than being murdered has happened, like she is being trafficked.
“It’s in my nightmares. That if she is alive, she’s not in a very nice place and what are (the authorities) doing about it? Nothing.
“This is why we need answers.”
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