Confirmed - Serial Killer "Big Bill" Holbert Rented Vacation House in Puerto Viejo, Costa Rica
By DON WINNER for Panama-Guide.com - Joesph and Sue Freconna, the owners of the vacation rental property in Puerto Viejo, Costa Rica, were flabbergasted to learn the body they discovered buried under their house in November of 2007 was most likely another victim of serial killers William Dathan Holbert and Laura Michelle Reese. They told Panama-Guide at the time when their property was rented by Holbert and Reese, who were using the alias of "Big Bill" and Michelle while in Costa Rica, their property was being managed by Gregory Petin of Sunrise Coast Realty. This company frequently manages vacation rental property in the Puerto Viejo area of Costa Rica. Joe and Sue Freconna said they were in the United States when the couple signed a three month rental contract. When we spoke on the phone, they didn't recall the exact dates but they seemed to remember it was "sometime in the Spring or Summer of 2007." Joseph Freconna said he would try to go back through his records to try to recreate or establish the exact dates that Holbert and Reese rented his house. And even though Joseph and Sue Freconna were not in Costa Rica at the time, and they never saw the couple who rented their house, they said that by the description of things it all seems to fit together perfectly. Joseph Freconna said "Greg told us about the couple. The guy who was renting the place, his name was Bill. Greg said he was a really big guy, and he was supposedly from Texas." William Dathan Holbert has told many people in the Bocas del Toro area of Panama that he was supposedly from Texas. And, while in Costa Rica he was known by the nickname "Big Bill." (more) Suspicious Early Departure: Holbert and Reese signed a contract to rent the house for three months and paid a deposit. However, supposedly they left in a big hurry just three weeks later. According to Sue Freconna, "they didn't even turn in the keys. They said they had some kind of a huge family emergency back in the United States and they had to leave immediately. They supposedly got an urgent phone call and they went straight to the airport. They just called Gregory Petin from the airport, said they were leaving, and that they would not be back." Well, it is now known that in fact Holbert and Reese did not actually leave Costa Rica at that time, and when they left from the Puerto Viejo area in a hurry they actually just moved across the country to the Jaco area on the Pacific side, where they stayed for at least two months before they moved to Bocas del Toro in Panama.
About The Victim: The Office of Judicial Investigation (OIJ) in Costa Rica never solved this case or determined the identity of the victim. Joseph Freconna said "we told the OIJ about Bill, the couple who left in a big hurry, and supposedly they also spoke to Greg Petin and investigated it. But they told us later that they never identified the victim, that they suspected it was a murder related to drug trafficking, and they closed the case. They said the cause of death was some kind of blunt force trauma to the back of the neck, but the body was pretty badly decomposed. They also said they found about $10,000 worth of gold jewelry on the body which is why they ruled out robbery as a potential motive. They said the victim was a tall, thin white man, but they never obtained a positive identification." Joseph and Sue Freconna said they hoped that now, with the knowledge that serial killers William Dathan Holbert and Laura Michelle Reese were most likely responsible for this murder, that maybe by narrowing down the time frame and by determining the exact dates when they rented the house, maybe or hopefully someone who was there at the time might remember something. "It makes a lot of sense, the guy's name was Bill, he was a big guy, so now the next step is to determine the identify of the victim."
Sloppy Construction Job: When Joseph and Sue Freconna purchased their home in Costa Rica, that area under the house where the cement slab was poured was just dirt and plants. "When we came back down in late 2007 I found out that someone had laid down this massive cement slab and I thought 'now who would do that - this is my property'." Joseph said the slab was massive and that it would have taken someone a lot of work to put it down, but it's likely the job was done by Holbert himself, because it was "all uneven, rough work - it was not professionally done, and it looked terrible." He said it measured 6 foot on one side by 10 feet on the other, and it was almost 18 inches thick. "They didn't even hardly dig a hole, they just dug a very shallow grave and then covered the guy with cement." Joseph was there when his workmen uncovered the body, which was wrapped in a green tarp. He though that maybe someone had buried a dead dog there or something so if that was the case then he didn't intend to notify the police. But when he opened the tarp and peered in, "I could see a torso and a rib cage, but the body was mostly just bones and soup. I just closed it back up and immediately notified the authorities, and then I called my lawyer."
"Thanks For Figuring This Out": Joseph and Sue Freconna were glad that I called and to ask them about this entire incident, to confirm with them that William Dathan Holbert and Laura Michelle Reese had in fact rented their vacation home in Costa Rica. They said "thank you very much, you've figured this out ... we have always wondered exactly what had happened and who could have done this." They indicated that the OIJ in Costa Rica apparently didn't do a very good job of investigating the case when the body was discovered in 2007. After officials recovered the body they were told that they could continue on with the improvements and construction of their house. They laid down a new cement floor, and three days later some OIJ investigators showed back up, "and all we could do was show them the cement we had just poured over the hole." They said that before I had called, no one else had made the connection between William Dathan Holbert, Laura Michelle Reese, and the unidentified corpse the pair of serial killers apparently buried under their house. "It's nice to know what happened. Those people are in prison, right?" Yes, they are. And that is a comforting thought.
Copyright 2010 by Don Winner for Panama-Guide.com. Go ahead and use whatever you like as long as you credit the source. Salud.
