Mexicans Name Suspects in Pirate Attack on American Couple

Two brothers are suspected members of Zeta drug cartel, Mexican prosecutor says.

ByABC News
October 2, 2010, 4:58 PM

Oct. 9, 2010— -- Mexican officials have reportedly identified two men they say are suspects in a pirate attack nine days ago on a Texas couple Jet Skiing on a border lake in which the husband was killed.

Mexican officials have not released photographs of the two men, but identified them as Pedro Saldiva Farrias, 27, and his brother, Jose Manuel Saldiva Farrias, Juan Carlos Ballesteros, an investigator with the attorney general's office of the Mexican state of Tamaulpas told ABC affiliate KRGV-TV in McAllen, Texas.

Both were said to be suspected members of the Zeta drug cartel from Nueva Ciudad Guerrero, near the abandoned town where David and Tiffany Hartley were sightseeing before they were ambushed, according to Ballesteros.

Early on in the case, Mexican police had questioned Tiffany Hartley's account of the incident on Sept. 30, saying they could find neither her husband's body, nor his Jet Ski, after she said she had to abandon him on Falcon Lake as the marauding pirates approached.

An eyewitness come forward late last week, claiming that he saw Tiffany Hartley fleeing in panic to the American side of the lake.

"I saw the Jet Ski come around an island," the witness told "Good Morning America" on Thursay. "There was something wrong actually. The way I saw her come around it looked like something terribly wrong happened. I mean, she was jittery, frantic. ... She was crying, sobbing."

As a safety precaution, the witness spoke in shadow and with voice alteration to avoid identification because he said he feared for his life.

What the witness did not see -- what apparently no one but the alleged victims and attackers saw -- was what exactly happened on the Mexican side of Falcon Lake, which straddles the border between Texas and Mexico.

Tiffany Hartley said she and her husband took Jet Skis to the Mexican side of the lake to take pictures of a small church when suddenly a band of Mexican pirates opened fire on them with assault rifles.