Deep within the lush mountains of the Caribbean island of Dominica, amid stands of lemongrass, big ferns and palms, three roads converge the place two lives ended, violently. A couple of weeks earlier than Christmas, the our bodies of Daniel Langlois, a French-Canadian philanthropist and Hollywood animation centi-millionaire, and his associate, Dominique Marchand, had been discovered at that spot, in a automotive, midway right into a ravine, burned past recognition. Despite the fact that the our bodies had been charred, investigators might inform they’d been shot first.
The official and nonetheless evolving story of their murders is a traditional story of excellent versus evil set in a steamy jungle. Like different expats who stay on Dominica, Langlois and Marchand, who purchased their property within the late Nineties, had been drawn to the island’s wild, Edenic high quality; its waterfalls, volcanic sizzling swimming pools and deep inexperienced forests the place spectacular blossoms in methods northerners would see solely in florist retailers develop like weeds. However the useless couple had grow to be heroes to many on the tiny, impoverished island of 72,000. They had been extensively admired philanthropists and environmentalists. A couple of weeks earlier than Langlois was murdered, the federal government had awarded him its highest civilian honor for his philanthropic work.
For many years, the couple lavished their wealth on the group, spending one million {dollars} simply to rebuild the native college destroyed in a Class 5 hurricane, designing resiliency tasks and constructing infrastructure like a jetty, pouring cash right into a marine reserve and the island’s stray canine and cat rescue program, in addition to numerous personal disbursements to people within the close by village who wanted healthcare or different help.
Langlois, 66, was a pc animation pioneer and Academy Award winner (Sci-Tech 1997) who labored with Steven Spielberg on Jurassic Park and different main filmmakers earlier than promoting his firm, Softimage, to Microsoft in 1994 for $200 million. His 3D device has been utilized in quite a few big-budget hits together with the Harry Potter collection, Star Wars prequel and Titanic. He was influential in early improvements of CGI, significantly because the tech associated to human characters and expressions. After promoting Softimage, he based the Daniel Langlois Basis in 1997 to advertise collaboration and exchanges between the humanities and science, and was a significant investor and promoter within the Montreal movie group.
In Dominica, Langlois spent years designing and constructing a dream challenge: an off-the-grid mannequin construction deep within the mountains that finally turned a luxurious resort he known as Coulibri Ridge. It opened in late 2022, and made Condé Nast’s Traveler’s “2023 Sizzling Record”. Journey and Leisure known as it “the world’s greenest resort.”
A couple of days after Langlois’ and Marchand’s stays had been discovered within the ravine a couple of miles from their house, police arrested the couple’s next-door neighbor, Jonathan Lehrer, an American with survivalist tendencies; and a Florida man, Robert Snyder, who police declare he employed as a success man. Police say the Individuals shot the Canadian couple, then set their automotive on fireplace, with an accelerant that burned so fiercely, Snyder reportedly had burns on his arms and legs when he was arrested.
Langlois and Lehrer had been each North American expats with cash who migrated all the way down to the tropics. However they had been inconceivable neighbors: a progressive Canadian who constructed a inexperienced resort the place wealthy, eco-minded friends paid at the least $700 an evening, and a reported prepper who turned his plantation right into a protected haven for himself and marketed it to different disaster-fearing survivalists.
Lehrer and his spouse arrived in 2011, with sufficient wealth to purchase the island’s oldest still-intact former espresso and cocoa plantation, the Bois Cotlette property, which bordered Langlois’ land. Lehrer upgraded the 53-acre 18th century grounds right into a vacationer vacation spot, financed by busloads of cruise ship passengers paying to go to his small exhibition on cocoa processing. The beans had been was bricks of chocolate that may be despatched to Trinidad and made edible, in response to a former worker.
Lehrer has been known as a “chocolatier” in information articles, however he and his spouse weren’t making or promoting chocolate. They had been operating bus excursions for cruise ship passengers by their previous plantation. They quickly turned infamous on the island as all-American private-property cranks. The filth highway from the coast into the mountains the place the eco resort is situated handed by their property. Dominicans had been utilizing it because the days of slavery, however the American couple tried to unofficially privatize it. As early as 2016, the highway was in dispute and shortly the battle went to courtroom. As Langlois constructed his eco-lodge, Lehrer would reportedly block the highway with stones and tree trunks. Coulibri Ridge staff routinely videotaped their contentious interactions with the Lehrers and have since posted some on-line.
A choose granted an injunction in 2019 holding the highway public and permitting Langlois’ friends and staff to entry it, explicitly calling it “Morne Rouge Public Highway.” However non-paying vacationers had been shoo’ed off. Journey Advisor feedback in regards to the chocolate plantation are full of warnings in regards to the Lehrers, claiming they set massive canines on passing hikers and threatened drivers who discovered themselves on the highway.
On a latest go to to Dominica, I drove the disputed route. It’s slender, unimproved, with deep, tire-sucking ruts, and too tough for something however a four-wheel drive or truck. It does go by the previous plantation’s ruins, shut sufficient to succeed in from a automotive window at one tight flip and contact stone partitions of the previous plantation’s warehouses and mills.
On the sting of a steep inexperienced ravine lower than a mile away, mourners have left a shrine of purple flowers in vases and the melted nubs of two candles on the crime scene. The fireplace was so sizzling that melted stays of the victims’ black SUV are embedded within the filth.
“This difficulty of the general public highway simply saved getting worse,” one longtime Langlois worker instructed me. “Principally it was Jonathan. Each time we had a cargo undergo that property, we videotaped as a result of he was simply… He was Jonathan.”
Golden Passports and a Bunker
Main crime is uncommon on the island. The police power is ailing geared up to do primary forensics and has reportedly needed to ship the stays to labs within the U.S. or Canada, and requested the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to help within the investigation into Langlois’ demise. In the meantime, inhabitants of the close by hamlet of Soufriere have been open about their intent to do vigilante justice if Lehrer is launched.
Lehrer and Snyder, a Florida mechanic Lehrer employed to work on his tour buses, are each within the nationwide jail, known as Inventory Farm, exterior the capital metropolis of Roseau. They haven’t but been required to enter a plea, however their legal professionals say they plan to plead not responsible. Lehrer’s spouse — who has not been charged — has left the island and employed a Texas PR agency.
Lehrer just lately utilized for bail after 5 months incarcerated within the severely overcrowded jail. His request was rejected. The bail denial included point out of an eyewitness to the crime, a Dominican native who Lehrer’s authorized workforce says labored as his property supervisor. If Lehrer is convicted, he will likely be topic to the Dominican penalty for homicide: execution by hanging.
Islanders I spoke with usually settle for the highway rage motive. However there are different features of the story that deepen the thriller, going past a easy highway dispute. The 2 rich white North Individuals — Langlois and Lehrer — had been avatars of two opposing sides of an island battle that pits environmentalists and activists towards a cabal of outdoor pursuits urgent for extra entry to pure assets, and a authorities accused of corruption in caving to these pursuits.
Dominica is mountainous, volcanic, and — immediately within the hurricane path — not a magnet for high-end resort funding. The island has been ravaged by numerous tempests. Its comparatively tiny and poor inhabitants is dependent upon tourism (cruise ships dock every day), fishing, small household farms or work on sporadic developments, many financed by Chinese language and Russian traders.
The island has for years subsisted largely on earnings from so-called golden passports, proceeds of which represent about half of the federal government’s revenues. As a result of Dominica is within the Commonwealth, its passport holders can get into the Schengen zone (EU) with out visas, even post-Brexit. Dominica sells passports beginning at $100,000. This system, known as citizen by funding, requires traders to place that cash into actual property, or a challenge (of which Lehrer’s property was one) or a authorities bond. This system has no residency or language requirement. Investigative journalists have individually accused some island officers of promoting diplomatic passports, which the officers deny.
The enterprise is reportedly corrupt, with investigative journalists discovering that passports have gone to worldwide criminals, cash launderers, crypto scammers. One 2019 Al Jazeera investigation revealed longtime President Roosevelt Skerrit allegedly took lots of of 1000’s of {dollars} for his 2014 election marketing campaign from an Iranian businessman named Alireza Monfared in alternate for making him the Dominican ambassador to Malaysia. Monfared was finally arrested by his personal authorities and sentenced to twenty years’ imprisonment. Skerrit — who has known as the allegations completely false — has been reelected 4 occasions, in generally tense election cycles involving riots and accusations of graft. His administration maintains shut ties with China, which has invested closely in infrastructure on the island, together with a controversial new airport which is below building, plus post-hurricane housing for displaced islanders.
After a consortium of investigative journalists collaborated on a 2023 exposé into the passport scheme, Skerrit blasted them as “terrorists” and accused them of being financed by the political opposition. The golden visa program has introduced a billion {dollars} into authorities coffers since its inception, and reportedly constitutes 55 p.c of the nationwide earnings. The Dominican authorities calls this system “Citizenship by Funding” (CBI) and deputizes numerous traders and different people across the island as “brokers.”
Lehrer was considered one of eight CBI “brokers” on the island, a place that allowed him to vet passport candidates, and gave him entry to prime authorities officers, in addition to unload bits of his personal huge property by this system. Lehrer’s legal professional within the homicide case is Lennox Lawrence, a detailed affiliate of Skerrit, and a former appearing legal professional common on the island. Lehrer’s closeness to the federal government — and the problem the case presents an under-equipped police power — have prompted observers in Dominica to fret that the authorities won’t be able to make prices stick. The federal government has introduced in a particular prosecutor from Trinidad to deal with the case, and reportedly requested for Canadian help with the investigation, though Canadian officers haven’t confirmed their involvement.
A police station in Roseau, the capital of Dominica. {Photograph} by Nina Burleigh.
Courtesy of Nina Burleigh
“The Prime minister and the tourism minister appear to have a very good relationship with this man,” Dominican radio host Matt Peltier just lately stated on Canadian TV. “There may be loads of concern whether or not this couple will really get justice.”
Reached by Zoom, Lawrence stated the truth that he served as legal professional common for a interval “doesn’t give us a bonus” as a result of Dominica has separation of powers between the judicial and government branches. He declined to touch upon the enterprise side of the connection between Lehrer and the passport program, saying he was “not well-informed” on the topic.
Each Langlois and Lehrer would have been eligible for the CBI program, given the amount of cash they invested within the nation. It’s not clear whether or not Langlois was concerned with it. Lehrer, as an agent, most actually was.
Lehrer is commonly described in information reviews in regards to the crime as an “American businessman,” however the nature of his companies is unclear. In line with the Texas-based publicist Nicolia Wiles, employed by Lehrer’s spouse, Lehrer labored for MetLife till 2017 and in addition made cash on investments, earlier than turning the plantation right into a tour enterprise. His identify is within the Pandora papers, an inventory of offshore firms that present shell firms in tax havens for individuals making an attempt to cover belongings. Within the Pandora database, Lehrer is related to an handle in Tortola that hyperlinks to 1800 offshore firms. (Lehrer’s spokesman stated he arrange that account to do “commodity buying and selling” and has since closed it.)
Lehrer, 57, had over time lived in Chicago, Staten Island, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, and most just lately owned a house in Winter Harbor, Maine. Information present a couple of felony prices, together with a weapons cost and critical vehicular violations — however within the Nineteen Eighties.
A member of the family instructed me that Lehrer was an “investor” — though the relative didn’t know what Lehrer may need invested in — and that he left the U.S. after Barack Obama was elected president as a result of he thought the nation was “going to hell.” When Lehrer, his spouse and 4 teenage children first moved to the island, they lived in a yurt and arrange solar energy for the property. He was, the member of the family stated, obsessive about post-apocalyptic survival, “sort of a prepper.” (Lehrer’s spokesman denies this.) None of his kids — who’re faculty age and older — are believed to have been on the island on the time of the murders.
“He wished to be extra self-contained, off the facility grid, have autonomy, maintain himself,” the relative stated. That member of the family added that Lehrer “was undoubtedly the sort of man who wouldn’t need individuals invading his land. He appreciated to be left alone.”
With Lehrer in jail and awaiting trial, the Bois Cotlette web site nonetheless touts the plantation as a vacationer vacation spot and an actual property funding: “Why Bois Cotlette? FREEDOM!”
The location advertises the CBI program and the advantages of investing with Lehrer, and supplies step-by-step instruction. It additionally explicitly targets individuals nervous about disasters and international instability. One web page, titled “Assurance Choices for a World of Uncertainty” provides a “Preppers possibility”: “Emergency Survival Preparedness: Actuality primarily based emergency preparedness for a society infrastructure that’s alive and properly, this cease hole protection lets you wait out brief to medium period life disturbances when you plan.”
It additionally provides a “Secure Haven Possibility,” marketed as follows: “Take pleasure in 3, 6 or 9 months of protected haven dwelling at Bois Cotlette if an outlined occasion happens in your area of the world” the location says. “Whether or not society is disrupted on account of financial, or political turmoil, a chronic pure catastrophe, or one other attainable state of affairs, Bois Cotlette defines preparedness and is one of the best hedge towards disaster in our advanced world. Bois Cotlette can also be your own home and sanctuary for on a regular basis dwelling.”
One downside: the “protected haven” bordered a progressive Canadian multimillionaire’s award-winning resort. Luxurious SUVs every day delivered well-heeled friends, bumping and bouncing on the highway by the property and over a mysterious underground bunker Lehrer had constructed — with out even stopping for a chocolate tour.
An evidentiary listening to scheduled for March 15 was canceled, with the federal government claiming that Snyder had COVID and couldn’t be dropped at the courtroom. As such, it’s troublesome to evaluate simply what proof the federal government has towards Lehrer and Snyder. A German vacationer who spoke to Canadian W5 tv, recognized within the report solely as “Thomas,” stated he was climbing the highway by Bois Cotlette towards Coulibri Ridge on the day the couple had been murdered, when a person ordered him to show again. He stated that, as he walked away, he heard pictures, and a short while later heard explosions and noticed black smoke, probably from the burning SUV. The German vacationer instructed the Canadian reporters that police took him again to the scene of the crime and, sitting behind him within the police bus, was Snyder handcuffed to Lehrer. The hiker recognized Snyder to police as the person he encountered within the highway that day, and later instructed the Canadian journalists that he noticed “heavy burning” harm on Snyder’s arm within the jail van. And “he didn’t have this harm after I met him on the path.”
Lehrer’s lawyer stated that, primarily based on his agency’s investigation, the vacationer “couldn’t determine Jonathan Lehrer in any respect.” (Snyder’s lawyer has not responded to a number of requests for remark.)
Lehrer and Snyder had been taken to the nationwide jail, Inventory Farm, inside days of the murders. Images confirmed each males showing to smirk as they walked from a van, handcuffed collectively, surrounded by offended island residents shouting at them. Per week later, Canadian newspaper reporters who had been dispatched to the island to research the homicide witnessed Lehrer again at his property for a couple of hours. Police instructed reporters the curious house go to was a part of an “unrelated investigation.” The standing of the investigation is unclear. Initially scheduled for March, the evidentiary listening to has been rescheduled for July and, if that date is met, a trial might come as early as September.
In the meantime, the island is rife with rumors, together with that the Lehrer worker who witnessed the murders is being held or hidden for his or her security. (Lehrer’s spokesman says the particular person has “disappeared from the island” because the arrests,) One intriguing leak: a video, believed to have been taken by the police, of a labyrinthine underground bunker beneath the Bois Cotlette Property, massive sufficient to carry at the least two cargo containers, whose contents and objective are a thriller.
Lehrer’s spokesman claimed the bunker is simply a big cold-storage cellar Lehrer copied from one he had seen in California wine nation. Wiles — Lehrer’s spouse’s publicist — additionally says Snyder was no hitman, however reasonably a mechanic who had come to the island to carry out upkeep on Lehrer’s tour buses.
Lehrer, from jail, continues to be urgent his case to declare the highway personal. In line with his spokesman, he had anticipated to be awarded “hundreds of thousands” in punitive damages from Langlois earlier than the couple died. The destiny of that lawsuit stays unclear because the murders. Wiles additionally instructed the couple may need merely “disappeared.” Considered one of Lehrer’s defenses apparently will likely be that there isn’t a forensic proof Langlois and Marchand are actually useless, because the our bodies recovered the place not identifiable. Wiles even insinuated that, as an acclaimed pioneer of Hollywood VFX, Langlois may need faked his personal demise. “His [Langlois’] total enterprise was constructed round making issues look actual that aren’t,” Wiles stated. “Is it far fetched? Yeah! We’re actually not saying that’s what we consider occurred. However.”
Wiles additional floated the chance that Langlois had one thing in his historical past that made him a goal of the Mafia or drug cartel. (Police discovered a load of cocaine within the jungle close to the Coulibri Ridge property in 2018, which a former worker instructed me prompted Langlois to begin patrolling his personal property with drones to fend off criminals).
No matter was occurring between the 2 wealthy males, the homicide investigation presents a profound, maybe insurmountable problem to the penurious tropical police power. After I met him at his workplace within the small, weather-beaten nationwide police headquarters, island Police Chief Davidson Valerie declined to touch upon a witness or the bunker, saying that the proof could be revealed on the first listening to. In the meantime, Lehrer’s spokesman and legal professionals have organized and disseminated to American and Canadian media reams of paperwork purporting to point out that the highway dispute was no homicide motive.
Langlois’ household and Coulibri Ridge workers declined to remark publicly. An in depth pal of Langlois on the island stated the Canadian’s associates had been nonetheless too shocked to speak in regards to the murders. Canadian IT businessman Marc Pettit was a detailed pal of Langlois. “There was one thing genuinely good about Daniel, if you evaluate the context and a worldview obsessive about trespasses on terrain, it simply doesn’t add up,” he instructed me on a name from Montreal. “There’s something that’s unbelievable.”
Sam Raphael is a hotelier and native Dominican who constructed his personal luxurious resort, Jungle Bay, with CBI funding cash. He knew Langlois, his associate, and Lehrer. He doesn’t assume the homicide had something to do with golden passports or different crimes. “The courts dominated that you just can’t do something to impede traversing on this highway. Whether or not it’s proven in your map or not, buddy, it’s Public Highway. That ought to have been the tip of that. However he couldn’t let it go.”