Three Baja men sentenced to 158 years in prison for killing foreign surfers

ENSENADA, Mexico (CN) — A judge sentenced Jesús Gerardo, Irineo Francisco and Ángel Jesús on Friday for the 2024 murders of Australian brothers, Jake and Callum Robinson, and Carter Rhoad of San Diego.The sentence of 158 years and 9 months comes after they were convicted last Friday. They received 135 years for homicide — 45 years for each victim — along with 10 years and 9 months for aggravated and violent robbery, and 13 years for grand theft.They will also have to pay 1,098,728 pesos, roughly $59,413, to the Robinson family and 549,550 pesos to the Rhoad family for damages.The men’s defense said they would “exhaust every resource " to appeal the decision.The trial lasted a little over a month in courtroom three of the criminal courthouse, a mundane and clerical room devoid of the dramatic shouting matches deployed by lawyers to win over a jury. Mexican trials do not have juries.The surfers were murdered at night while camping on a bluff near a lighthouse overlooking the Pacific Ocean during a surf trip in 2024 in the wine-growing valley of Santo Tomás. The campsite is a rugged two-hour drive south of Ensenada.A state investigator for missing persons found the bodies in a makeshift well on May 3, 2024. It took a rescue crew four and a half hours to extract the bodies.The agency also found a fourth body, who forensics experts said was killed weeks earlier. His murder is currently under investigation. He is thought to be the patrolman of the property where the bodies were found. The three guilty men have not been charged with the fourth murder, raising dire questions about who exactly the Mexican judicial system serves.“It’s a miracle they’re guilty,” an Ensenada convenience store shopkeeper said last Friday. “Nothing ever gets solved out here.”That night following the verdict, after all the cruise ship tourists had boarded and left, the sleepiness in Ensenada was palpable. During an atypical heat spell, the breeze rustled the palms over a derelict swimming pool, a massive Mexican flag waved above the docked fishing boats and the old man in a suit tried to sell roses to passersby in front of a mom-and-pop convenience store on the main drag.The trialOn the afternoon of April 27, the three defendants — based on a tip from a girlfriend who saw the foreigners that day — went to the campsite and pretended to have run out of gas to scope out the victims and their belongings.The men then left after the three surfers helped them. They returned later that night. The prosecution used this as evidence of premeditation and not simply an impromptu robbery gone wrong.“They planned their attack and acted with senseless violence," a prosecutor said during the trial. “They showed no humanity toward their victims.”Debra Robinson, Jake and Callum’s mother, gave a final statement to the court during the trial with her husband’s arm around her. The defendants stared forward as they did most of the trial, dressed in orange jumpsuits, their legs shackled to the floor, as they sat in three adjoining chairs surrounded by guards.She voiced her utter shock, not only at how someone could murder three young men so brutally, but three kind, compassionate young men who earlier in the day had helped the men who would later come back to kill them.“We struggle to understand how three young men, even in their final hours, could be treated so cruelly. They gave up their keys and pleaded for their lives,” she said.One stolen cell phone led Rhoad’s family members and police to their campsite, which had been torched, including their Chevy pickup truck that was stripped of its tires.Through the phone, they also located the ringleader’s girlfriend, Ari Gisell, who admitted to instigating the robbery and was sentenced to 20 years in prison in November 2025.Gisell tipped off state agents to the whereabouts of the ringleader, Jesús Gerardo — whose stepson helped state agents locate a white Ford Ranger used during the killings.The pickup truck contained some of the surfers’ charred personal belongings, gasoline and a 9mm Glock-style pistol belonging to Jesús Gerardo — a gun Gisell said Jesús Gerardo kept with him at all times and slept with under his pillow.She said Jesús Gerardo was a hitman and kept a list of people he intended to kill, she testified.This was the only time during the trial that any of the defendants’ criminal backgrounds were mentioned.“He talked about how he was going to ‘fuck up some gringos,’” she testified on Sept. 7.She added that he callously mocked how they pled for their lives and bragged about how beautifully they cried.In his own testimony on Sept. 7, from a different room to protect his identity, the stepson said he was present during the beginning of the horrific events that took place on the night of April 27.When he heard a horrible noise, he managed to escape to his family member’s home, where he hid inside a bathroom.The stepson identified the other two men, Irineo Francisco and Ángel Jesús, corroborated by a witness interview that a Baja California search unit conducted after receiving a call from a Santo Tomás ranch worker about an abandoned and burned pickup truck.The defense team strongly attempted to discredit the stepson and girlfriend’s accounts of the events, arguing neither of them was present during the events, that one defendant was only identified by voice and that their narrative was supplied by the state.One defense attorney cited numerous human rights laws during closing arguments, implying the two other defendants, merely by association with Jesús Gerardo, were unjustly considered criminals from the beginning.“This isn’t just ‘El Kekas’ and company as they make it out to be. These are two individuals who deserve a proper defense individually,” she argued, referring to Jesús Gerardo by his alias, “El Kekas.”The defense team noted improper management of the crime scene. The crime scene was contaminated when family members and police first arrived and wasn’t cordoned off right away.The defense also attempted to poke holes in ballistics experts’ testimony. Although a bullet from Jesús Gerardo’s 9mm gun was found inside one of the victims’ legs, multiple .45 caliber shells were also found at the campsite and well. A .45 caliber weapon was never produced by the prosecution.Baja California Attorney General María Elena Andrade Ramírez asked for an exemplary concurrent sentence of 210 years for each of the three men, circumventing Baja California’s 60-year sentence cap, which only applies to sentences for a single major crime, a lawyer told Courthouse News. In this case, each defendant was convicted of multiple major crimes.A blanket “life imprisonment” is prohibited, but there are cumulative sentences for crimes such as kidnapping or homicide that can total more than 100 or 150 years in prison, effectively functioning as a life sentence.Mexico has laws similar to parole. Conditional release allows the prisoner to serve half of their sentence outside of prison and under supervision if they showed good conduct, aren’t considered a threat to society and meet other certain requirements.Early release completely terminates the remainder of their sentence if they served 70% of their sentence and met all the same requirements as conditional release.The Robinson parents were not present for sentencing on Friday. They flew back home last week after hearing the judge’s verdict.As soon as their translator told them the guilty verdict, they hugged each other inside the courtroom.“We don’t actually really speak their names. They’re not part of our grief,” said Debra Robinson in a statement last week, referring to the guilty men.Courthouse News reporter William Savinar is based in Mexico City.Subscribe to our free newslettersOur weekly newsletter Closing Arguments offers the latest about ongoing trials, major litigation and rulings in courthouses around the U.S. and the world, while the monthly Under the Lights dishes the legal dirt from Hollywood, sports, Big Tech and the arts.Additional Reads