Federal court documents say a Santa Barbara man told FBI agents he murdered his two young children to save the world from monsters. Prosecutors filed murder charges against Matthew Taylor Coleman Wednesday.
The nine-page federal complaint says Coleman left Santa Barbara with his two-year-old son and ten-month-old daughter Saturday. Coleman's wife told police they had been preparing for a camping trip when he left with the kids. When he failed to return home, she contacted Santa Barbara Police. A phone tracking app showed he was in Mexico.
He was intercepted by FBI agents as he was returning to the United States. When they discovered he didn't have his children they contacted Mexican authorities. The bodies of the children had already been found off of a road between Tijuana and Ensenada, but up until then Mexican law enforcement officials hadn't been able to identify the remains.
The complaint says the children were killed by a spear fishing gun.
Agents say the 40-year-old man told them he had to kill his children because they were going to grow into monsters. They say he claimed he was enlightened by QAnon and Illuminati conspiracy theories. He's facing charges of foreign murder of United States nationals.
Coleman and his wife own a popular Santa Barbara-based surf school.
