Jeanette Stauffer is going to Costa Rica in search of justice.

Almost a year after her daughter was slain there, Stauffer is returning today to Costa Rica, carrying her message that more must be done to bring Shannon Martin’s killer to justice.

“My trip is to help find out the progress of the investigation because I’m not hearing much,” said Stauffer, of Topeka. “I’m really concerned.”

Martin, a 23-year-old Kansas University student, was stabbed to death May 13, 2001, in Golfito. She was killed just days before she would have graduated.

“I want to know why it’s taken so long” to find the killer, Stauffer said.

No one has been charged in the killing, although Costa Rican authorities since November have been holding Katia Vanesa Cruz Murillo, 27.

Investigators do not think she acted alone and are looking into the possibility at least two men were involved.

The suspect has offered little information. Officials told Stauffer it probably would take a substantial reward to persuade any witness to come forward.

Earlier this month, Stauffer said the reward for information leading to a conviction had increased to nearly $50,000.

Traveling with Stauffer will be lawyer Pedro Irigonegaray of Topeka and reporters from two television stations. The group will be in Costa Rica a week, dividing time between San Jose, the capital, and Golfito, which is on the Pacific coast 210 miles southeast of San Jose.

Stauffer and her group will meet with officials from the Costa Rican Organization of Judicial Investigation, the FBI, U.S. Embassy, and perhaps the president of Costa Rica.

They will spend time in Golfito reviewing the crime scene, talking with people who were in town the night Martin was killed, and spreading word of the reward.

Jeff Weinberg, representing the KU chancellor’s office, is to be in Golfito during Stauffer’s visit to help answer her questions. In 2000, Martin was in Golfito as part of a KU study abroad program. When she was killed, she was there to finish up research on tropical ferns.

Now, her mother is heading back in an attempt to find her own facts.

“I have to keep believing that this is what Shannon would want me to do,” Stauffer said.