Topeka ? The mother of a Kansas University student murdered in Costa Rica says the campaign to find and prosecute her daughter’s killers has left her more than $100,000 in debt.

“I’m not worried about it, yet. We still have options,” said Jeanette Stauffer, referring to herself and her husband, Brad Stauffer.

“I have learned that the most important thing in life is to help other people and to take on a lot of what my daughter valued in life. Materialism isn’t important. If we have to live in a shack, we’ll live in a shack.”

Stauffer’s daughter, Shannon Martin, 23, was stabbed to death after leaving a nightclub in the coastal town of Golfito, Costa Rica. Her body was found May 13, 2001, beside an airstrip-access road near her host family’s house.

Two of Martin’s attackers, Kattia Cruz, 29, and Luis Alberto Castro Carrillo, 33, were found guilty of “simple homicide” last week. Both were sentenced to 15 years in prison. A third suspect, Rafael Zumbado Quesada, 52, was found not guilty.

Costly campaign

The trial, expected to last five to six days, stretched over a six-week period.

“Those six weeks cost us anywhere from $20,000 to $22,000,” Stauffer said.

In the two and a half years since her daughter’s murder, Stauffer said she made 11 trips to Costa Rica. Her husband joined her on five trips.

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Stauffer said she also paid airfare, hotel and meal expenses for KBI agent Larry Thomas and translator A. Jesse Ybarra, who gathered much of the evidence used to convict Cruz and Carrillo. The KBI paid Thomas’ wages, Stauffer paid Ybarra’s.

“It took outsiders to solve this murder,” Stauffer said.

Stauffer said she also picked up the hotel and meals tab for four security guards provided by the Costa Rican Ministry of Public Safety during the last three days of the trial.

The guards were called in, Stauffer said, after officials realized the defendants were part of a “Costa Rican, drug-dealing underworld” capable of killing those who stand up against it.

“Those first few days, the courtroom was chaos,” Stauffer said. “The defendants’ families were all in there — I had two of Kattia’s brothers, both of them big men, stand behind me the whole time. And then they’d follow me wherever I went.”

The guards’ arrival “put an end to all that,” she said.

Widespread corruption

Stauffer invited reporters to a morning news conference at Washburn University, where she publicly thanked Thomas and Ybarra.

Soon after Thomas and Ybarra joined the case, Stauffer said, it became apparent that many witnesses had not cooperated with local authorities because they feared retribution.

“There is a lot of corruption in Costa Rica — from the cop on the street to the president of the country,” Ybarra said.

Thomas said that once Golfito residents realized he was independent of the local and national police, he had little trouble finding the taxi driver who took Cruz, Carrillo and Quesada from the scene of the stabbing.

The taxi driver’s testimony that Cruz and Carrillo had blood on their clothes proved to be critical in establishing the two defendants’ guilt, Thomas said.

“So much of what we had was circumstantial,” Thomas said. “He put them at the scene.”

Related cause

Stauffer said she and her husband have dedicated themselves to raising money for the Shannon Lucile Martin English Center in Golfito, which opens in February. Donations may be sent to the Shannon Lucile Martin Foundation, 5431 S.W. 29th St., Topeka 66614.

Asked where donations may be sent to help relieve the Stauffers’ debt, Stauffer replied: “No, I don’t want that; I appreciate the thought, but I don’t feel this is anybody’s responsibility but ours and possibly the University of Kansas, which I’ll be talking to them about.”

Martin took part in KU’s Study Abroad Program, spending six months in Golfito in 2000. At the time of her death, she was in Golfito collecting fern specimens needed to complete a science project at KU.

In her opening remarks, Stauffer thanked the Journal-World and Tico Times newspapers for their willingness to report on her efforts to prosecute her daughter’s killers.

“They gave me credibility,” she said of the reports. “And without that credibility, this case wouldn’t have been solved.”

Tico Times is a weekly English-language newspaper in Costa Rica.