In early May, no two-year-old girl found barefoot and alone outside a church in the Mexican coastal city of Cancun.
Shortly afterwards, mother Tahnee Louise Shanks (32) was reported missing.
The 32-year-old was last seen on Monday 2 May, and it is still not known how she was separated from her two-year-old daughter.
Suspected drug cartel
Shanks is originally from Australia, but moved to Mexico at the age of 18 in 2007, where she also met the two-year-old’s father – Jorge Aguirre Estudillo.
The family of three, who live in the town of Merida on the Yucatan Peninsula, had booked a hotel room in Cancún when Shanks and the father of the child disappeared without a trace.
HOLIDAY PARADISE: Tahnee Shanks disappeared from the world-famous tourist destination Cancún in Mexico. Photo: Shutterstock
sea view
Attorney General for the Mexican state of Quintana Roo, Oscar Montes de Oca Rosales, was interviewed at the end of May in the Australian version of the American television program “60 minutes”.
According to the Australian newspaper The Canberra Times Montes de Oca Rosales said that the couple may have been a target for drug cartels, or that it was all about domestic violence.
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– It may have been a revenge from the criminal gangs he was involved in, the Attorney General said.
He believes too there is a good chance that Jorge Aguirre Estudillo is a member of a drug cartel.
Hired a private investigator
Now, however, the family has grown tired of the Mexican police, and believes they have slowed down the investigation.
According to ABC News they have now decided to hire a private investigator.
Daniel Shanks, Tahnee’s brother, says they have also lodged a complaint with the Australian Commission on Human Rights, after the Mexican authorities spent three weeks sending over the files.
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– They are not accommodating. They tell us nothing. I have had to go through the Australian embassy, which in turn has had to contact the Mexican authorities, in order to get any answers as to where they stand in the investigation.
Over the past two years, the number of registered disappearances in Mexico has increased dramatically. according to Amnesty International has officially landed more than 97,000 missing persons.
– Tahnee is just another missing person. After all, it doesn’t really mean that much to anyone over there, Daniel tells ABC News.
SAFE: Tahnee Shanks daughter (2) with grandmother and uncle Daniel Shanks. Photo: GoFundMe
sea view
– We have not even started the mourning process yet, because we hope we do not have to go there. Still, it is almost inevitable at this stage, he believes.
– Something that did not agree
Daniel has previously said that the sister tried to get the two-year-old home to Australia. The child, like the mother, has Mexican citizenship.
In May, he told ABC News that Estudillo had agreed to sign the papers, but that the couple was in the middle of a serious quarrel.
MISSED: Authorities are looking for 32-year-old Tahnee Louise Shanks. Photo: Yucatan State Attorney’s Office
sea view
The latest message from Shanks was sent on Sunday, May 1st. She wrote to Daniel on Messenger and stated that she was in a small fishing village with poor coverage.
– There was something wrong, the brother explained at the time.
A family friend created a penny roll on the GoFundMe website to raise money so the family can afford to look for Tahnee Shanks on their own.
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