A search in the Mexican jungle for an Australian mother who has been missing for nearly a year along with her estranged husband has turned up no trace of the couple.
Tahnee Shanks, 32, was last seen on May 2 of last year as she left the family’s hotel in Cancun with her husband Jorge Luis Aguirre Astudillo and their daughter Adelynn, now three years old.
Little Adelynn was later found wandering alone and barefoot outside a Cancun church around 9pm that day with no sign of her parents.
While Adelynn’s uncle Daniel and grandmother Leanne Shanks immediately flew from Queensland to retrieve Adelynn, who now lives with Daniel and his wife, there has been no sign of her parents.
In January, a heavily armed team that included members of the State Attorney General’s Office, the Investigative Police, the Quintana Roo Police, the National Guard and the Secretary of National Defense searched an area of the jungle near a unit of housing in the south of Cancun.
They believed the couple’s bodies might have been brought there and buried in clandestine graves.
Tahnee Shanks and her ex-partner Jorge Aguirre Astudillo are still missing in Mexico. Her daughter Adelynn was later found wandering the streets of Cancun alone.
The search for the Australian mother (right) in a jungle area in Cancun proved fruitless.
A heavily armed team searched a jungle area in Cancun for the bodies of Ms Shanks and her husband in January but found no trace of them.
Several acres of the area were searched, and cadaver dogs were also brought in, but no trace of the couple was found, a Mexican newspaper reported.
The search came after authorities received possible “new evidence” in relation to her disappearance, believing that Ms. Shanks and Mr. Aguirre Astudillo may have been taken to the jungle area and killed.
The white van they were in was reportedly parked outside a house for 10 hours before they went missing.
The Mexican publication Por Esto! They said sources close to the investigation believed there might be other bodies of victims of criminal groups buried in the area.
At the time of Ms Shanks’ disappearance, authorities said they were investigating two theories.
The first is that there was an incident of domestic violence and Mr. Aguirre Astudillo is a fugitive or in hiding.
Tahnee Shanks, 32, was last seen on May 2 of last year as she left the family’s hotel in Cancun with her husband Jorge Astudillo and now their three-year-old daughter, Adelynn.
In January, a heavily armed team that included members of the State Attorney General’s Office, the Investigative Police, the Quintana Roo Police, the National Guard and the Secretary of National Defense searched an area of the jungle near a unit of housing in the south of Cancun.
The alternative theory is that Mr. Aguirre Astudillo was involved in criminal activities linked to Mexico’s notorious drug cartels and the disappearance is revenge.
The family had traveled from their home in Mérida to the tourist hotspot of Cancún on May 1 and then left their hotel the next day.
His white 4×4 was seen on toll road cameras just before 12:00 pm and was returning to Merida before making a sharp U-turn.
A similar burnt-out car was later found and is believed to be the vehicle the family was traveling in.
But reports suggest the car may have been linked to another kidnapping, and the one the family was traveling in was bought by another driver who is not connected to Ms Shanks’s disappearance.
Leanne Shanks now hopes that security cameras taken outside the church where Adelynn was dumped can piece together what happened to her daughter.
She said she had recently been granted permission to view the images, and someone from a missing persons organization claimed to have seen Aguirre Astudillo and one of his relatives outside the church.
The couple’s white van was seized while leaving a hotel in Cancun on the morning of May 2. They were traveling 20 kilometers toward Mérida when the van suddenly made a U-turn and headed back toward Cancún, before taking a detour off the highway.
Ms Shanks’ text messages to a friend show her describing the breakdown of her marriage.
“I’m willing to go back (to Mexico) but the consulate can’t really serve me, which makes it difficult because I don’t even know where to start or if they (the police) will talk to me.” she told the Mail.
‘Is it criminal or is it domestic? We really are not wiser yet.
Ms Shanks was due to return to Australia on June 22 last year, just weeks after she went missing.
Text messages between her and a friend showed her expressing the break in her relationship with Mr. Aguirre Astudillo.
While she said he wasn’t physically abusive, she didn’t “want to wait” for the emotional abuse and anger to turn violent.
In another WhatsApp exchange, she revealed that she had locked herself in her daughter’s room in an attempt to escape her husband’s wrath as he tried to kick her out of the family home.
The couple recently split after Ms Shanks found out he was having an affair and booked a flight back to Queensland with Adelynn.
Ms. Shanks’s mother Leanne (left) and brother Dan (right) rushed to Mexico to get Adelynn back when they found her wandering the streets. Adelynn now lives with them.