SELENA, Cayo, Thurs. Jan. 6, 2016–As we go to press tonight, Belize police are still trying to piece together what transpired in the vicious stabbing murder of the famous Canadian filmmaker, Matthiew Klinck, 37, who had migrated to Belize in 2011. Two males from the Santa Elena/San Ignacio area have been detained, pending charges.
Klinck was a film producer, and through his company, Make-Belize Films, he had produced a number of films and a soap opera. An article appearing in the Globe and Mail this week says that Klinck’s upcoming project was CBS’s new primetime drama, Criminal Minds: Beyond Borders, due to premiere March 2 in the US.
Klinck, who had been living in the remote area of Selena, in the area of Spanish Lookout, Cayo, was found dead and decomposing near his home at about 8:30 Sunday night by friends who could not reach him on his phone. He had been stabbed 14 times in the upper part of his body, mostly his neck.
Edwin Paz, the caretaker of the property, who is stationed at its entrance, told police that he last saw Klinck at about 4:00 Saturday evening, when Klinck drove up to the property in his vehicle. Klinck was alone at the time, he said.
According to Paz, Klinck usually worked alone for long hours in his house, and so the caretaker did not suspect that something was amiss when he did not see him on Sunday.
Paz told the media that at about 8:00 Sunday night, two of Klinck’s friends told him that they had been trying to contact Klinck but he was not responding to their calls. They went to the house to see if they could find Klinck, and that was when they found him murdered near his home. Police were later called to the scene.
Superintendent Andrew Ramirez, Commander of San Ignacio police, told the media on Wednesday that on Sunday night, when they went to the home, they saw Klinck lying on the ground face-up about 15 feet away from his house. He was already dead.
An onsite post-mortem determined that he had died from “hypovolemic shock due to internal and external hemorrhage, due to multiple stab wounds.”
Ramirez said that police were puzzled by what they found. The doors of the ransacked home were left wide open, but Klinck’s very expensive filmmaking equipment, including his cameras, was untouched and nothing appeared to have been stolen.
Police said that they have not yet determined a motive for the murder.
Klinck’s body was cremated and his ashes will be taken back home by his relatives.
Inspector Reymundo Reyes, Deputy Commander of the San Ignacio Police, told Amandala that the area where Klinck lived was remote, which poses a problem for the investigation, since his body was found more than 24 hours after he was last seen, and the killer or killers would have had enough time to escape.
Klinck became popular in San Pedro for the Curse of the Xtabai, a 2012 film produced in San Pedro, as well as La Isla Bonita telenovela, the first Spanish soap opera filmed in Belize.
(For more on Matthiew Klinck’s film career, see story on page 46 of this issue.)