Mexican investigators say they haven't found any evidence of an attack on David Hartley, 30, including his body or the personal watercraft he was said to be riding on Falcon Lake, The Monitor newspaper of McAllen, Texas, reported.
Hartley's 29-year-old wife, Tiffany, told authorities the couple was taking in the sights on Jet Skis on Sept. 30 on the Mexican side of the border lake when several boats of gunmen began shooting at them, hitting her husband in the head. She said she tried to save him but then fled to safety. Authorities say the area on the Mexican side is abandoned and dangerous.
Mexican investigators questioned the account given by Hartley and the two sets of GPS coordinates they were given showing where the couple was said to have been, The Monitor reported.
"We are not sure," Marco Antonio Guerrero Carrizales, the district attorney whose area covers Falcon Lake, told the newspaper, speaking in Spanish. "We are not certain that the incident happened the way that they are telling us."
Asked about the comments this morning on NBC's "Today" show, an emotional Tiffany Hartley responded, "I would have to say that, you know, when they know the pirates are out there. We knew that. We knew there was a possibility of them being there. I believe in my heart that they went back and took him, and they're hiding our Jet Ski, they're hiding him. And we just plea that we get him back. "
Mexican authorities said U.S. consular officials gave them two sets of GPS coordinates where Hartley was last seen, the newspaper said. Without additional information, Mexican officials searched on land and water for about a mile around each location on Saturday, the paper said.
"We are blind with a stick trying to find him," Rolando Armando Flores Villegas, the Tamaulipas State Police commander charged with searching for Hartley, said to The Monitor, speaking in Spanish.
Guerrero said his office has not received a report from Tiffany Hartley, which is required to launch a formal investigation, and told the paper he would like to speak with her.
"Nobody has called to file a report," Guerrero told The Monitor. "If we can talk to her, maybe we can conclude that something really happened. But if she starts jumping and falling into contradictions, the investigation could have a twist."
Though she said they knew there was the possibility of pirates, Hartley said earlier in the "Today" interview that the couple hadn't heard anything about them lately.
"We had heard about the pirates ... we just hadn't heard anything recently," she said.
She said she realized they were in danger when she saw three boats headed toward them and heard gunfire. She said she saw her husband fly over the Jet Ski.
"I quickly turned around and went to him and jumped off my Jet Ski," she told NBC. "And I had to turn him over because he was facedown in the water, and turned him over and he was shot in the head."
She said a boat approached her and "had a gun pointed at me" and then left. She said she tried to get her husband onto her Jet Ski but couldn't.
"And I just kept hearing God tell me, 'You have to go. You have to go.' So I had to leave him so I could get to safety," she told NBC.
Hartley, her in-laws Dennis and Pam Hartley and sister-in-law Nikki all answered no when asked on "Today" if Mexican authorities are doing everything possible.
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"And our plea to the general public, this is not something that there's a textbook on to know what we're supposed to do," Nikki Hartley said. "We've been doing what we've been directed to do by everybody, and I don't feel we've been provided the right information to make stuff work."U.S. authorities said they're working with Mexico to recover the body, The Monitor said.
"We've asked the Mexican authorities to do everything they can in the case and bring it to a close," Brian Quigley, a spokesman for the U.S. Consulate in Monterrey, told The Monitor. "Both sides are trying to find the body."