Incident At Falcon Lake:...Was David Hartley Really Offed By Mexican Thugs?...Wonder Of Wonders...

By PATRICK ALCATRAZ
Editor-In-Chief

FALCON LAKE, Texas - It doesn't take very long once you near this lake before one gets the idea that, hey, something sure smells fishy. Tasty, fresh-water Bass draw many an angler out this far west of Rio Grande City, and many of them are day-outing people who often grill their catch right there on the banks of the expansive lake's many crooks and crannies. The aroma moves from campsite to campsite. It is an outdoor delicacy that comes largely free-of-charge. All you need is a fishing license.

But that allows you permission to fish on the U.S. side of the lake. The equally-bountiful Mexican side is something else altogether. Americans have long fished wherever they wanted to on this lake. Fish wardens patroll only the U.S. parks, dropping-in on people in the middle of a grilling to ask for fishing licenses. The Mexican side of the lake requires no official authorization, although other things come into play over there.

Apparently, a man named David Hartley found out the hard way that the Mexican side of Falcon Lake brings risk other than some gung-ho game warden pulling you over to ask for something or another. Hartley was reportedly jet-skiiing last week with his wife, Tiffany, when, as she tells it, the pair was attacked by Mexicans on speedboats firing automatic weapons. According to his wife, David Hartley was shot in the head and presumably killed. His body has not been found, nor has his jet ski.

It's an odd story. Much of it sounds believable, but much of it does not.

Tiffany Hartley, shown in photo above, says she managed to speed away from her attackers, that she heard and saw bullets splashing all around her, that blood coming from David's exploding head splattered on her life vest. That blood is now being analyzed, although, as any private investigator will tell you, it'll only matter if the blood of Tiffany's vest came from Hartley, and if someone can prove that it is as fresh as his killling - the latter being a bitch to prove.

As could have been expected, the Hartley family and a boatload of supporters have now damned border law enforcement - on both sides of the Rio Grande - while giving little info as to how Tiffany could have escaped the clutches of so-called heartless and cruel thugs not used to, well, letting witnesses go free. And, as someone else noted, where is that jet ski?

"Tiffany Hartley said she was seeing bullets hitting close to her in the water and realized that her husband had been hit behind the head," Zapata County Sheriff Sigifredo Gonzalez Jr. told ABC News at week's end. "She went back trying to find, trying to help him. She went in the water trying to load up her husband to her Jet Ski ... trying to get his body and Jet Ski back to the U.S. side. She was being shot at so she finally had to let go of the body, climb back in her Jet Ski and head back over here to the United States."

If things did happen as Tiffany Hartley alleges they happened, well, that bloody jet ski is now in the hands of some teen cartel hooligan using it to impress chicks on some lake in the Mexican interior.

And if past history is any indication, David Hartley's body was recovered by the Mexicans and placed head-first inside a 55-gallon drum full of acid...

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