The Murder in Room 3: The True Story Behind a Shocking Crime in Costa Rica

By Harry Bodaan and Karl Kahler

This is the story of Harry Bodaan, owner of a hotel in Manuel Antonio, Costa Rica, where a brutal rape and murder occurred on July 20, 2020. The leading suspect was quickly arrested, but Harry and a third man were arrested days later based on “bite mark evidence” on the victim’s body.

The murder of Dr. María Luisa Cedeño, head of anesthesiology at Costa Rica’s top hospital, became a national sensation, in part because she was a prominent physician, and in part because Bodaan was one of the best-known foreigners in the country.

Why would a 5-star hotel owner of 20 years suddenly decide to rape and murder a guest that he had never met, and just leave her body there for the staff to find in the morning? The Murder in Room 3 is the definitive examination of this chilling case, a story that explores the dark corners of justice gone wrong.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kahler Productions
• Release date: Jul 16, 2025
• ISBN: 9789697192434

Book preview

Copyright © 2025 by Harry Bodaan and Karl Kahler

All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

Published in the United States of America by Kahler Productions

The Murder in Room 3 is a work of nonfiction, describing actual events and using real names. Source material has been translated from the original Spanish.

Cover art: AI-assisted image of María Luisa Cedeño by Linda Rorije. View from the rear of Room 3 at La Mansion Inn, looking toward Manuel Antonio National Park, courtesy of the OIJ. Background image courtesy of Quang Nguyen Vinh via Pexels.

Book design by Debbie Bride

Translation by Karl Kahler and Laianer Arias

ISBN: English edition

E-book 978-9-69-719243-4

Softcover 978-9-69-719242-7

ISBN: Spanish edition

E-book 978-9-69-719245-8

Softcover 978-9-69-719244-1

Contents

Foreword

1.Gruesome Discovery

2.First Responders

3.Weekend Getaway

4.Happy Sunday

5.Chicken Dinner

6.Lights Out

7.Where’s Teo?

8.Crime Scene

9.The Raid

10.The Autopsy

11.The Odontologist

12.Police Calling

13.Under Arrest

14.Hell Hotel

15.In Prison

16.Life’s Work

17.Community Organizer

Photo Pages

18.The Trial

19.The Detective

20.Police Assumptions

21.K9 Cop

22.The Defendant

23.People’s Witnesses

24.Photoshop Guy

25.The Locksmith

26.Bite Marks

27.Bite Rebuttal

28.The Neighbors

29.The Ex-Boyfriend

30.Best Friends

31.The Maid

32.The Manager

33.Maintenance Man

34.The Receptionist

35.Top Cop

36.Head Sleuth

37.Suspects Needed

38.The Family

39.My Spouse

40.Two Doctors

41.Teodoro’s Phone

42.The Verdict

43.The Accused

44.The Sentence

45.Set Free

46.The Appeal

47.The Ruling

48.New Trial?

49.Appealed Again

50.My Innocence

Back cover

Foreword

When I first met Harry Bodaan in September 2016, he received me in the grand lobby of his hotel sitting in front of a giant aquarium with a fat piranha inside, which I thought made him look a bit like a James Bond villain.

I was the travel editor of the Tico Times, the top English-language newspaper in Costa Rica, and I was in Manuel Antonio to write a series of articles about this leading tourism destination. Harry was the owner of the 5-star La Mansion Inn, a beautiful oceanfront hotel, and was also president of the Quepos Chamber of Commerce. He gladly agreed to an interview, and he sat with me for an hour answering every question I had.

I learned more from Harry in one hour than I could have learned from other people in 10 hours.

He was a volcano of information about Manuel Antonio and neighboring Quepos, all the attractions they offered and all the problems they faced. He was a quotable, informed and articulate advocate for this community. He knew his facts and recited them freely, though he never raised his voice, was never bombastic or pushy.

Harry was 65 years old, and he came off as kind of a grandfatherly figure, a senior statesman for his chosen home, always soft-spoken and gentle-mannered, his competence preceding him.

After our interview Harry showed me around the hotel, including a brief tour of his apartment, which had a private indoor swimming pool with a stage for a small band. Harry had a wall full of photos where he posed with celebrities and heads of state — Arnold Schwarzenegger, Mikhail Gorbachev, George H.W. Bush, Elizabeth Taylor, Chuck Norris and many more. He had met all these people as the head of press clubs in both Washington and Moscow in the 1980s and 1990s.

I booked a room that night at La Mansion, as part of my mission to write a series of reviews of local hotels. Harry offered to comp my room, but I told him the Tico Times frowned on that, so the newspaper would be paying my bill.

Toward the end of the day, Harry asked if I could do him a favor. The Chinese ambassador to Costa Rica, Song Yanbin, was coming to La Mansion tomorrow for a luncheon, followed by a tour of a nearby palm oil plantation. Harry wondered if I could stay another day and write a story for the paper about the ambassador’s visit.

This sounded reasonably newsworthy to me, and I always needed new content, so I agreed. The next day I attended the luncheon, seated next to Harry. He noticed that I didn’t eat much and offered to have the chef bring me something else, but I told him not to worry, I just have a small stomach.

I rode with him in a chauffeured SUV to the tour of the palm oil plant. Harry chatted with me along the way in his understated manner, sotto voce, volunteering the surprising tidbit that this Costa Rican palm oil plantation was totally owned by Nicaraguans. I returned to La Mansion that night and filed the story.

In the morning I checked out of the hotel, and I never saw Harry again. To this day. At least not in person.

Imagine my shock four years later when I saw on the national news that Harry had been arrested on suspicion of raping and murdering a woman who was a guest at his hotel. The police were talking about a three-way conspiracy between Bodaan and two others, and they said there were bite marks on the victim’s body that could be a match for Bodaan’s teeth.

Harry bite a woman? Everyone knew he was gay, in a long-term relationship with a man. I said to myself: There is no part of a woman that Harry wants to put in his mouth. As I followed the drumbeat of the daily news, I refused to believe he had participated in this crime.

And yet, like countless other people in Costa Rica, eventually I thought that with this much smoke, there must be some fire. Surely Harry wouldn’t have been so aggressively charged by government prosecutors if he was totally innocent. I imagined privately — quite ignorantly — that maybe his friends committed this crime and he found out about it later and helped cover it up.

None of my speculation turned out to be even remotely true. But it illustrates the power of criminal charges to influence public opinion, when even casual friends of the defendant will assume he’s probably dirty somehow.

For the next three years I followed the case on TV, through Harry’s imprisonment and trial, which lasted until April 2023. I kept saying to myself, Someone should write a book about this.

Months after the verdict, I was surprised to receive a Facebook notification from Harry, who was then in Holland, inviting me to read a new post of his. This was not a personal note from him but more of a mass notification in which I was tagged. I hadn’t spoken to Harry in eight years, but apparently we were long-lost Facebook friends. I read his post, which was an impassioned proclamation of his innocence.

I sent Harry a note via Messenger, reminding him who I was, and said I would be interested in talking to him for an article about this case if he was game.

He replied that he was game, putting the word in quotation marks. I would soon learn that getting out the truth about this case had become the primary preoccupation of the twilight of Harry’s life.

So began an intercontinental conversation that has lasted close to two years so far, via audio calls, video calls and thousands of emails, texts, forwarded documents and shared photos. It soon became clear that we had way too much material for an article.

Eventually we entered into a ghostwriting agreement in which I would write a book from his perspective, based on his recollections but also on a thorough examination of all the evidence in the case. Primary sources for this book include the 614-page trial transcript, which records all the testimony of every witness at a murder trial with three defendants. This is supplemented by police interviews of witnesses who did not testify at trial, including two of the defendants. Also, I interviewed multiple people who knew Harry well, were familiar with the case and had valuable insights to offer.

The trial transcript is of course in Spanish, and large parts are translated into English here for the first time. I’m originally from Arkansas but I moonlight as a Spanish-English translator, having lived six years in Venezuela, Mexico and Bolivia as a child, plus the past 10 years in Costa Rica.

I also have 25 years of experience as a journalist at California’s Pulitzer Prize-winning San Jose Mercury News, where I started as a copy editor and departed as national editor. I was never an investigative reporter there, though this book may have turned me into one.

My profound thanks to Harry for being so forthcoming with information on so many topics. If I published everything he ever told me, this book would weigh 300 pounds.

Harry’s husband, Danilo Obando, also was exceptionally helpful in locating critical documents and photos. I’m grateful also to the friends of Harry who agreed to be interviewed, in some cases providing vital information available nowhere else.

My thanks also to our superb editor and designer, Debbie Bride, a fellow expat and a total pro. My former Tico Times colleague Laianer Arias was also enormously helpful in editing the Spanish version of this book. If I’ve made any errors of fact or judgment, I take full responsibility.

I get goosebumps every time I think about María Luisa Cedeño, and I think about her every day. I would dedicate this book to her.

Karl Kahler

Playa Cocles, Costa Rica

July 2025

1

Gruesome Discovery

Iwas at a meeting in the boardroom of my hotel in Manuel Antonio when I received an alarming phone call.

I had invited some local officials and colleagues from Quepos to La Mansion Inn to iron out details of a plan to form a sister city relationship with Haikou, China. We were about an hour into the meeting when the desk phone in front of me rang. My staff knew I was in a meeting, and they wouldn’t call if it wasn’t important, so I answered.

The call was from my operations manager, Daniela Ceciliano, who sounded extremely distraught. In a trembling voice, she told me that something horrible had happened to the woman staying in Room 3.

This guest hadn’t shown up for breakfast or checkout, and didn’t answer the phone, so Daniela went to check on her with our receptionist, Raquel Navarro. What they found was the guest’s body lying on her bed covered by a sheet, and there was blood all over the room.

Daniela would testify in court two years later: I told Harry on the phone that the person in Room 3 had a lot of blood and because of the smell in the room and the color of her skin it was obvious that she was not well.

It’s impossible to express how shocked and horrified I was to hear this. But I said I would be right there.

I told the people at the meeting what I’d just heard, and I rose to my feet on my two new artificial knees, the result of a recent double knee replacement. Room 3 was in a building upstairs from us, and I had difficulty climbing stairs, so someone from the meeting helped me to climb the steps.

In front of Room 3 I found Daniela, Raquel and Lester Jiménez, head of maintenance. All had already looked inside the room, and the expressions on their faces were grim.

I asked them to open the door, and Lester opened it with a master key. I walked inside, braced for a disturbing scene but unprepared for the tragedy that awaited.

To the right was the bathroom, where the trash can had been knocked over and the toilet paper inside scattered all over the floor. To the left was a closet, and on the floor inside that was a shivering little brown dachshund.

The whole room came into view, and I froze in place. There was a woman’s body on the bed covered by a blood-stained white sheet. I could see only the hair of her head and one of her feet. The body was absolutely still.

There were large bloodstains on the mattress, and there were bloody sheets scattered around the tile floor, which was also smeared in red.

I backed out of the room, horrified and sickened, and closed the door. I asked someone to call 911, but Raquel already had.

‘Who is she?’

I gathered all the staff in the lobby, and I asked someone to go find Danilo. 

I had been in a relationship with Danilo Obando for 11 years. He was a law student in Nicaragua when I met him in 2009, the year he turned 20, and when he finished law school he moved in with me in my apartment at La Mansion. We were married in 2021 after gay marriage became legal in Costa Rica.

Danilo had woken up with me that morning about 7 to help me get dressed, as my recent operations had greatly affected my mobility, as well as the onset of Parkinson’s disease. But after I left for my meeting about sister cities, he went back to bed.

My security guard Cristopher Castro went to get Danilo, walking right into the apartment and shaking him awake. Cristopher told him one of our guests had been found dead in her room, though he had no idea how she died. Danilo was deeply disturbed to hear this, fearing that the guest had died of Covid, which could be very bad publicity for our hotel.

Danilo got dressed and walked up a series of stairs to the main hotel area, where he joined the meeting in the lobby. He soon learned that the problem was quite a bit worse than a case of Covid.

We were all sitting around in the lobby trying to figure out what could have happened.

Who is she? I asked.

Raquel, who had checked her in, produced a printout from our reservation system showing that the guest’s name was María Luisa Cedeño. We would learn that she actually went by her second name, Luisa.

I had never heard of this person, and I’d never seen her even in passing that weekend, as I hadn’t left my apartment to go up to the main hotel area. I was unaware that we had any guests in the hotel. It was the height of the Covid pandemic, and guests were few and far between.

Raquel had received Luisa two days ago, on Saturday, July 18, 2020. She was a friendly Costa Rican woman traveling alone with her little dog Mafalda, a brown dachshund.

Raquel had checked her into Room 3, and even upgraded her to our all-inclusive plan, which included meals and drinks, for an extra $100. Raquel would testify in court that she spent quite a bit of time chatting with Luisa while serving her breakfast on Sunday.

It turned out that María Luisa Cedeño, 43, was the head of the anesthesiology department at CIMA in Escazú, the most prestigious hospital in the country, and in fact the place I often went for medical care and had several operations. Raquel testified in court two years later that Luisa had booked two nights at La Mansion as a getaway from her hospital job, and she even confided in Raquel that after recently ending a relationship, she was taking some solo time just to de-stress.

According to the testimony in court of both Raquel and Daniela, Luisa was scheduled for a noon checkout on this same day, Monday, July 20, 2020. When the doctor didn’t show up for breakfast, and the phone in her room appeared to be disconnected, Raquel and Daniela went to check on her.

They knocked but she didn’t answer. They didn’t have a key to Room 3, but they were able to enter the adjoining Room 4.

View of Room 4 at La Mansion Inn. Daniela and Raquel went outside and slipped through a fence to get into the rear garden of Room 3. (Source: La Mansion Inn)

From there they walked out into the rear yard and shouted, Doña María Luisa! The only answer was a little dog that ran outside barking.

Raquel and Daniela easily slipped through the little fence to get into the back yard of Room 3. The sliding glass doors were ajar, but the curtains were closed.

The rear of Room 3, as photographed by the police. Daniela and Raquel found it with the door ajar but the curtains closed. (Source: OIJ)

Raquel pulled the curtains aside, and to her horror she saw blood-stained towels and sheets on the floor, and then on the bed, a body under a sheet. Daniela noticed a strong smell in the room.

The two were too horrified to even set foot inside. They retraced their steps through Room 4 and ran to find Lester, the maintenance man, who had a master key that could open Room 3.

Raquel told Daniela they had to call 911, and Raquel dialed the number herself.

Raquel testified at trial: I called, but because I was in an altered state, I tried to explain that there was a lot of blood, towels with blood on the floor, and she was in the bed. I think [the operator] wanted me to go check on the body, but I couldn’t do that.

Raquel stayed in the lobby while Daniela and Lester went upstairs. Lester opened the door and went inside. Lester went to the body, lifted the sheet and was the first to see Dr. Cedeño’s face in death. It was clear that she was not alive. He put the sheet back where it had been, left the room and closed the door.

They found Raquel waiting downstairs, and Lester said the woman in the room was dead.

Raquel started screaming.

2

First Responders

Two medics from the Red Cross arrived around 1:30. We were all still sitting around the lobby, asking questions, grasping for a fragment of a clue about what might have happened. But honestly none of us had any idea.

Daniela and Lester accompanied the two medics upstairs, and Lester opened the door for them. Daniela testified in court that she didn’t go in the room because the smell was really strong.

Ten minutes later the Red Cross came back downstairs and said the woman in the room was dead. They said there was a lot of blood on the bed, and the room was in a state of total chaos.

The Red Cross alerted the police that they had found a dead woman at La Mansion Inn who appeared to be the victim of a murder. This call finally prompted a police response.

The OIJ (pronounced oh-ee-HO-ta) is the Organismo de Investigación Judicial, the federal police of Costa Rica, and it’s tasked with investigating virtually all major crimes in this country. There was an OIJ office in Quepos, the town right next to Manuel Antonio, and I knew a lot of the officers there from having supported their efforts over the years in my capacity as president of the Chamber of Commerce.

The OIJ responded by about 3:30 p.m., two hours after the Red Cross, and a little over three hours after Dr. Cedeño was found dead in Room 3. It felt like a lifetime to me.

More than a dozen officers from the Quepos OIJ arrived and went upstairs to Room 3, while I remained downstairs in the lobby. The lead investigator was a detective from the Quepos OIJ named Ronny León Fernández, who would be the government’s first witness at trial. He put on a full body suit to avoid contaminating the scene, and went inside the room with his assistants. Two officers from the Fuerza Pública, the local police, were posted in the front and rear of Room 3 to prevent anyone else from entering.

León found the shivering little dog, Mafalda, and removed her from the room. Someone brought the dog downstairs to the lobby and put her in a women’s restroom with food and water.

The crime scene that awaited León is well documented by photos taken by a police photographer. There was a woman’s figure on the bed to the right, lying face up, her entire body covered by a sheet except one foot and the back of her head.

There was a lot of blood visible on the bed, the sheets and the floor. There were also bloody sheets on the tile floor, which was smeared with wiped blood.

The scene in Room 3: bloody sheets and towels on the floor, scattered clothing, empty bottles and cans. The victim was lying on the bed at right, covered by a sheet. (Source: OIJ)

Crime scene photos show women’s clothing was also scattered all over the floor, like bikinis and blouses. Other traces of Dr. Cedeño’s occupancy included random items like makeup and face cream placed on chairs, and an open bottle of mouthwash on the little glass table where the coffeemaker was.

In the rear of the room was a little sitting area with a love seat, meaning a sofa for two, and a rectangular glass coffee table covered with glasses, bottles, cans and mostly unopened packages of pharmaceutical drugs (apparently from a physician sample kit).

The glass coffee table in the rear of the room was littered with mostly unopened prescription drugs, evidence of alcohol consumption and an untouched watch. (Source: OIJ)

One side of the love seat was occupied by the doctor’s open suitcase — which was still full, bulging with contents, indicating that nobody had rifled through it. Luisa appears to have packed it in preparation for her departure tomorrow.

In another indication that this was no robbery, there were two pricey watches found in the room, and Luisa’s late-model iPhone was found on the bed next to her body. There was also an iPad on the floor. (Her money and keys were locked up in the safe.)

Dr. Cedeño’s watch and iPhone. The phone was found on the bed next to her body. (Source: OIJ)

An empty bottle of red wine was standing on the glass coffee table, along with two wine glasses, but only one of them appeared to contain any wine residue.

There was also an open can of a mandarin-flavored Adán & Eva vodka drink on the coffee table. And on top of the mini-fridge were two more empty cans of Adán & Eva, Wild Berries flavor, and they were both slightly dented, as if whoever drank them was in the habit of crushing his empties a bit.

In the bathroom there was a fourth empty can of Adán & Eva, mandarin again, that was tossed into the bathroom sink, along with an empty bottle of water that was crushed flat. Even stranger, someone had tossed foil-backed packages of stomach medicine into the bowl of the toilet.

There was a lot of evidence here to unpack — many traces of an innocent guest enjoying her weekend, but also the residue of a vicious attacker who ended her life.

León testified that he moved in to examine the body pretty quickly, mindful that it would have to be moved soon and preserved for autopsy.

While the OIJ processed the scene, I talked to a Fuerza Pública officer named Lt. Danilo Fonseca downstairs. I told him I wanted to speak to the OIJ, because I had an idea about who they should be questioning. Before long a couple of OIJ officials came downstairs, and I told them a strange but true story about what had happened the night before.

3

Weekend Getaway

Dr. María Luisa Cedeño had arrived at La Mansion around noon on Saturday, July 18, driving her 2018 Lexus. She planned to stay two nights, and Raquel checked her into Room 3.

Dr. Cedeño’s friends testified at trial that she had recently broken up with a boyfriend, and she was taking a weekend away with just her little dog for some me time. One of the reasons she said she chose La Mansion was because it was pet-friendly.

Opening the door of Room 3 with a card key, Luisa would have found an immaculate and well-appointed room with a king-size bed, large bathroom and nice furniture. The sliding glass doors in back opened on a stunning ocean view looking toward Manuel Antonio National Park. On the other side of the glass doors was a garden, a grassy little yard, where I imagine the little dog might have relieved herself after their three-hour road trip.

The entrance to La Mansion Inn. (Source: Karl Kahler)

On the side of this little garden was the framework of a fence to separate it from the garden behind Room 4. These were not real fences that could prevent someone from slipping through, but more like a framework of light poles, erected to suggest that people should not go wandering around behind other people’s rooms. But it would have been a simple matter to slip through the widely spaced bars of these fences.

View from inside Room 3, with Manuel Antonio National Park in the distance. (Source: OIJ)

Dr. Cedeño soon showed up at the pool in a bathing suit with her dog. The pool was on the same level as Room 3, at the end of a short hall, very close to her room.

The pool at La Mansion. Room 3 was to the left, in the building with the green roof. (Source: La Mansion Inn)

There wasn’t much competition for pool chairs. One female couple arrived on Saturday after Luisa and were booked into Room 10, one floor above her, but they apparently never had any interaction with her.

Luisa was greeted by the poolside bartender, Diego Chaves, a very nice man who was well-liked by the staff and was good with guests. Tragically, he was killed in a motorcycle accident a few months after the murder. But his eyewitness testimony survives in his statements to police, who interviewed him in some detail about his dealings with Dr. Cedeño.

Diego said hello to the new guest, no doubt with his usual warmth, and asked if she would like anything to drink. She asked him for a vodka drink, which he went off to prepare. As he did, he noticed that another person appeared at the pool, said hello to the lady and stopped to chat with her.

This man was Teodoro Herrera Martínez, a former employee who had been laid off because of the Covid pandemic but was still staying at the hotel while he tried to get back on his feet. Originally from Nicaragua, Teo was a waiter and bartender who sometimes moonlighted as an exotic dancer at a gay-friendly nightclub in San José called the Venue.

I met Teo through a DJ friend named Eleazar who came to visit the hotel a couple of years previously with some bartenders from the Venue.

Teodoro Herrera is crouching in this photo, with Harry Bodaan second from right with his arm around his DJ friend, Eleazar. At far right is Danilo. The others were bartenders, and all worked at a club in San José called the Venue.

Teo was looking for work, and the hotel was short-staffed at the time, so