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A San Diego, California surfing teacher and self-proclaimed QAnon theorist, has confessed to driving his two toddler children across the Mexican border in a sprinter van and killing them with a spear fishing gun.
Matthew Taylor Coleman, 40, faces charges for the foreign murders of two United States citizens, his 10-month-old son and 2-year-old daughter, according to a criminal complaint filed Wednesday in a Los Angeles court.
The two children's bodies were found on an agricultural property, the Rancho Del Descanso in Rosarito, about 35 miles south of the U.S.-Mexico border, with multiple wounds, according to Mexican authorities.
Coleman told authorities "he was enlightened by the QAnon and Illuminati conspiracy theories and was receiving visions and signs revealing that his wife...possessed serpent DNA and had passed it onto his children," according to court documents.
Coleman and his two children were reported missing from Santa Barbara on Saturday by his wife, the mother of the two children. According to the criminal complaint, she was concerned because the family had planned to go on a camping trip together, but Coleman had left with the kids without telling her where they were going and without taking the car seats.
The couple's sprinter van was missing, and Coleman was not responding to the wife's texts but the mother did not believe her children were in any specific danger, according to the complaint.
Santa Barbara authorities discovered Coleman and the children were in Mexico through the Find My iPhone application and the FBI took over the case, then alerted U.S. Border Patrol agents to be on the lookout for Coleman and the children, the complaint said.
Coleman was seen on surveillance video checking into a Rosarito hotel with his two children, according to the Baja California Attorney General's Office. At about 3 a.m., Coleman was seen leaving the hotel with his two children. He returned hours later without them. Then, he checked out of the hotel, according to the Attorney General.
When Coleman tried to re-enter the U.S. without his children on Monday, he was apprehended by U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents, who were warned to be on the lookout for him.
Coleman confessed to the murders during an interview at the border.
"Coleman stated that he believed his children were going to grow into monsters so he had to kill them," the complaint read.
In the confession, Coleman said he used a spear fishing gun to shoot his children through the chest. He said he then hid their bodies in the nearby brush and told authorities where their bodies were located.
"Coleman was asked whether he knew what he did was wrong. M Coleman stated that he knew it was wrong, but it was the only course of action that would save the world," the complaint read.
Newsweek reached out to Baja California's attorney general for comment.
