Mob torches Americans' animal sanctuary

PUNTA GORDA, Belize (CNN) - An American couple in Belize struggled Tuesday to figure out their future, their dreams literally up in smoke after a mob of indigenous Mayans burned down their animal sanctuary in the belief the foreigners fed two missing children to crocodiles on their property.

Cherie and Vince Rose moved to the tiny Central American nation in 2004 to form a 36-acre sanctuary for two species of endangered crocodiles found in Belize -- the American and Morelet's crocodiles.

Bit by bit, their hope turned into reality. They built a two-story octagonal-shaped house that rested on stilts and reached 30 feet into the air. They constructed two smaller cottages for researchers and students to stay in. They dug out two acres of canals for the crocodiles. They acquired two boats.

They called the place the American Crocodile Education Sanctuary.

Most of it vanished Sunday morning, when a throng of angry villagers from a settlement about 10 miles away torched the buildings on their property. The villagers had been told by a local psychic that the Americans had fed the two missing children to the 17 crocodiles at the sanctuary, police say.

The Roses were rescuing three crocodiles on a distant island at the time, so were not home to ward off the attack -- or possibly suffer a gruesome fate.

"It was like something out of a Frankenstein movie," Cherie Rose said Tuesday. "If we'd been home, they would have killed us. They said they were going to chop us up and feed us to the crocodiles."

National police confirm that the indigenous Maya villagers were acting on the advice of a psychic who said the Roses had something to do with the August 7 disappearance of 9-year-old Benjamin Rash and his 11-year-old sister Onelia.

"They have their own superstitions," deputy police commissioner James
Magdaleno said about the Maya, who make up about 10 percent of Belize's
population. "Because of their beliefs, they decided to take the law into their
own hands."

No arrests have been made, the deputy commissioner told CNN.

"We don't know who burned the house," he said. "That is still under investigation."

Police also questioned Vince Rose about the missing children but no connection was established, Magdaleno said Tuesday.

For the Roses, the drama unfolded in excruciating slow motion from far away.

They traveled August 29 to rescue some crocodiles on Ambergris Caye, a Caribbean Sea island off the northeastern coast of Belize. Their sanctuary in Punta Gorda is on the Caribbean coast in southeastern Belize, more than five hours away by land and airplane.

On Friday, September 3, the couple received phone calls from friends saying that truckloads of people from the village of San Marcos were on their way to the sanctuary to burn it down. The Roses sent their caretaker to the compound, but everyone was gone by the time he got there.