Correct...the owner and his two sons were recently killed. This was quite a shock as La Fortuna is a fairly "quiet" place and crime here is few & far between. This was a crime specific to these people (not random) so I can tell you that the people in the community still feel quite safe living here. This was a great tragedy. I would suggest that YOU call the hotel directly since the agent is obviously trying to keep the "bad" information from you! Not sure what is going on with the hotel going forward.

Hello Mr. William!, as part of the Mountain Paradise Staff I would like to let you know that yes we did suffer a tragedy that took place out side of our hotel, it did involve the owner and his two sons. The hotel is up and running, nothing has changed, I do recomemed if you would like to book with us, call us directly 2479-1414 or send us and email- reservations@hotelmountainparadise.com. We would gladly help you make a reservation with us or answer any of the questions that you might have about the situation or the hotel itself... You can be sure that staying here with us, you will be 100% safe.

Thank you all for your responses. That information is extremely helpful.

insidecostarica.com/2013/… is a link to the story. Very sad. We've always felt very safe in that area.

the hotel owner and his sons were murdered a few weeks ago. I believe the hotel is part of the investigation and is closed indefinitely. We were booked in August and our travel agent just notified us that all reservations for this year will be moved.

Members of our group were staying at the hotel when the tragedy took place. It's a beautiful facility (our group members raved about it) so I hope those people whose livelihood depended on the facility will be OK. We never felt unsafe while there for 3 days.

Don't give up on your dream of staying someplace special in/around Arenal and La Fortuna. Fortunately there are many other quiet/peaceful places with gorgeous views and grounds in the area.

Best wishes to the Mountain Paradise staff.

This was terrible but the hotel is open and working normally. I know this because a friend of mine just returned from Costa Rica a couple of days ago, and she stayed at Mountain Paradise.

If anyone finds out any further developments in the case, can you please post them here? I had also read about some arson fires in the area right around the same time this incident happened. Does anyone know where those occurred?

Terrible to see this sort of thing happening, and the crime seems so brazen. We love that area.

-:- Message from TripAdvisor staff -:-

This post was determined to be inappropriate by the TripAdvisor community and has been removed.

To review the TripAdvisor Forums Posting Guidelines, please follow this link: http://www.tripadvisor.com/pages/forums_posting_guidelines.html

Our staff may also remove posts that do not follow our posting guidelines, and we reserve the right to remove any post for any reason. Thanks for being a part of the TripAdvisor travel community!