Good and Evil in Paradise

Deep in the lush mountains of the Caribbean island of Dominica, amid stands of lemongrass, giant ferns and palms, three roads converge where two lives ended, violently. A few weeks before Christmas, the bodies of Daniel Langlois, a French-Canadian philanthropist and Hollywood animation centi-millionaire, and his partner, Dominique Marchand, were found at that spot, in a car, halfway into a ravine, burned beyond recognition. Even though the bodies were charred, investigators could tell they had been shot first. 

The official and still-evolving story of their murders is a classic tale of good versus evil set in a steamy jungle. Like other expats who live on Dominica, Langlois and Marchand, who bought their property in the late 1990s, were attracted to the island’s wild, Edenic quality; its waterfalls, volcanic hot pools and deep green forests where spectacular blossoms northerners would see only in florist shops grow like weeds. But the dead couple had become heroes to many on the tiny, impoverished island of 72,000. They were widely admired philanthropists and environmentalists. A few weeks before Langlois was murdered, the government had awarded him its highest civilian honor for his philanthropic work.

For decades, the couple lavished their wealth on the community, spending $1 million just to rebuild the local school destroyed in a Category 5 hurricane, designing resiliency projects and building infrastructure like a jetty, pouring money into a marine reserve and the island’s stray dog and cat rescue program, as well as countless private disbursements to individuals in the nearby village who needed health care or other assistance. 

Langlois, 66, was a computer animation pioneer and Academy Award winner (Sci-Tech 1997) who worked with Steven Spielberg on Jurassic Park and other major filmmakers before selling his company, Softimage, to Microsoft in 1994 for $200 million. His 3D tool has been used in numerous big-budget hits including the Harry Potter series, Star Wars prequels and Titanic. He was influential in early innovations of CGI, particularly as the tech related to human characters and expressions. After selling Softimage, he founded the Daniel Langlois Foundation in 1997 to promote collaboration and exchanges between the arts and science, and was a major investor and promoter in the Montreal film community. 

In Dominica, Langlois spent years designing and building a dream project: an off-the-grid model structure deep in the mountains that eventually became a luxury resort he called Coulibri Ridge. It opened in late 2022, and made Condé Nast’s Traveler’s “2023 Hot List.” Travel + Leisure called it “the world’s greenest resort.”  

A few days after Langlois’ and Marchand’s remains were found in the ravine several miles from their home, police arrested the couple’s next-door neighbor, Jonathan Lehrer, an American with survivalist tendencies; and a Florida man, Robert Snyder, whom police claim he hired as a hit man. Police say the Americans shot the Canadian couple, then set their car on fire, with an accelerant that burned so fiercely, Snyder reportedly had burns on his hands and legs when he was arrested.  

Langlois and Lehrer were both North American expats with money who migrated down to the tropics. But they were improbable neighbors: a progressive Canadian who built a green resort where rich, eco-minded guests paid at least $700 a night, and a reported prepper who turned his plantation into a safe haven for himself and advertised it to other disaster-fearing survivalists. 

Lehrer and his wife arrived in 2011, with enough wealth to buy the island’s oldest still-intact former coffee and cocoa plantation, the Bois Cotlette estate, which bordered Langlois’ land. Lehrer upgraded the 53-acre 18th century grounds into a tourist destination, financed by busloads of cruise ship passengers paying to visit his small exhibition on cocoa processing. The beans were turned into bricks of chocolate that would be sent to Trinidad and made edible, according to a former employee. 

Lehrer has been called a “chocolatier” in news articles, but he and his wife were not making or selling chocolate. They were running bus tours for cruise ship passengers through their old plantation. They soon became notorious on the island as all-American private-property cranks. The dirt road from the coast into the mountains where the eco resort is located passed through their property. Dominicans had been using it since the days of slavery, but the American couple tried to unofficially privatize it. As early as 2016, the road was in dispute and soon the conflict went to court. As Langlois built his eco-lodge, Lehrer would reportedly block the road with stones and tree trunks. Coulibri Ridge employees routinely videotaped their contentious interactions with the Lehrers and have since posted some online. 

A judge granted an injunction in 2019 keeping the road public and allowing Langlois’ guests and workers to access it, explicitly calling it “Morne Rouge Public Road.” But non-paying tourists were shooed off. Trip Advisor comments about the chocolate plantation are filled with warnings about the Lehrers, claiming they set large dogs on passing hikers and threatened drivers who found themselves on the road.

On a recent visit to Dominica, I drove the disputed route. It is narrow, unimproved, with deep, tire-sucking ruts, and too rough for anything but a four-wheel drive or truck. It does pass through the old plantation’s ruins, close enough to reach from a car window at one tight turn and touch the stone walls of the old plantation’s warehouses and mills.

On the edge of a steep green ravine less than a mile away, mourners have left a shrine of purple flowers in vases and the melted nubs of two candles at the crime scene. The fire was so hot that melted remains of the victims’ black SUV are embedded in the dirt.

“This issue of the public road just kept getting worse,” one longtime Langlois employee told me. “Mostly it was Jonathan. Every time we had a shipment go through that property, we videotaped because he was just … He was Jonathan.”

Golden Passports and a Bunker

Major crime is rare on the island. The police force is ill equipped to do basic forensics and has reportedly had to send the remains to labs in the U.S. or Canada, and asked the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to assist in the investigation into Langlois’ death. Meanwhile, inhabitants of the nearby hamlet of Soufriere have been open about their intent to do vigilante justice if Lehrer is released. 

Lehrer and Snyder, a Florida mechanic Lehrer employed to work on his tour buses, are both in the national prison, called Stock Farm, outside the capital city of Roseau. They have not yet been required to enter a plea, but their lawyers say they plan to plead not guilty. Lehrer’s wife — who has not been charged — has left the island and hired a Texas PR firm.  

Lehrer recently applied for bail after five months incarcerated in the severely overcrowded prison. His request was rejected. The bail denial included mention of an eyewitness to the crime, a Dominican native who Lehrer’s legal team says worked as his property manager. If Lehrer is convicted, he will be subject to the Dominican penalty for murder: execution by hanging.

Islanders I spoke with generally accept the road rage motive. But there are other aspects of the story that deepen the mystery, going beyond a simple road dispute. The two wealthy white North Americans — Langlois and Lehrer — were avatars of two opposing sides of an island conflict that pits environmentalists and activists against a cabal of outside interests pressing for more access to natural resources, and a government accused of corruption in caving to those interests.

Dominica is mountainous, volcanic and — directly in the hurricane path — not a magnet for high-end resort investment. The island has been ravaged by countless tempests. Its relatively tiny and poor population depends on tourism (cruise ships dock daily), fishing, small family farms or work on sporadic developments, many financed by Chinese and Russian investors. 

The island has for years subsisted largely on income from so-called golden passports, proceeds of which constitute about half of the government’s revenues. Because Dominica is in the Commonwealth, its passport holders can get into the Schengen zone (EU) without visas, even post-Brexit. Dominica sells passports starting at $100,000. The program, called citizen by investment, requires investors to put that money into real estate, a project (of which Lehrer’s property was one) or a government bond. The program has no residency or language requirement. Investigative journalists have separately accused some island officials of selling diplomatic passports, which the officials deny. 

The business is reportedly corrupt, with investigative journalists finding that passports have gone to international criminals, money launderers, crypto scammers. One 2019 Al Jazeera investigation revealed longtime President Roosevelt Skerrit allegedly took hundreds of thousands of dollars for his 2014 election campaign from an Iranian businessman named Alireza Monfared in exchange for making him the Dominican ambassador to Malaysia. Monfared was eventually arrested by his own government and sentenced to 20 years’ imprisonment. Skerrit — who has called the allegations totally false — has been reelected four times, in sometimes-tense election cycles involving riots and accusations of graft. His administration maintains close ties with China, which has invested heavily in infrastructure on the island, including a controversial new airport that is under construction, plus post-hurricane housing for displaced islanders. 

After a consortium of investigative journalists collaborated on a 2023 exposé into the passport scheme, Skerrit blasted them as “terrorists” and accused them of being financed by the political opposition. The golden visa program has brought $1 billion into government coffers since its inception, and reportedly constitutes 55 percent of the national income. The Dominican government calls the program “Citizenship by Investment” (CBI) and deputizes various investors and other individuals around the island as “agents.”

Lehrer was one of eight CBI “agents” on the island, a position that allowed him to vet passport applicants and gave him access to top government officials, as well as sell off bits of his own vast property through the program. Lehrer’s attorney in the murder case is Lennox Lawrence, a close associate of Skerrit, and a former acting attorney general on the island. Lehrer’s closeness to the government — and the challenge the case presents an under-equipped police force — have prompted observers in Dominica to worry that the authorities will not be able to make charges stick. The government has brought in a special prosecutor from Trinidad to handle the case, and reportedly asked for Canadian assistance with the investigation, although Canadian officials have not confirmed their involvement.  

“The prime minister and the tourism minister seem to have a good relationship with this guy,” Dominican radio host Matt Peltier recently said on Canadian TV. “There is a lot of concern whether this couple will actually get justice.”

Reached by Zoom, Lawrence said the fact that he served as attorney general for a period “does not give us an advantage” because Dominica has separation of powers between the judicial and executive branches. He declined to comment on the business aspect of the relationship between Lehrer and the passport program, saying he was “not well-informed” on the subject. 

Both Langlois and Lehrer would have been eligible for the CBI program, given the amount of money they invested in the country. It’s not clear whether Langlois was involved with it. Lehrer, as an agent, most certainly was.

Lehrer is often described in news reports about the crime as an “American businessman,” but the nature of his businesses is unclear. According to the Texas-based publicist Nicolia Wiles, hired by Lehrer’s wife, Lehrer worked for MetLife until 2017 and also made money on investments, before turning the plantation into a tour business. His name is in the Pandora Papers, a list of offshore companies that provide shell companies in tax havens for people trying to hide assets. In the Pandora database, Lehrer is connected to an address in Tortola that links to 1,800 offshore companies. (Lehrer’s spokesman said he set up that account to do “commodity trading” and has since closed it.)

Lehrer, 57, had over the years lived in Chicago, Staten Island, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, and most recently owned a home in Winter Harbor, Maine. Records show a few criminal charges, including a weapons charge and serious vehicular violations — but in the 1980s. 

A family member told me that Lehrer was an “investor” — although the relative didn’t know what Lehrer might have invested in — and that he left the U.S. after Barack Obama was elected president because he thought the country was “going to hell.” When Lehrer, his wife and four teenage kids first moved to the island, they lived in a yurt and set up solar power for the property. He was, the family member said, obsessed with postapocalyptic survival, “kind of a prepper.” (Lehrer’s spokesman denies this.) None of his children — who are college age and older — are believed to have been on the island at the time of the murders.

“He wanted to be more self-contained, off the power grid, have autonomy, take care of himself,” the relative said. That family member added that Lehrer “was definitely the kind of guy who would not want people invading his land. He liked to be left alone.”

With Lehrer in jail and awaiting trial, the Bois Cotlette website still touts the plantation as a tourist destination and a real estate investment: “Why Bois Cotlette? FREEDOM!” 

The site advertises the CBI program and the benefits of investing with Lehrer, and provides step-by-step instruction. It also explicitly targets people worried about disasters and global instability. One page, titled “Assurance Options for a World of Uncertainty” offers a “Preppers option”: “Emergency Survival Preparedness: Reality based emergency preparedness for a society infrastructure that is alive and well, this stop gap coverage helps you to wait out short to medium duration life disturbances while you plan.” 

It also offers a “Safe Haven Option,” advertised as follows: “Enjoy 3, 6 or 9 months of safe haven living at Bois Cotlette if a defined event occurs in your region of the world,” the site says. “Whether society is disrupted as a result of economic, or political turmoil, a prolonged natural disaster, or another possible scenario, Bois Cotlette defines preparedness and is the best hedge against crisis in our complex world. Bois Cotlette is also your home and sanctuary for everyday living.” 

One problem: The “safe haven” bordered a progressive Canadian multimillionaire’s award-winning resort. Luxury SUVs daily delivered well-heeled guests, bumping and bouncing on the road through the estate and over a mysterious underground bunker Lehrer had constructed — without even stopping for a chocolate tour.

An evidentiary hearing scheduled for March 15 was canceled, with the government claiming that Snyder had COVID and couldn’t be brought to the court. As such, it is difficult to assess just what evidence the government has against Lehrer and Snyder. A German tourist who spoke to Canadian W5 television, identified in the report only as “Thomas,” said he was hiking the road through Bois Cotlette toward Coulibri Ridge on the day the couple were murdered, when a man ordered him to turn back. He said that, as he walked away, he heard shots, and a short time later heard explosions and saw black smoke, possibly from the burning SUV. The German tourist told the Canadian reporters that police took him back to the scene of the crime and, sitting behind him in the police bus, was Snyder handcuffed to Lehrer. The hiker identified Snyder to police as the man he encountered in the road that day, and later told the Canadian journalists that he saw “heavy burning” damage on Snyder’s arm in the prison van. And “he didn’t have this injury when I met him on the trail.”

Lehrer’s lawyer said that, based on his firm’s investigation, the tourist “could not identify Jonathan Lehrer at all.” (Snyder’s lawyer has not responded to several requests for comment.) 

Lehrer and Snyder were taken to the national prison, Stock Farm, within days of the murders. Photos showed both men appearing to smirk as they walked from a van, handcuffed together, surrounded by angry island residents shouting at them. A week later, Canadian newspaper reporters who were dispatched to the island to investigate the murder witnessed Lehrer back at his property for a few hours. Police told reporters the curious home visit was part of an “unrelated investigation.” The status of the investigation is unclear. Initially scheduled for March, the evidentiary hearing has been rescheduled for July and, if that date is met, a trial could come as early as September. 

Meanwhile, the island is rife with rumors, including that the Lehrer employee who witnessed the murders is being held or hidden for his or her safety. (Lehrer’s spokesman says the person has “disappeared from the island” since the arrests.) One intriguing leak: a video, believed to have been taken by the police, of a labyrinthine underground bunker beneath the Bois Cotlette Estate, large enough to hold at least two cargo containers, whose contents and purpose are a mystery. 

Lehrer’s spokesman claimed the bunker is just a large cold-storage cellar Lehrer copied from one he had seen in California wine country. Wiles — the Lehrers’ publicist — also says Snyder was no hit man, but rather a mechanic who had come to the island to perform maintenance on Lehrer’s tour buses. 

Lehrer, from jail, is still pressing his case to declare the road private. According to his spokesman, he had expected to be awarded “millions” in punitive damages from Langlois before the couple died. The fate of that lawsuit remains unclear since the murders. Wiles also suggested the couple might have simply “disappeared.” One of Lehrer’s defenses apparently will be that there is no forensic proof Langlois and Marchand are in fact dead, since the bodies recovered where not identifiable. Wiles even insinuated that, as an acclaimed pioneer of Hollywood VFX, Langlois might have faked his own death. “[Langlois’] entire business was built around making things look real that are not,” Wiles said. “Is it far fetched? Yeah! We’re certainly not saying that’s what we believe happened. But.”

Wiles further floated the possibility that Langlois had something in his history that made him a target of the Mafia or drug cartel. (Police found a load of cocaine in the jungle near the Coulibri Ridge property in 2018, which a former employee told me prompted Langlois to start patrolling his own property with drones to fend off criminals.)

Whatever was going on between the two rich men, the murder investigation presents a profound, perhaps insurmountable challenge to the penurious tropical police force. When I met him at his office in the small, weather-beaten national police headquarters, island Police Chief Davidson Valerie declined to comment on a witness or the bunker, saying that the evidence would be revealed at the first hearing. Meanwhile, Lehrer’s spokesman and lawyers have organized and disseminated to American and Canadian media reams of documents purporting to show that the road dispute was no murder motive. 

Langlois’ family and Coulibri Ridge staff declined to comment publicly. A close friend of Langlois on the island said the Canadian’s associates were still too shocked to talk about the murders. Canadian IT businessman Marc Pettit was a close friend of Langlois. “There was something genuinely good about Daniel, when you compare the context and a worldview obsessed with trespasses on terrain, it just doesn’t add up,” he told me on a call from Montreal. “There is something that’s incredible.”

Sam Raphael is a hotelier and native Dominican who built his own luxury resort, Jungle Bay, with CBI investment money. Raphael knew Langlois, his partner and Lehrer. He doesn’t think the murder had anything to do with golden passports or other crimes. “The courts ruled that you cannot do anything to impede traversing on this road. Whether it’s shown on your map or not, buddy, it’s Public Road. That should have been the end of that. But he couldn’t let it go.”