QAnon Dad Matthew Taylor Coleman Deemed Incompetent to Stand Trial on Accusations He Killed 2 Kids
Matthew Taylor Coleman is charged with killing his 2-year-old son and 10-month-old daughter in Mexico on Aug. 9, 2021
Matthew Taylor Coleman, a California surf instructor who is accused of killing his two young children with a spearfishing gun in Mexico, has been deemed incompetent to stand trial.
An online docket entry reviewed by PEOPLE confirms that U.S. District Judge Cathy Ann Bencivengo on Oct. 11 ordered Coleman, 42, to be committed for treatment. His competency hearing is scheduled for March 8, 2024.
The judge's decision suspends the criminal proceedings against Coleman, who was facing trial on two counts of foreign murder of United States nationals stemming from the Aug. 9, 2021 deaths of his 2-year-old son Kaleo and 10-month-old daughter Roxy in Mexico. He has pleaded not guilty.
According to charging documents previously reviewed by PEOPLE, he allegedly told police he was motivated by the conspiracy theories of QAnon — believing that his kids had "serpent DNA" and needed to be killed to save the world. Coleman was indicted by a federal grand jury in September 2021 and has undergone psychological testing to determine his state of mind. In February 2023, federal prosecutors decided not to pursue the death penalty, the docket entry states.
Police said Coleman drove from his Santa Barbara, Calif., home with his children — Kaleo and Roxy — into Mexico on Aug. 7, 2021. Two days later, authorities allege, he took the kids to a ranch, where he killed them with a spearfishing gun and returned to his hotel a few hours later. He was arrested when he attempted to cross the border back into the United States, PEOPLE previously reported.
In a 10-page criminal complaint that was filed in the U.S. District Court at the time, FBI special agent Jennifer Bannon said that Coleman detailed how he killed his children.
"M. Coleman stated that he knew it was wrong," Bannon wrote, "but it was the only course of action that would save the world."
Coleman allegedly told police he was motivated by an outlandish conspiracy theory that alien, reptilian humanoids are masquerading as people to overthrow humanity.
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In an affidavit reviewed by PEOPLE in 2022, authorities allege that his wife Abby "explained that she and her husband were researching QAnon, and that [Matthew] became significantly more paranoid that people around him were involved in a conspiracy."
The couple exchanged text messages the morning of the kids’ murders, PEOPLE previously reported, citing an affidavit. Hours after the time officials think the children were killed, Abby texted her husband to take care of the children. Coleman was arrested later that day as he tried to enter California and after Abby called police to report her husband and kids missing.
Authorities said that a farmer stumbled across the children’s bodies in a remote part of a ranch in Baja California, a Mexican province about 60 miles south of San Diego, just hours after they were killed.
PEOPLE has reached out to Coleman’s attorneys with the federal public defender’s office in Los Angeles for comment.
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