Silas Duane Boston, a former resident of Sacramento, California, was charged with the murder of British couple Chris Farmer and Peta Frampton back in 1978. The horrific deaths of the victims are now dramatized in the new series Dead in the Water.
Boston’s criminal history includes shooting his wife, Mary Lou, point-blank in the head in 1986 after she expressed her desire for a divorce and hoped to take their two sons away. Ten years later, Boston fled rape charges in California and moved with his sons, Vincent and Russell, to Belize to start anew. However, it was in Belize where Boston committed his next heinous crime, this time in front of his two sons.
The English couple, Chris Farmer and Peta Frampton, both university graduates from Manchester, decided to take a year off to travel and encountered Boston while in Belize. They chartered his boat to transport them to Mexico and embarked on a sailing trip with him in 1978. Unfortunately, a falling out ensued during the trip, leading Boston to bludgeon them, shackle their bodies to engine parts, and throw them overboard to their deaths.
The bodies of Farmer and Frampton were discovered off the coast of Guatemala in 1978 and were quietly buried. It wasn’t until decades later, in 2016, that Boston was arrested for their murders. The killings are now the subject of the Prime Video series Dead in the Water, where Boston’s son, Vince, reveals the fear and pressure he faced from his father to keep silent about the gruesome act.
The true crime series, based on the book by Penny Farmer, premiered on February 28, 2024, and is available for streaming on Amazon Prime Video.
