[Daily Mail, where America gets its news] Mexican officials, who say they are pursuing various lines of inquiry, drew up a brief document summarizing the abduction of the Americans and biographical information on them. The metadata of the digital document suggested it was created on Wednesday.
It included their names, birthdays and addresses, and details of criminal records. Among them were convictions for drug-related offenses against Brown and Woodard.
In view of the prior convictions, 'it cannot be ruled out that the attack against (the Americans) could be directly linked to drug trafficking operations,' which their assailants believed the Americans could be carrying out, the document said.
Reuters left voicemails and sent messages on social media to people identified by public records as relatives of the four, as well as at a number for Williams, but without response.
A Reuters review of South Carolina state records found that Woodard was convicted five times between 2007 and 2016 of drug crimes. Nearly all were minor offenses, but they included one of manufacturing banned narcotics with the intent to distribute.
Brown was convicted twice in 2015 for possessing small amounts of marijuana or concentrated cannabis, records show.
The records also showed that Williams was in 2017 convicted for the manufacture and distribution of cocaine, though this was not mentioned in the Mexican document seen by Reuters."
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