Update: Matthew Taylor Coleman confessed to killing his two young children whose bodies were found earlier this week in Rosarito, Mexico, a federal criminal complaint filed Wednesday shows.

SAN DIEGO — A Santa Barbara man has been charged with foreign murder after allegedly taking his two young children to Mexico and killing them, federal prosecutors said Wednesday.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles said a federal criminal complaint has been filed charging Matthew Taylor Coleman with foreign murder of United States nationals.

Coleman, a 40-year-old founder of a California surfing school, was arrested at the San Ysidro Port of Entry on Monday. A news release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office says the investigation began Saturday when Coleman’s wife contacted Santa Barbara Police to report her husband left home in a Sprinter van and she didn’t know where he went.

Investigators say Coleman’s wife filed a missing persons report the next day and using a computer application, she learned Coleman’s phone had been in Rosarito, a resort town in Baja California, on Sunday afternoon. The same phone-locating service showed Monday that Coleman’s phone was near the San Ysidro Port of Entry at the U.S.-Mexico border.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office said the FBI sent agents in San Diego to contact Coleman, who entered the U.S. in the Sprinter van without the children.

FBI agents contacted law enforcement officials in Rosarito and learned Mexican authorities had recovered the bodies of two children matching the description of Coleman’s children.

Coleman is expected to make an initial court appearance Wednesday afternoon. The FBI, United States Customs and Border Protection, the Santa Barbara Police Department, and the Secretaría de Seguridad Pública Municipal de Rosarito are investigating.