Lucas de la CalSpecial Envoy Koh Pahangan (Thailand)
Special Envoy Koh Pahangan (Thailand)
Updated Tuesday, April 9, 2024-02:37
Thailand In the Buddhist paradise with buffalo fights where Daniel Sancho risks the death penalty
Crime All information about the Sancho case
The owner of the villa where Daniel Sancho dismembered
Edwin Arrieta
says that she had to hire the services of some Buddhist monks to "cleanse the bad spirits" from the crime bungalow. Although it didn't help him much either because until several months later, after Christmas, he did not recover the usual flow of guests that the establishment had before the macabre event.
In a former pirate hideout, at the foot of Salad beach, northeast of Koh Phangan, in the quietest part of one of the three inhabited islands in the Gulf of Thailand, is the 100 square meter bungalow with private pool that He rented Sancho in August of last year. This week, sleeping there for three nights costs 492 euros.
The owner of the complex, who thought she had already gotten rid of the media "harassment" that "ruined" her business after the event, is one of the witnesses summoned by the Prosecutor's Office to testify in the long trial that begins this Tuesday on the island. neighbor of Koh Samui.
Return to the "cursed island" of Daniel Sancho eight months after the crimeLUCAS DE LA CAL (Video)
"They performed an exorcism at the resort where they dismembered the body to see if the tourists would return," a tourist office employee says with a laugh. "Phangan is a very quiet place and the crime shocked the entire island."
Next to the villa, on the same Salad beach, is the store where the Spanish chef bought a kayak to go into the sea and dump some of Arrieta's remains. "They have also called me to testify," says one of the workers, still angry because some television programs recorded interviews with her "without permission" when Koh Phangan was invaded by Spanish journalists and cameras last August.
"It was at night and a colleague and I told him (Sancho) that it was dangerous to go into the sea at that time," the worker recalls. «But the boy insisted and took out $1,000 in cash. "We only rent kayaks here, but that was an amount we couldn't refuse."
Koh Phangan has long since turned the page on the most perverse crime in the history of this vibrant island flooded with tourists from all over the world. Sancho now faces a possible sentence for premeditated murder in court. Also for the charges of destroying other people's documentation and making parts of the victim's body disappear. The Thai criminal code, in its article 288, contemplates the death penalty for the first case, although it is usually commuted to life imprisonment later.
If Sancho finally receives life sentence or is found guilty of reckless homicide as the defense will attempt (between 15 and 20 years), the strategy of the accused's lawyers will be to request extradition, a complex process because Thailand hardly has bilateral agreements at all. respect to a handful of countries, and Spain is not among them. But if he is sentenced to life imprisonment, the lawyers can cling to an agreement signed between Spain and Thailand in 1987, by which, after serving between five and ten years in prison, transfer to Spain could be requested.
Just before the most media trial of the year in Spain begins,
EL MUNDO
recreates the crime by traveling on a motorcycle to all the key points on the island related to the case: the villa where Sancho dismembered Arrieta, the beach where he bought the kayak and He got rid of some parts of the victim's body, the landfill where the first remains appeared and the supermarkets where he bought the knives, the saw and the garbage bags.
It all starts with an alert they receive at the Koh Phangan police station at 12:00 on August 3, 2023. Municipal waste collectors find human remains in garbage bags at the landfill: chopped intestines, parts of buttocks, a pelvis and pieces of a right leg.
The next day, a black bag appears at the landfill containing red underwear, a T-shirt torn across the chest by a knife, and a pair of pants. There is also a shopping ticket that takes agents to
Big C Food Market
, the largest supermarket on the island. Reviewing the security cameras, they discovered that a foreigner, a young boy with long hair tied up, had bought there on August 1 an eight-inch knife for chopping meat, three packages of garbage bags, latex gloves, metal mesh stainless steel, 120 meters of plastic wrap, rubber bands and scouring pads.
Two supermarket workers who have also been summoned by the Prosecutor's Office to testify at the trial prefer not to make statements. In the establishment's cameras, Sancho appears at 5:03 p.m. on August 1. At 5:14 p.m., he makes the payment. The agents, after also checking the cameras outside the store, verify that the boy leaves loaded with the bags and gets on a small rented scooter.
Zooming in on the image, you can see the vehicle's license plate, which leads investigators to a motorcycle rental location near the dock. There, thanks to a copy of the passport, they get the name of the man who immediately becomes the main suspect in the crime.
The 29-year-old Spaniard arrives in Koh Phangan on July 31 at 1:39 p.m. The next day, which is Tuesday, he takes the utensils. On the morning of August 2, Sancho enters another store,
Home Mart
, and buys a knife and saw. Around 2:00 p.m., he picks up Arrieta (44 years old) on the motorcycle, who has just arrived by ferry to the island and who is wearing the same clothes that would be found the next day in the landfill next to the human remains.
CRIME IN THAILAND
Judgment.
Daniel Sancho: "I am convinced that they are going to acquit me"
Editorial: EFE Koh Samui (Thailand)
Daniel Sancho: "I am convinced that they are going to acquit me"
Evidence.
The document that Daniel Sancho clings to to prove that he incriminated himself for deception
Editorial: GEMA PEÑALOSA Madrid
The document that Daniel Sancho clings to to prove that he incriminated himself for deception
The trail of Sancho and Arrieta is lost at 3:37 p.m. on Wednesday, when they both enter the bungalow that the Spaniard has reserved on the quiet beach of Salad. Sancho appears again on the island's cameras, this time alone, at 7:17 p.m.
According to the Spaniard's testimony, what happened inside the bungalow is that he and Arrieta fought because the Colombian tried to force him to have sexual relations. Then, there is a struggle. Sancho throws a punch at him and, as he falls, Arrieta hits his head against a sink (this is the thesis, that of self-defense, that will support the defense).
Sancho claims during his confession that it takes three hours to mutilate the body. With the corpse already skinned and some of the remains stored in the room's refrigerator, he thoroughly cleans the entire room. The first time he leaves the hotel, carrying a black sports bag, he heads to the beach where he buys the kayak. Climbing into the boat, he rows about 600 meters out to sea and throws away the first remains.
On a second trip, already at dawn, he takes the motorcycle and spreads garbage bags with more remains over the containers he finds on the road that goes to Haad Rin beach, more than 45 minutes by motorcycle from the crime scene. where, according to investigators, he gets rid of Arrieta's passport and wallet.
On Thursday the 3rd, around 6:00 a.m., he got rid of more remains on the beach of his hotel, using the kayak again. Around 9:00 he checks
out
, still with some parts of Arrieta stored in a sports bag. Three hours later, two landfill workers find the garbage bags and notify the police.
At dusk, Sancho, accompanied by two girls he has met at his hotel, attends a famous party on Haad Rin beach. At 11:00 p.m., he returns to Salad beach and takes one last kayak trip. At that time, the news has already broken that human remains have been found in the landfill.
Sancho already knows that Darling, Arrieta's sister, has called the Phangan police station to report the disappearance. The woman has also contacted Sancho on Instagram, deducing that they would be together after seeing that they are both friends on the social network and that they have uploaded photos on the Thai island.
"I don't know anything about him either," the Spaniard answers, committing to go report the disappearance. When he arrives at the police station, Sancho says that he has not heard from Arrieta since the night of August 2, emphasizing that the surgeon left the hotel room at midnight and never returned. The agents who treat him notice a detail that makes them suspicious: the chef has several scratches and cuts on his arms.
On August 4, after finding the purchase receipt in the landfill and analyzing the supermarket cameras, the police arrested Sancho. At first, the Spaniard denies any involvement in a murder. The information that then reached the Thai press is that investigators believe it was a crime of passion, but Sancho reiterates that he has no romantic relationship with the Colombian.
DNA tests
On Saturday the 5th, after a second search of the garbage dump and Salad's room, where traces of blood, hair and grease were found in the pipes, the island authorities assure that Sancho collapses and confesses that he killed Arrieta and that He later dismembered him. DNA tests confirm that the remains found in the landfill are those of the surgeon.
«I am guilty, but I was Edwin's hostage. It was a glass cage, but it was a cage. "He made me destroy my relationship with my girlfriend, he has forced me to do things that I would never have done," Sancho confessed on Sunday the 6th in an interview with
Ramón Abarca
, correspondent of the Efe Agency in Bangkok, who was able to chat with the detainee in the presence of their public defenders.
That day, the Spaniard cooperates at all times with the Thai investigators, whom he accompanies to the points on the island where he disposed of Edwin Arrieta's remains. Sancho is transferred to the neighboring island, Koh Samui, where, according to Thai authorities, he pleaded guilty again before a provincial judge, who sent him to preventive detention.
The Spaniard's lawyers have been alleging for months that their client was tricked into confessing to the crime. The program And Now Sonsoles had access to a part of the reconstruction of the crime in which Sancho, inside Salad's bungalow, describes to the investigators what the fight with Arrieta was like: «He was there. I got up and punched him... We were talking and I started raising my voice, and so did he. I got up and he started to step back. I started talking to him more and he said boom!
On August 15, eight days after Sancho was admitted to Samui prison, Thai investigators hold a press conference. They claim that the murder was premeditated, that Sancho stabbed Arrieta and that they are going to request the death penalty for the accused. "Daniel at first said it was an accident, but then he confessed to the stabbing," said the deputy director of the Royal Police,
Surachate Hakparn,
in that press conference
. «The victim had stab marks on the right side of his chest. It cannot yet be confirmed whether Edwin died from the stab wound or from hitting his head against a sink after falling to the floor. Or even by cutting the neck when dismembering the body.