A Thai court will sentence the son of a Spanish movie star on Thursday for murdering and dismembering a Colombian plastic surgeon he met online.
The case against Daniel Sancho Bronchalothe 30-year-old son of actor Rodolfo Sancho, has attracted huge interest in his home country, with dozens of Spanish journalists attending the trial.
Young Sancho, a chef with a YouTube channel, is accused of murdering and dismembering Edwin Arrieta Arteaga on the resort island of Koh Pha Ngan last year.
His trial, on charges of premeditated murder, concealment of a body and destruction of documents, was held in April in Koh Samui, another tourist destination known for its turquoise waters and rave parties.
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Sancho denies premeditated murder but remains in custody after admitting killing Arrieta, 44, in what he says was an act of self-defense.
He also admitted to hiding the body, but denies destroying the Colombian’s passport.
The two had agreed to meet after meeting online.
The trial heard that Sancho placed parts of Arrieta’s body in plastic bags and distributed them around Koh Pha Ngan. Sancho led police to seven locations, where he allegedly dumped the victim’s dismembered body in plastic bags, BBC News reported.
Although his crimes carry the death penalty, Arrieta’s family has said they would prefer life in prison.
“Leave him in Thailand so he can take the time, all the time God gives him to live, to think about what he’s done,” Darling Arrieta, the victim’s sister, said in an HBO documentary about the case.
“He didn’t just dismember my brother, he dismembered a family.”
Sancho’s father said in the same documentary that Arrieta threatened his son, after which “there was a fight, and in that fight there was an accident.”
According to IMDB, Rodolfo Sancho has dozens of film and television credits to his name and starred in “El Ministerio del Tiempo” (“The Ministry of Time”).
“He finished it”
The defense argues that Sancho acted in self-defense after Arrieta tried to force him to have sex. Sancho told Spanish news agency EFE that he had been “held hostage” by the victim, who was obsessed with him, BBC News reported.
“He tried to rape me and we fought,” Sancho said in a statement quoted by Spanish daily El Mundo.
According to the newspaper, Sancho said he did not immediately inform the police of Arrieta’s death because he was in shock and because it was all “an accident.”
But a lawyer for the victim’s family, Juan Gonzalo Ospina, said in a recent interview with El Mundo newspaper that Sancho was living a “false reality.”
“He continues to deny any responsibility for what he did,” he said.
Photo by JOSE PERDOMO/AFP via Getty Images
Thai police, he added, “did a commendable job” in reconstructing the crime and finding evidence.
“When Sancho went to report Edwin Arrieta missing in search of an alibi, they already knew that the perpetrator of the crime was him,” he said.
Ospina said it was proven during the trial in April that Sancho had bought knives, plastic bags and cleaning products before the crime and kept them in the room where the murder took place.
“It is indisputable,” he added.
He said Sancho admitted during the trial that Arrieta had convulsions after hitting him.
“In his statement he admitted that he then finished him off. That is, he murdered him,” he added.
However, Sancho’s family lawyer, Carmen Balfagon, told Spanish news programme Cronica that they were “very optimistic, because during the trial we demonstrated that there was no premeditation”.
DAILYNEWS via Reuters
Koh Pha Ngan is famous for its white sand beaches and attracts thousands of backpackers for its notoriously wild “full moon” parties.
In 2014, another tourist island, Koh Tao, was rocked by the double murder of two young British backpackers. Two Burmese men are serving life sentences for the killings, but human rights groups have accused Thai authorities of using the men as scapegoats.
