The television broadcasts a clip on a loop in which Daniel Sancho is separated for a second from his police escort —a parenthesis in the reconstruction of the crime— and gets his feet wet on the shore of the Thai island of Phangan, looking lost on the horizon . “What is he thinking?” The gathering table asks. And with her, the audience from half of Spain and part of Colombia, which has been trapped for a week by the details of the murder and dismemberment of the Colombian surgeon Edwin Arrieta, 44, at the hands of the Spanish chef Daniel Sancho, 29.
The motives of the confessed murderer are the great media mystery of the case, since the defendant’s version and the investigation by the Thai police agree on the basics of the facts. The cook —with an air of influencers, son and grandson of famous actors, Rodolfo Sancho and Sancho Gracia— met the doctor a year ago on Instagram, where they share a love of gastronomy and travel. After several encounters, which according to the confession include friendship, sex and money, the two men stay on the paradisiacal island to attend the full moon party. Sancho arrives a couple of days early and buys gloves, bags, a knife, scouring pads, bleach. On Wednesday, August 2, after picking up Arrieta on a motorcycle, walking around the island and having dinner together, he kills the Colombian in the context of a fight in which the doctor coerces him to make public images of sexual content if Sancho leaves him, always depending on its version. The police have also found alleged death threats from the victim on the phone of the killer, who has declared that he felt “hostage” to Edwin’s obsession.
After the crime, the Spanish dismembers the corpse for three hours. He cleans the bungalow and throws bags of human remains in a landfill and at the bottom of the sea, for which he hastily buys a kayak for 1,000 dollars (912 euros). He goes to the full moon party with two girls and then to the police station to report the disappearance of his friend. He does it pushed by the constant calls from Arrieta’s sister and a friend. They do not know him, they have contacted him through networks, concerned that Edwin, who usually speaks several times a day with his family, has not reported in too many hours. By then, the police have already found his pelvis in a garbage bag. Sancho leaves the police station handcuffed.
Those who knew him, who played tennis with him, shared a desk in private schools in Madrid or business dreams, have offered anonymous statements to television: “I don’t see him doing something like that, Daniel is all kindness,” a man says in distorted audio. close friend in Telecinco. “He was narcissistic and arrogant, it was seen a bit that he did what he wanted, that there would be no consequences,” says a schoolmate in Cuatro from the shadows. The family has hired Carmen Balfagón, a media lawyer who collaborates with the evening programs, as a spokesperson. “In any criminal act there is a motivation that is what must be clarified here,” she explains by phone.
Part of the media deployment and the leaking of numerous details and images have given rise to voices that question the rigor of the investigation by the Thai police. However, Spanish agents used to working with colleagues from other countries believe that the Thai investigations have been “very complete” in view, precisely, of what has been reported in the media. “They tracked the video surveillance cameras and located images of the detainee buying the tools he used in the crime and others with the victim before murdering him; they found biological remains in places such as drains and, above all, they have obtained the confession of the alleged perpetrator, who initially denied the facts and tried to deceive them”, these police sources highlight.
Daniel Sancho first tried to be a tennis player and then a cook. Just two weeks before his arrest, his father boasted in the magazine Hello! of his son’s projects: “He is a chef and has a catering and a restaurant. However, the young man does not appear in the records as a partner in either of the two businesses mentioned by the actor, La Bohème and Boogie Burgers, both with headquarters in a luxurious portal on Calle de Zurbano, Madrid, where no one answers the phone. Barely a month and a half after its inauguration, the closure of Boogie Burgers in Malasaña is over and on their Instagram the owners have posted a post: “Our restaurant has been affected due to an event outside the company. Unfortunately, the media publish unverified news, damaging our image and reputation.”
What affects the most is what happens closer. To not miss anything, subscribe.
subscribe
A fan of Muay Thai, a Thai martial art, Sancho had a cooking channel on YouTube with few followers and on his social networks he lavished himself with images in expensive Madrid restaurants, parties in Ibiza or traveling through the Riviera Maya, Peru, Lanzarote or Thailand. Thanks to them, many of the meetings that he had with Arrieta in the last six months have become known. In January, according to the magazine Week, they met in Madrid to have dinner at Umiko, recognized with two Repsol suns. In February, they repeated their appointment at an equestrian center in La Granja (Segovia) and according to Espejo Público (Antena 3), they slept in a nearby hotel. At the end of July, they traveled to Ibiza with friends of the chef (who, according to what they have stated on TV, were unaware of their intimate relationship). In his last post on his Instagram, Sancho appears on a boat, at night, with a drink in his hand. One last episode of a life cultivated in networks that disappeared, like his account, the day real life began.
Arrieta’s real life had started in modest Lorica, a northern Colombian municipality of 112,000 inhabitants, in a very Catholic home. “Since he was a child, he had two dreams: to be a doctor and to see the world,” says Darlin Arrieta, his older sister. She fulfilled both. He was trained in Argentina where he specialized in plastic surgery until he became a successful doctor who spent half the month in Chile and the other in Colombia. In both countries he had a consultation and on the Chilean Facebook page there are still gaps in the August agenda for liposculpture and abdominoplasty for about 5,000 euros.
He went to Spain “about five times in the last 10 months,” says his friend Silvio Suárez, to whom he had told of his intention to live in the country: “He said that he was working on the validation of his documents and that he had plans to set up businesses in Madrid”. His friends describe him as “sociable and friendly.” The perfect host, they say, polite and respectful, that he played polo and had a daily appointment at three in the afternoon to pray the rosary of the Chaplet of Divine Mercy.
One of the big unknowns in the case is why Arrieta traveled to Thailand with $80,000 (72,968 euros) in cash, a sum that was found by the police in the crime room. Meanwhile, his family, which is waiting for the repatriation of the remains, wants the confessed murderer to be tried in Thailand. “It is an impartial field and would give more guarantees,” says his lawyer, Miguel González Sánchez. According to Amnesty International, the Thai justice system has imposed close to 800 death sentences since 2010. Of these, 104 in 2022. Of this high number, in the same period it has only executed three, the last in 2018. Arrieta’s family is demanding a exemplary sentence, but they do not believe in the death penalty as a punishment. “The only one who takes and gives life is God,” says Darlin.
With information from Jacobo Garcia, Oscar Lopez-Fonseca and Ana Maria Sanhueza.
Subscribe to continue reading
Read without limits
#months #dating #Daniel #Sancho #Edwin #Arrieta