A THAI court on Thursday jailed a famous Spanish actor’s son for life for the grisly murder of a Colombian plastic surgeon on a tropical holiday island, in a lurid case that has gripped Spain.
Daniel Sancho Bronchalo, a 30-year-old chef, was found guilty of the premeditated murder of Edwin Arrieta Arteaga on the tourist island of Koh Phangan last year.
The case has generated enormous interest in Spain because the defendant’s father Rodolfo Sancho is a well-known actor, and scores of Spanish reporters have flown in for the trial.
The court on the island of Koh Samui said in a statement that Sancho had been given a life sentence and ordered to pay 4.4 million baht (S$169,380) to Arrieta’s family.
Bussakorn Kaewleeled, a lawyer for the victim’s family, said they were happy with the outcome.
“The plaintiff is satisfied with the sentence because he will be put in prison for life and they receive some financial compensation,” Bussakorn told reporters outside the court on the island of Koh Samui.
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“The verdict has been delivered, both sides have the right to appeal according to Thai law,” Bussakorn added.
When asked about Sancho’s reaction, she said: “He is sad, but we can’t forget the loss of the dead one”.
The trial heard that Sancho chopped up Arrieta’s body and put the parts in plastic bags before distributing them around Koh Phangan.
“We didn’t expect it (the life sentence) but we must accept what the Thai justice has said, we have to respect it,” Carmen Balfagon, a lawyer for Rodolfo Sancho, told reporters.
Marcos Garcia-Montes, another Spanish lawyer representing the Sancho family, said they would launch an appeal.
Rodolfo Sancho and Silvia Bronchalo, the defendant’s mother, left court without speaking to reporters.
Sancho claimed he killed Arrieta, 44, in self-defence, and admitted hiding the body, but denied destroying the Colombian’s passport.
While Thailand still has the death penalty for some crimes, including premeditated murder, it rarely carries out executions – the last being in 2018.
“We always knew that premeditation was a provable fact and we had the elements to assert it,” Arrieta’s family said in a statement.
The family previously said they favoured a sentence of life imprisonment.
“Let him be left in Thailand so he can take time, all the time that God gives him to live, to think about what he did,” Darling Arrieta, the victim’s sister, said in an HBO documentary about the case.
Self-defence claim
Sancho and Arrieta agreed to meet in person after getting to know each other online.
Sancho’s father said in the same HBO documentary that Arrieta had threatened his son, and then “there was a fight, and in this fight, there was an accident”.
The defence argued that Sancho acted in legitimate self-defence after Arrieta tried to force him to have sex.
“He tried to rape me, and we fought,” Sancho said in a statement quoted by the Spanish daily El Mundo.
A lawyer for the victim’s family, Juan Gonzalo Ospina, said in a recent interview with El Mundo that Sancho was living a “false reality”.
Ospina said it was proven at the trial in April that Sancho had bought knives, plastic bags and cleaning supplies ahead of the crime, and kept them in the room where the killing took place. AFP
