A court in Thailand yesterday found Daniel Sancho Bronchalo, a member of a famous Spanish acting family, guilty of premeditated murder and sentenced him to life in prison, in a lurid case that involved the victim being dismembered.
The Koh Samui Provincial Court issued an initial sentence of death for Sancho, but commuted it to life imprisonment due to his cooperation during the trial, said Surat Thani Provincial Police Deputy Commander Colonel Paisan Sangthep, who attended the hearing.
Sancho, a 30-year-old chef with a YouTube channel, had been charged with the murder of Edwin Arrieta Arteaga, a 44-year-old plastic surgeon from Colombia, when both were vacationing on the Thai holiday island of Koh Pha-ngan in August last year.
Photo: EPA-EFE
The island is famous for its monthly “full moon” beach parties, attracting travelers from all over the world for all-night raves.
The convicted man is the son of Rodolfo Sancho Aguirre, a prominent Spanish actor, and Silvia Bronchalo, who has also been in acting. Both parents are 49 years old and attended yesterday’s court session.
At his trial on the island of Samui, Sancho claimed he got into a fight with Arrieta for allegedly trying to sexually assault him.
He said that Arrieta fell as they scuffled and hit his head on a bathtub, losing consciousness and then dying.
He had pleaded not guilty to charges of premeditated murder.
Sancho acknowledged dismembering the victim’s body and disposing of the parts on land and at sea.
For the charge of concealing or damaging a body, he received a four-month prison sentence, reduced to two months for acknowledging the act, Paisan said.
He had also pleaded not guilty to the charge of destroying another person’s documents — the victim’s passport — for which he received a two-year prison term.
The elements of the case — violent death on a holiday island, the celebrity connections and the lurid details — attracted huge coverage in Spanish media. HBO produced a Spanish-language documentary on the events.
The case became known when trash collectors found what the Bangkok Post newspaper described as a sawed-off pelvis and intestines weighing about 5kg in a fertilizer sack at a garbage dump.
Shortly after that, Sancho reported to police that Arrieta was missing, and police then gathered evidence linking the two men that led them to detain him.
Police established a narrative, claiming to the press that Sancho had confessed to the murder and saying he had planned it because Arrieta threatened to disgrace him and his family by revealing their alleged sexual relationship.
Sancho, through his father and his lawyers, said that was a distorted version of what he told police, and denied having a sexual relationship with Arrieta.
Police obtained surveillance video showing Sancho allegedly purchasing a knife, rubber gloves, garbage bags and cleaning solutions at a convenience store before Arrieta’s death, which prosecutors claimed bolstered the charge of premeditated murder.
In his closing statement earlier in his trial, Sancho told the court he regretted his actions, the Spanish newspaper El Pais reported.
“I am sorry that a life has been lost and that parents have lost a son,” Sancho said. “I am sorry that his family was not able to bury him properly. I’m sorry for what I did after the death.”
‘UNUSUAL EVENT’: The Australian defense minister said that the Chinese navy task group was entitled to be where it was, but Australia would be watching it closely The Australian and New Zealand militaries were monitoring three Chinese warships moving unusually far south along Australia’s east coast on an unknown mission, officials said yesterday. The Australian government a week ago said that the warships had traveled through Southeast Asia and the Coral Sea, and were approaching northeast Australia. Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles yesterday said that the Chinese ships — the Hengyang naval frigate, the Zunyi cruiser and the Weishanhu replenishment vessel — were “off the east coast of Australia.” Defense officials did not respond to a request for comment on a Financial Times report that the task group from
Chinese authorities said they began live-fire exercises in the Gulf of Tonkin on Monday, only days after Vietnam announced a new line marking what it considers its territory in the body of water between the nations. The Chinese Maritime Safety Administration said the exercises would be focused on the Beibu Gulf area, closer to the Chinese side of the Gulf of Tonkin, and would run until tomorrow evening. It gave no further details, but the drills follow an announcement last week by Vietnam establishing a baseline used to calculate the width of its territorial waters in the Gulf of Tonkin. State-run Vietnam News
DEFENSE UPHEAVAL: Trump was also to remove the first woman to lead a military service, as well as the judge advocates general for the army, navy and air force US President Donald Trump on Friday fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General C.Q. Brown, and pushed out five other admirals and generals in an unprecedented shake-up of US military leadership. Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social that he would nominate former lieutenant general Dan “Razin” Caine to succeed Brown, breaking with tradition by pulling someone out of retirement for the first time to become the top military officer. The president would also replace the head of the US Navy, a position held by Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to lead a military service,
Four decades after they were forced apart, US-raised Adamary Garcia and her birth mother on Saturday fell into each other’s arms at the airport in Santiago, Chile. Without speaking, they embraced tearfully: A rare reunification for one the thousands of Chileans taken from their mothers as babies and given up for adoption abroad. “The worst is over,” Edita Bizama, 64, said as she beheld her daughter for the first time since her birth 41 years ago. Garcia had flown to Santiago with four other women born in Chile and adopted in the US. Reports have estimated there were 20,000 such cases from 1950 to
RSS