A Thai court on Thursday jailed for life the son of Spanish actor Rodolfo Sancho for the high-profile murder and dismembering of a man last year on the popular tourist island of Koh Phangan.
Daniel Sancho is the son of Rodolfo Sancho, who starred in “El Ministerio del Tiempo” (The Ministry of Time) and actress Silvia Bronchalo. He pleaded guilty to concealing the victim’s body, but denied premeditated murder, the court said. Both parents are 49 years old and attended Thursday’s court session.
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 Police Col. Paisan Sangthep, deputy commander of the Surat Thani Provincial Police, who attended the hearing.
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 came to light when trash collectors found what the Bangkok Post newspaper described as a sawed-off pelvis and intestines weighing about 5 kilograms (11 pounds) 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 and interrogate him.
Throughout the trial, Sancho had maintained the August 2023 killing of Arteaga, a plastic surgeon, was an act of self-defense, according to Thai media reports.
Sancho was a chef on holiday in Thailand at the time of the incident, local media said.
He dismembered the victim’s body and placed parts of it in plastic bags that he distributed around the island.
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 Koh Pha-ngan in August last year.
The island is famous for its monthly “Full Moon” beach parties, attracting travelers from around the world for all-night raves.
A map of Koh Pha-ngan:
The court also ordered Sancho to pay more than 4.2 million baht ($125,000) in compensation to the victim’s family. Lawyers representing the family at the trial had asked for 30 million baht ($882,000), Spain’s EFE news agency reported.
EFE also quoted Sancho’s father Rodolfo telling media after the verdict that he intended “to always keep fighting, to keep fighting.”
At his trial on the island of Samui, Daniel Sancho had 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.
He 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, said Paisan.
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.
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.“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.”
Under certain conditions, Sancho can apply to be repatriated to serve the remainder of his prison term back home after several years of incarceration in Thailand, according to a treaty between Thailand and Spain.
The handful of Spanish nationals in Thai prisons includes another man convicted of premeditated murder and dismembering his victim.
Artur Segarra Princep was convicted of the 2016 killing of fellow Spaniard David Bernat. Police suspected that Segarra robbed the victim, whom he was said to have known. The body was kept in a freezer in Segarra’s Bangkok apartment until parts were tossed into Thailand’s Chao Phraya River.
His 2017 death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment in 2020 by Thailand’s King Maha Vajiralongkorn.
Reuters