An accidental death would not fit with the images of Daniel Sancho, prior to the night of the crime, in which he bought a knife and large plastic bags in a local store even before Edwin Arrieta set foot on the tourist island of Koh Phangan. But until the Thai authorities clarify the facts, the chronology of the cameras that captured that scene is verified and the trial is held, Sancho’s version is currently the only official allegation as to whether it was a premeditated crime or not.
According to the prisoner, son of actor Rodolfo Sancho, the death of the Colombian surgeon was an involuntary homicide resulting from a strong fight after which he tried to revive the victim, without success. And the reason for said dispute was, according to what the Bangkok Post extracted from Sancho’s statement, that Arrieta was submitting to him and threatening to damage his family’s reputation in Spain, since, apparently, the deceased had in his possession intimate graphic material that Sancho had given him previously. The two met on Instagram a year earlier.
The true relationship between the victim and the defendant is another of the issues that generate the most morbidity in history. Many media accept the version that Sancho and Arrieta maintained something more than a friendship or business contacts, but the source from which all this information derives, once again the Bangkok Post, backed down and made this information disappear from its website after a few minutes without explanation.
There is no doubt that, after Arrieta’s death, Sancho tried to get rid of the corpse and to do so he came to dismember it into up to 14 parts, carefully divided between those that were recognizable and those that were not. To get rid of the former, he took a red kayak from a tourist beach in the area and went into the sea to drop the bags. More of Edwin’s mortal remains were found at the local incinerator plant by workers there.
According to the chronology considered by the local media, Daniel Sancho arrived in Thailand on July 30 and on the island of Koh Phangan on August 1. The surgeon joined him a day later. The night of their meeting, a heated argument broke out between them that resulted in the Colombian being dead in the hotel room they shared. After that, Sancho himself reported a day later, on the night of Thursday, August 3, the disappearance of the Colombian at the Koh Phangan police station, and he began to be questioned as a suspect on Friday.
Sancho’s confession to the police arrived on Saturday, apparently because the evidence that pointed to it was too obvious. On Sunday he was taken to various locations on the island of Koh Phangan to reconstruct the crime. Among them was the beach where he would have abandoned the kayak with which he disposed of parts of Arrieta’s body.
Another bizarre detail in the story is the public statement that Sancho made to Efe on Sunday night. As he commented to the program, the policemen were treating him “very well” because he had been cooperative. “To give you an idea, I’m having dinner at the best hotel on the island, which is an Anantara,” revealed the detainee.
In statements to the Efe agency, Sancho had another opportunity to explain the motive for the crime in his own way: “I am guilty, but I was Edwin’s hostage. He held me hostage. It was a glass cage, but it was a cage. He made me destroy the relationship with my girlfriend, he forced me to do things that I would never have done, ”he assured.
Sancho has spent his second night in the Thai prison on Koh Samui and is currently in isolation for ten days due to covid protocol, a period during which he can only be visited by his lawyer. “He knows what he did. He wants to plan life in prison, ”explained yesterday the lawyer hired by the family at the first sight of him.
Once the isolation protocol is over, Sancho will await trial, with an indeterminate date, for which he could wait weeks or months. Meanwhile, the Thai police still have nine more weeks to conclude the investigation of the facts.
