Yesterday a family was enjoying the bungalow occupied by Daniel Sancho and Edwin Arrieta, completely oblivious to that bloodletting. Salad beach has continued to be one of the most peaceful and magnetic on the Thai island of Phangan. Although the procession goes inside.
For example, for Kanda, the woman from the supermarket who took the thousand dollars that Sancho offered her, for one of the canoes he rents. “I have been summoned to testify for three days in Samui this week, but the police have told me that there are too many of us.”
This is the neighboring island, where the provincial court is located, which since this Tuesday is hosting one of the most high-profile trials of the year. Not in Thailand, of course, but in Spain.
Because here the desire to turn the page has dominated for a long time and the watchword is not to speak. Not to mention among the Indian owners of Bugain Villas, the complex of a dozen bungalows, punctuated by the dismemberment of surgeon Arrieta at the hands of Daniel Sancho. “We are not going to say anything else,” proclaims Mrs. Singh, with infinite exhaustion.
The tragedy of those two families has also been a blow to his, just a year after inaugurating his very careful investment. The bad publicity of the crime has reduced the clientele. “But we don’t plan to return to India,” she says defiantly, while her husband no longer knows where to turn.
Arrieta’s head and one arm, which Sancho threw into the sea at night from a kayak, took a few days to be pushed by the waves against the rugged promontory where Salad ends. Amara – not her real name – can see it perfectly from her massage table, on the edge of the beach.
What Amara has not experienced or heard about the circumstances of the crime, she has read on social networks or – at first – in the Thai media, with details that differ from those in the story of our gatherings.
“A German couple, whom I have known for a long time, told me that they had seen Daniel and the Colombian bathing in the pool, very animated, with loud music. They are a young couple who rents a house nearby, seasonally. She noticed Daniel’s physique. “He didn’t look like a gangster at all.”
Haad Salad or Salad Beach means, in any case, pirate beach. Nothing to do with salads, which in any case would be made from sea cucumbers, which infest its waters.
As Amara reveals, his hotel, Villa Cha-Cha, “was the first place Daniel went looking for a kayak, but the manager refused to rent it to him because it was getting dark and he went to the supermarket.” But that wasn’t when he saw it. “It was when he passed by here, already surrounded by police.”
“Daniel left the kayak leaning against the wall of our hotel,” says the cashier at Salad Hut, which is also a restaurant.
However, he had acquired it a hundred meters further away. Where Mrs. Kanda says that Sancho seemed to her “a good boy.” Today he has three kayaks left to rent, but none of them belong to the son of actor Rodolfo Sancho. “The police took that one.”
The masseuse Amara, a hundred meters from the scene of the events – and not ten thousand kilometers – says that what circulated among the tourist workers on the island is that “Daniel was with a girl in another hotel, in Haad Rin, in the another tip. Moto up, moto down.” She understands that she was “Spanish” or she could be and looked like “a bride.”
From what he has heard from some agent, the cosmetic surgeon’s “parents” had to go to Thailand “months ago.” If he hadn’t done it personally, the police wouldn’t have been able to give them the $60,000 his son was carrying, he says.
One hundred meters from the scene of the crime, two police officers say they do not recognize a photo of Daniel Sancho. His superior makes an effort to remember. “Ah, yes, yes, Daniel.” But he adds that it is a quiet island. “”This year there has been no crime and last year there was no other.
Amara says the bungalows in question “have everything from knives to garbage bags.” But it will not be she but three magistrates who, at the gates of summer, will have to hand down the sentence, listening to everyone and based on evidence.
