Daniel Sancho and Edwin Arrieta: Where the two met up in the last six months

Talk shows in Spain broadcast a clip of Daniel Sancho breaking away from his police escort for a second — a digression in the reconstruction of the crime — and wetting his feet on the shore of the Thai island of Ko Pha-ngan, staring blankly into the horizon. “What’s he thinking?” the presenters wonders. The same question was being asked by an audience comprising half of Spain and part of Colombia, which has spent the past week gripped by the news of the murder and dismemberment of the Colombian surgeon Edwin Arrieta, 44, at the hands of the Spanish chef Daniel Sancho, 29.

In the media, here is plenty of speculation regarding the motives of the confessed murderer. Sancho’s version of what happened and the Thai police investigation coincide on the basic facts of the case. The chef — who has the trappings of an influencer, the son and grandson of famous actors, Rodolfo Sancho and Sancho Gracia — met the doctor a year ago on Instagram, where they shared a passion for gastronomy and travel. After several meetings, which according to Sancho’s confession involved friendship, sex and money, the two men met on the paradisiacal island in Thailand to enjoy the full moon party. Sancho arrived a couple of days earlier and bought gloves, plastic bags, a knife, scouring pads and bleach. On Wednesday, August 2, after picking up Arrieta on his motorcycle, strolling around the island and dining together, he murdered the Colombian. Sancho alleges that he killed the surgeon during a fight after he threatened to post sexual images if Sancho left him. Police have also discovered alleged death threats from the victim on the killer’s phone. Sancho claimed he felt like a “hostage” to Arrieta’s obsession.

Following the murder, the Spaniard spent three hours dismembering Arrieta’s corpse. He cleaned the bungalow and dumped bags of human remains in a landfill and at the bottom of the sea, for which he hastily purchased a kayak for $1,000. He attended the full moon party with two girls and then headed to the police station to report his friend’s disappearance, pressured by the constant calls from Arrieta’s sister and his friend. They did not know Sancho, they had contacted him through social media, concerned that Edwin, who routinely spoke several times a day with his family, had not been in touch for a long time. By then, the police had already found the surgeon’s pelvis in a trash bag. Sancho was subsequently arrested at the police station.

Those who knew Sancho, from tennis mates to business partners and people who attended the same private school in Madrid, have spoken anonymously to the media about the murderer. “I can’t see him doing anything like that, Daniel is all about kindness,” a close friend said in an interview with the Spanish TV station Telecinco. “He was narcissistic and arrogant, you could tell he kind of did what he wanted, that he wasn’t going to face any consequences,” an old schoolmate told another channel somberly. Sancho’s family has hired Carmen Balfagón, a media lawyer who often appears on evening programs, as spokesperson. “In any criminal act there is a motive, which is what needs to be clarified here,” she explained by phone.

Some of the media attention and the leaking of numerous details and images have prompted voices to question the rigorousness of the investigation by the Thai police. However, Spanish officers accustomed to working with colleagues from other countries believe that the Thai investigations have been “very thorough” in view of what has been reported in the media. “They scoured the video surveillance cameras and located images of the detainee buying the tools he used for the crime and others with the victim before murdering him. They found biological remains in places like drains, and they even obtained the confession by the alleged perpetrator, who initially denied the facts and tried to deceive them,” these police sources point out.

Daniel Sancho first sought to become a professional tennis player and then a chef. Only two weeks before his arrest, his father proudly spoke in ¡Hola! magazine about his son’s projects: “He’s a chef and has a catering business and a restaurant.” However, the young man’s name does not appear in the records as a business partner in either of the two ventures mentioned by his father (La Bohème and Boogie Burgers), both of which are registered in a luxurious building on Calle de Zurbano in Madrid, where no one answers the phone. Barely a month and a half after its opening, Boogie Burgers in Malasaña, a trendy neighborhood of Madrid, has been closed and on its Instagram the owners posted: “Our restaurant has been affected because of an incident beyond the company’s control. Unfortunately, the media publishes unverified news, which damages our image and reputation.”

Sancho was a fan of Muay Thai — a Thai martial art — had a cooking channel on YouTube with a small following and on his social media channels he posted images of himself in expensive restaurants in Madrid, parties in Ibiza and trips to the Riviera Maya, Peru, Lanzarote and Thailand. These images have revealed many of the meetings he had with Arrieta over the last six months. In January, according to Semana magazine, they met in Madrid for dinner at Umiko, a restaurant awarded two Repsol suns (an accolade in recognition of one of the best restaurants in the country). In February, they met again at an equestrian center in La Granja (Segovia) and, according to Espejo Público (Antena 3), they slept in a nearby hotel. At the end of July, they traveled to Ibiza with the chef’s friends (who, according to reports on TV, were unaware of the two’s intimate relationship). In his last post on Instagram, Sancho appears on a boat, at night, with a drink in his hand. One last episode of a life built on social media that disappeared, like his account, the day real life began.

Meanwhile, Arrieta’s life began in the humble northern Colombian town of Lorica, with a population of 112,000, in a strongly Catholic household. “Since he was a child, he had two dreams: to become a doctor and to see the world,” says Darlin Arrieta, his older sister. Edwin managed to fulfill both of his dreams. He trained in Argentina, where he specialized in plastic surgery, and went on to become a successful doctor who spent half the month in Chile and the other half in Colombia. In both countries he had an office and on the Chilean Facebook page there are still openings in the August agenda for liposculpture and abdominoplasty for about $5,000.

He visited Spain “about five times in the last 10 months,” according to his friend Silvio Suárez, who said he planned to move to the country: “He said he was working on validating his documents and was planning to set up business in Madrid.” His friends describe him as “sociable and friendly.” The perfect host, polite, courteous and respectful, who played polo and recited the Chaplet of the Divine Mercy every day at 3 p.m.

One of the big mysteries surrounding the case is why Arrieta traveled to Thailand with $80,000 in cash, which was found by the police at the scene of the crime. Meanwhile, his family, which is waiting for the repatriation of the body, wants the self-confessed murderer to be tried in Thailand. “It is unbiased terrain and would provide more guarantees,” says the family’s lawyer, Miguel González Sánchez. According to Amnesty International, the Thai judiciary has issued nearly 800 death sentences since 2010. Of these, 104 were in 2022. Of this number, in the same period it has only executed three, the last one was in 2018. Arrieta’s family is calling for a sentence that will serve as an example, though they do not believe in the death penalty as a punishment. “Only God gives and takes away life,” said Arrieta’s sister Darling.

With reporting by Jacobo García, Óscar López-Fonseca and Ana María Sanhueza.

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