Spanish YouTube chef found guilty of gruesome murder, dismemberment in Thailand

globalnews.ca:

Daniel Sancho Bronchalo, a Spanish YouTube chef and member of a famous family of actors, was found guilty of premeditated murder and sentenced to life in prison Thursday for the gruesome death and dismemberment of a Colombian surgeon on an island in Thailand.

Sancho, 30, was accused of murdering Edwin Arrieta Arteaga, 44, in August of last year. The two men were vacationing on the island of Koh Pha-ngan, known for its infamous “Full Moon” beach parties where travellers from around the world come to party all night. Sancho allegedly told police they had connected on Instagram a year earlier and become romantically involved, the Spanish newspaper El País reported.

At his trial on the island of Samui, 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.

However, he told the court that he dismembered the victim’s body and disposed of the pieces of the body on both land and sea.

The case came to light when trash collectors found what the Bangkok Post newspaper described as a sawed-off pelvis and intestines weighing about five kilograms 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.

The police narrative claimed that Sancho confessed to the murder and said he planned to murder Arrieta, claiming the two were lovers, because Arrieta threatened to go public with their alleged sexual relationship and disgrace the Sancho family.

Sancho, through his father and