how to better understand the case of Daniel Sancho and the terrible murder of Edwin Arrieta

The Koh Samui provincial court, with its stifling tropical atmosphere and polished wooden benches, looked more like a Buddhist temple than a place to dispense justice. In its main room, where a fan rotated lazily above the heads of those present, Daniel Sancho Clad in his orange uniform and the flip-flops that marked his status as a prisoner, he awaited the verdict with his eyes fixed on the ground. It was a humid morning, full of silence and a tension that electrified even the prosecutors and lawyers, already experts in the codes of Thai justice, who kept wiping the sweat from their foreheads with cloth handkerchiefs.

In the first row, Rodolfo Sancho, The actor whose elegance seemed to belie his suffering, stood erect next to his court-appointed lawyer. That man who embodied heroes and villains on screens was now nothing more than a lost father, reduced to a shadow under the neon lamps. Behind, in the shadows of the last row, Silvia Bronchalo, Daniel’s mother clutched a crumpled handkerchief in her hands, unable to look ahead. The scene was of a theatricality that could only be rivaled by a playwright’s masterpiece. But the tragedy was not fictitious.

The judge, With his dark clothes and his monotonous voice, the reading of the sentence began. Some words in Thai that first came as a murmur incomprehensible to foreigners, but that transformed into thunder when the translator broke them down in icy Spanish: “Life sentence for premeditated murder.” The reduced sentence, the judge noted, was a recognition of Daniel’s initial cooperation during the investigation. But those words were hardly a consolation. The entire room seemed to stop in a frozen moment of disbelief.

Rodolfo leaned his head forward, hiding his face in his hands. Silvia, on the other hand, was petrified, as if a current of cold air had passed through it. Daniel looked up for the first time. In his eyes, more than fear, there was a fire that burned. “This is not justice”he said in English, breaking the solemn silence of the court. His voice rang through the air with a mix of rage and desperation. Then something unexpected happened. Alice, the petite woman the family had hired as a consultant in Thailand, stood up abruptly. Dressed in a simple blouse and dark pants, she seemed insignificant before the magistrate, but her tone was firm and authoritative. In Thai, she reproached the judge for something that only she, he and the interpreters seemed to understand. The confrontation was brief, but explosive. The judge, visibly irritated, threatened to expel her from the courtroom. The Spaniards, bewildered, tried to decipher what had just happened. It was during a break when Silvia, still trembling, approached the translator to ask for explanations.

“That wasn’t the sentence I was supposed to read,” the interpreter explained. Those words added a new level of mystery to an already tangled case. Now, the writer Joaquín Campos immortalizes this episode in his book Death in Thailand. Her story offers an unforgiving perspective: according to her sources, Alice had promised that she could influence the judge’s decision in exchange for an exorbitant sum of money. But the plan, according to Campos, not only failed; left the Sancho family trapped in a web of accusations and mistrust. Alice, contacted by the press, denied everything.

His voice, calm but charged with indignation, was raised against the insinuations of bribery and fraud. According to her, her role had only been as a liaison between the family and the Thai legal system. But Campos insisted. “It was all a setup,” maintains the writer, with the confidence of someone who has dedicated months to following the traces of this story. According to your version, Daniel Sancho’s defense had fallen into a trap. Rodolfo, desperate, would have accepted the promises of Alice and her contacts, but what he found was a mirage that cost not only money, but also his credibility.

The case was further complicated by the figure of Dimitri, an alleged link with the Russian mafia. Campos suggested that Alice and this mysterious character had taken advantage of the Sancho’s desperation for financial gain. But no solid evidence supported these theories, which the condemned man’s family described as “fables.” Meanwhile, in Surat Thani prison, Daniel began his new life as a life-long prisoner. Campos, remembering the case of Artur Segarra, another Spaniard convicted in Thailand, predicted a gloomy but not definitive future. “If he pays compensation to the victim’s family, acknowledges the facts and requests a royal pardon, he could reduce his sentence,” he explained. But all of that required time, money, and a willingness that, at least for now, seemed out of Daniel’s reach.

In this story, where the borders between truth and fiction blur like a mirage under the Thai sun, each protagonist seems to have become a piece on a board that they do not control. Rodolfo, Silvia, Daniel, Alice and even Joaquín Campos himself, all of them orbit around a crime whose echo continues to resonate, not only in the pages of newspapers, but also in the darkest corners of the human soul. Because, in the end, beyond the sentences, the accusations and the books, this is a story of human frailties faced with the implacable machinery of justice, both legal and moral.