He hides his face for fear of being recognized, but he wanted to make his testimony public to portray someone who, according to him, was a “real monster, a master of manipulation.” His name is Luis, he is Colombian and he reported Edwin Arrieta after seven months of continuous harassment. At the trial, he assures that the surgeon stated before the magistrate and the police: “He is mine, I love him.”
The parallelism between his statements and those that Daniel Sancho offered to the Thai police after pleading guilty to Arrieta’s murder raise the hackles: “I could have been Daniel. Edwin knew no limits and took you to the extreme,” he said this Tuesday. in an interview with Sonsoles Ónega.
It all happened in 2005: “We met in a bar. He wanted to buy me a drink and I turned him down. Then I saw him crying and he told me that no one wanted him. Days later, he called me on the phone. I don’t know how he got my number, but Then he showed up at my office, at my house… Later he told me that he had hired someone to follow me,” Luis remembers. “I panicked when he threatened to call my mother and reveal my sexuality to her.”
Luis recounts different violent episodes with Edwin Arrieta: “Once he showed up at the restaurant where I was having lunch with a friend. He yelled at me in front of everyone and threw the drink in my face.” Another day, he called him 143 times: “I didn’t pick up any and he showed up at my house with the police, claiming that I had stolen a watch.” He claims that posing as a victim was a frequent trick: “On one occasion he chased me down the street. I started running, he grabbed me by my jacket and threw me to the ground. He fell with me and started screaming that I was robbing him. I “I covered my face to avoid a scandal and he bit my hand.” She also adds that Edwin’s mother knew about her son’s obsessive behavior: “I spoke to her on one occasion, a sweet woman. I told her what was happening and she promised me that her son would leave me alone.”
But he didn’t and Luis decided to file a lawsuit against him for harassment. At the trial, Edwin, according to his testimony, laughed: “He looked at me as if that were a joke. The judge made him sign a document promising to leave me alone and before signing it, he turned around, looked at us and said to the magistrate: ‘I love him, he is mine’. I felt violated, violated and decided to change cities. I no longer went out, I lived locked up out of fear.”
Luis concludes: “He knows very well how to manipulate you, he takes you to the limit. When I found out what had happened I felt identified with Daniel, because I could have been him if I had not had the firmness to report him. I would have killed him or he would have killed me. killed me. He had to push that boy to the limit.”