They were hoping that on August 29th the nightmare their son had plunged them into would end. Daniel Sancho by killing and dismembering the surgeon Edwin Arrieta ended with a more lenient sentence that would allow them to live with some hope, surely that of being able to repatriate their son after a prison stay of no more than eight years. But the sentence that was read out this past Thursday by the judge of the Kho Samui Court after determining that the Spaniard killed his former partner with premeditation has left devastated not only the accused himself, who burst into tears upon hearing the verdict. After reading those two damning words, “life imprisonment”, his parents, Rodolfo Sancho and Silvia Bronchalo They would surely have received the hardest blow of their lives, even stronger than the one they felt when they found out what their son had done with his own hands last August, so many miles from home.
If the whole process has been very hard to bear on an emotional level, the overwhelming sentence has been a very strong blow to the state of mind of Rodolfo and Silvia, even though the actor left the courts holding his own and emphasizing that, far from losing hope, he intends to continue fighting as always for his son. But undoubtedly the procession goes on inside and will leave its moments of collapse, which surely there will be, for privacy. Because if until now it has been difficult to keep up the good work in the face of media pressure and to bear behind closed doors the pain of the bloody act of murder committed by their son, the future prospects are going to make it very difficult for both of them to maintain emotional integrity. And even more so when both parties, Rodolfo and Silvia, are so far apart.
But the emotional cost is only one part; the other cost, this time quantitative, of this matter, is the economic one. Frank Cuesta already warned about this when he said “They’re going to go broke.”
Stratospheric spending and insufficient assets
For the past year, Rodolfo has had to put his professional agenda on hold to dedicate himself to working on his son’s defense. At that time, his financial situation was not as buoyant as many might have expected: the house in Fuerteventura where he lives with his partner Xenia Toasted and their daughter still has a mortgage of 100,000 euros and, according to José Ángel Leiras when the crime came to light, Rodolfo’s mother would be living in an affluent neighborhood of Madrid, but in a house that was also re-mortgaged. In fact, after the events at the hands of his son, Rodolfo was unable to travel to Thailand until almost a month later, because it was difficult for him to gather the money needed to help her: he had to gather the approximate 1,500 euros for the flight expenses, the 400 euros per month for Peculio (contribution to prison expenses), the expenses of his stay, which are around 200 euros per night in bungalows in the area, apart from the 100,000 that he already knew he would have to pay to the legal team in the process. Marcos Garcia-Monteswho was in charge of Daniel’s defence. This money was in addition to what they would have had to pay to the team of Thai lawyers, headed by the office of Don Fernando Oca, who was the one who initially put the accused in contact with the lawyer Khun Anan, whose services were subsequently rejected. On the other hand, the hiring of interpreters for the entire process has also meant a significant outlay.
What they did not count on was that after that first trip there would be several more: tickets, stays and expenses that have done nothing but squander an economy that is not as buoyant as it might seem on the part of the actor and very discreet on the part of Silvia Bronchalo, who has faced the expenses from her own assets, obtained through her work in a multinational company based in Spain, where she has specialized in the field of asset management.
In Rodolfo’s case, just when the terrible crime occurred, the actor was promoting a film Silver Dolphinswhich obviously had to stop in the face of all the media fuss raised after the crime committed by her son. Nor was she promoting it months later Zorro, filmed with Secuoya for TVE. Surely he had already been paid for those jobs (it is said that he pocketed between 30,000 and 50,000 euros for the film), but not for those he planned to develop in 2023 with his own production company, Intrepidus Entertainment SL. In fact, he already had an agreement with the production company with which he had worked in The Ministry of TimeOnza, to develop some project, but logically he would have had to stop it to fight to obtain, together with the hired legal team, the most lenient sentence possible for his son.
Forced by the situation and in order to have money, he did agree to sign a contract with HBO to make a four-chapter documentary (only the first one has been broadcast) speaking in the first person about the crime, for which he would have signed a check for 120,000 euros, according to Alfonso Arús on his programme on La Sexta. But such money would be insufficient considering that the actor has made sure that his son’s life in prison was as easy as possible, making regular financial contributions -just as Silvia has done- so that he can eat better or sleep on a futon.
New stage, new expenses
The expenses, after the reading of the sentence, will continue to accumulate, as Rodolfo and Silvia will surely continue to contribute from their assets to improve their son’s life in prison as much as possible, especially with regard to food; but, in addition, there is the compensation that the judge has imposed on Daniel of 106,000 euros to be paid to Edwin’s family, an amount that they could ask to be increased. Although Daniel does not have assets with which to cover such expenses, they could also end up on the list of disbursements of Daniel’s parents, since, according to the law, one of the requirements for a Spanish convict to be able to serve his sentence in Spain is that he has compensated the victim. And it is clear that both Rodolfo and Silvia are going to fight to the end for an appeal before the court of appeal that seeks not only to reduce the prison sentence, but to be able to extradite their son in a few years.
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