Daniel Sancho Bronchalo: Son of famous Spanish actor receives life sentence for murder

BANGKOK (AP) — A Thai court on Thursday found Daniel Sancho Bronchalo, a member of a famous Spanish acting family, guilty of premeditated murder and sentenced him to life in prison. The victim was also dismembered as part of the sensational proceedings.

The Koh Samui provincial court had initially imposed the death penalty on Sancho, but commuted it to life imprisonment because of his cooperation during the trial, Police Colonel Paisan Sangthep, deputy commander of the Surat Thani provincial police, who attended the hearing, told the Associated Press.

Sancho, a 30-year-old chef with a YouTube channel, was accused of murdering Edwin Arrieta Arteaga, a 44-year-old plastic surgeon from Colombia, while both were vacationing on the Thai resort island of Koh Pha-ngan in August last year.

The convicted man is the son of Rodolfo Sancho Aguirre, a well-known Spanish actor, and Silvia Bronchalo, who was also an actress. Both parents are 49 years old and attended the court hearing on Thursday.

At his trial on the island of Samui, Sancho claimed he got into an argument with Arrieta because he allegedly tried to sexually assault him. He said that during the scuffle, Arrieta fell and hit his head on a bathtub, lost consciousness and then died.

He had pleaded not guilty to the charge of premeditated murder.

Sancho admitted to dismembering the victim's body and disposing of the parts on land and at sea. He received a four-month prison sentence for the charge of concealing or damaging a corpse, which was reduced to two months due to the confession, Paisan said.

He had also pleaded not guilty to the destruction of someone else's documents – the victim's passport – and was sentenced to two years in prison for this.

The details of the case – a violent death on a holiday island, the celebrity connections and the lurid details – attracted widespread attention in the Spanish media, and HBO produced a Spanish-language documentary about the events.