Daniel Sancho Bronchalo sentenced to life in prison, guilty of murder

Daniel Sancho Bronchalo, a Spanish YouTube chef, was sentenced to life in prison on Thursday for a gruesome murder and mutilation in Thailand.

The case was documented in a Spanish-language HBO documentary. Sancho is the son of prominent Spanish film and TV actor Rodolfo Sancho and Silvia Bronchalo, who has crew credits and has also reportedly acted.

The verdict was announced by the Koh Samui Provincial Court and related to a case in which Sancho was accused of murdering Colombian surgeon Edwin Arrieta Arteaga, dismembering his body and disposing of the body parts. The two men were vacationing on Koh Panang, a nearby island known for its full moon rave parties.

The court initially sentenced Sancho to death for the “premeditated murder” of Arrieta, but reduced the sentence to life imprisonment because he had cooperated with the court.

Sancho claimed that he and Arrieta got into an argument after Arrieta tried to sexually assault him. Sancho said Arrieta hit his head on a bathtub and died.

While Sancho pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder, he acknowledged dismembering Arrieta’s body and scattering the body parts on land and sea. He was given a four-month prison sentence, reduced to two months. In addition, he received a two-year prison sentence for destroying Arrieta’s passport, a charge he denied.

The Associated Press agency reports that Thai police have obtained surveillance video showing that Sancho had purchased a knife, rubber gloves, garbage bags and cleaning products at a supermarket before Arrieta’s death. Prosecutors said this supported the charge of first-degree murder.

“I am sorry that a life has been lost and that parents have lost a son,” Sancho said in his closing speech to the court, according to the Spanish-language newspaper El Pais. “I am sorry that his family could not bury him properly. I am sorry for what I did after death.”

Both his parents were in court Thursday to hear the verdict.