Search for Marta del Castillo in river Guadalquivir to start next week
Search for Marta del Castillo in river Guadalquivir to start next week
A FRESH search for murdered Sevilla teen Marta del Castillo Casanueva will start this Tuesday, back in the original site where her ex-boyfriend claimed to have dumped her body eight years ago.
Marta's family has been fighting to reopen the case after years of fruitless searches and her killer's multiple versions of his former girlfriend's whereabouts.
Her parents paid a private detective to infiltrate the family and social circle of one of the main suspects, known as 'El Cuco', who was 15 at the time of Marta's death, and presented recorded conversations showing he and his parents had lied about where they had been on the night the young woman was last seen alive.
They have since commissioned a technical report involving a geo-radar analysis on the harbour area of the river Guadalquivir, which showed human remains may be in the area.
Miguel Carcaño, who admitted to Marta's murder in January 2009, initially said he had thrown her body in the river and, as the harbour has no current, it is possible she may still be there and her body relatively intact, experts have said.
Marta, who was 17 when she was killed, had arranged to meet Miguel, then 20, to 'discuss rumours' he was allegedly spreading about them now that their short-lived relationship was over.
According to Carcaño's original version, the couple had rowed and, during the course of their heated discussion, he threw an ashtray at her.
He said he was not sure whether he had just knocked her unconscious, but panicked, believing her dead, and threw her in the river.
Since then, other suspects including two 15-year-old male friends and Carcaño's elder stepbrother have been implicated, and a later version maintained Marta was gang-raped as the men took it in turns to hold her down, then she was strangled.
Carcaño has indicated abandoned farm fields, ditches and a landfill site as being Marta's resting place, but complete searches on these did not uncover any trace of her.
Other than El Cuco, who was only able to serve two years in a detention centre as he was a minor, and Carcaño who was sentenced to 20 years in jail, all the others were acquitted.
Eventually, the judge in charge of the case refused to authorise any further searches and closed his file, despite repated applications from the teen's family to keep going.
Their voices have finally been heard, and it is expected that police divers will search the Guadalquivir harbour in Sevilla from Tuesday onwards.
