The first alert to the police station in one of the Koh Phangan sub-districts came at 12:00 on 3 August. Municipal waste collectors had found human remains inside a sack of fertilizers in the incineration plant dumpster. They were remains of a man: sliced intestines, parts of the buttocks, and the penis. A day later, while workers were rummaging through the entire garbage dump looking for more evidence, they discovered parts of a right leg inside a black plastic bag. Also a T-shirt, shorts and underwear.
The researchers found on the bag a shopping tag who took them to a shop in Koh Phangan, a very touristy island in the southeast of Thailand. There they checked the closed-circuit cameras and discovered that a foreigner, a young boy with long blonde hair, had bought large plastic bags at that commercial establishment on August 1, a meat mincing kniferubber gloves, detergent, a sponge and stainless steel wool.
After the purchase, the cameras stationed outside the premises captured how the boy left on a small rented motorcycle, which is the usual way that tourists choose to get around this small island that is half the size of Ávila. Thanks to the license plate, the agents found the store that owned the vehicle. Over there they handed over the documentation where the name of the boy who had rented the motorcycle came from: Daniel Sancho Bronchalo, 29, the same person who on Thursday the 3rd had gone to a police station to report the disappearance of a Colombian man with whom he was spending his stay on the island .
When Sancho went to file the disappearance complaint, the Thai media had already reported that human remains had been found in the dump. The local newspapers began to publish that it was a murderer who had dismembered his victim. And names started coming out. The dead man was Edwin Arrieta Arteaga, a 44-year-old surgeon who turned out to be Sancho’s companion.