Marta del Castillo’s murderer sentenced

THE ex-boyfriend of a Sevilla teenager, Miguel Carcaño, has been jailed for 20 years for her murder, despite her body never being found.

Marta del Castillo, aged 17, went missing in Sevilla on January 24, 2009.

Carcaño’s older brother, his brother’s girlfriend and a friend were all acquitted by Sevilla Provincial Court.

The public prosecutor was asking for 52 years in prison for Carcaño and between five and eight each for the other three. Carcaño, Marta’s ex-boyfriend, confessed he had killed her during an argument at his home after hitting her in the head with an ashtray. However, he denied knowing where her body was.

He is sentenced to pay €340,000 to her family for moral damages, as well as the legal costs, and is banned from living in the same city or town as her parents or sisters for 30 years.

The sentence considered it proved that Carcaño and a friend known as El Cuco, who had already been sentenced as a minor for covering up the crime, with the help of an unknown third person, put Marta’s body in a wheelchair and disposed of it.

Meanwhile, a Sevilla judge required the police to search for her body in a location pointed out by her grandfather, between Camas and Valencina de la Concepcion, near the area where Miguel Carcaño lived.

The family spokesman says there is a stream nearby with a lot of undergrowth, which is easy to access and could be an ideal area to dump to body.

Her grandfather and other volunteers searching the area found a blanket there which they handed over to the police.