Murder of Marta del Castillo

On January 24, 2009, Marta Del Castillo Casanueva (born July 19, 1991), a Spanish high school student disappeared and was presumably murdered.

Despite extensive searches and the conviction of Miguel Carcaño Delgado in 2011, her body has never been found.

The case is popularly known in Spain as the Disappearance of Marta Del Castillo (Desaparición de Marta Del Castillo) or simply as the Marta Del Castillo Case (Caso Marta Del Castillo).

Del Castillo was chatting with a friend, Silvia Fernández, through Messenger when she left the conversation with the line Gordaaa t djo q sta l Migue abajo y bvoy a abal con el luego t llamo y t cnto ttQ ("Fatty, I leave you because [e]l Migue is downstairs and I'm going to talk to him. I'll call you later and tell you about it. Love you.").

"El Migue" was the nickname of 19-year old Miguel Carcaño Delgado, a boy she had been casually seeing for approximately one month.

Around 17:00, Del Castillo told her family that she would spend the evening with friends, and she left the family home in Seville's Argantonio Street.

Del Castillo's mother had previously warned her about Carcaño, claiming that he had the "profile of a domestic abuser."

When Del Castillo was late getting home, her family called her cell phone, which was on for the first hours, but she didn't respond.

They then called her friends, including some of the people who would be later accused of her disappearance, like Carcaño and Samuel Benítez.

Carcaño admitted that he had seen her that evening, but claimed that he had left her near the entrance of her apartment block around 21:30.

Del Castillo's mother was suspicious and told Carcaño that she'd "throw the police over" him if something bad had happened to her daughter.

Carcaño attracted further suspicions from Del Castillo's family and friends when he moved immediately to nearby Camas, rather than joining the search for Del Castillo.

Carcaño resided from then on in Camas with his latest girlfriend, 14-year old Rocío P. G., and her family.

Among other places, Del Castillo's friends looked for her in the apartment where Carcaño had lived before with his older half-brother, Francisco Javier Delgado Moreno, in Seville's 78 León XIII Street, and they noticed that the place smelled strongly of bleach and ammonia.

Del Castillo's family reported her disappearance to the police around 2:00 AM.

The case was investigated by the Underage People Task Force (Grupo de Menores) of the Spanish National Police.

After Carcaño's confession, it was joined by the Homicide Task Force (Grupo de Homicidios).

Carcaño denied his involvement in repeated interrogations, but P. G. claimed to have seen blood on Carcaño's pants, and the lining of Carcaño's jacket tested positive for Del Castillo's blood.

A luminol test in León XIII also revealed a large bloodstain on the bedroom floor.

Carcaño was interviewed again on February 14.

Upon hearing of P. G.'s testimony and the existence of forensic evidence, he collapsed and confessed to the murder.

According to this testimony, Carcaño murdered Del Castillo during an argument on the night of January 24.

The reason for the argument was Carcaño's relationship with P. G. and Del Castillo's threat to tell P. G. about her own continued relationship with Carcaño if he didn't stop seeing her.

The murder weapon was a heavy ashtray which was never found, but that Carcaño claimed to have used to hit Del Castillo on the left side of the parietal bone, killing her.

Carcaño also claimed to have called a friend, Samuel Benítez Pérez, from a payphone in León XIII Street, and to have requested his help moving the body to Camas.

Once there, they threw the body in the Guadalquivir River near a point called Charco de la Pava.

Police suspected that Carcaño was not telling the whole truth.

Among other things, he claimed that the vehicle used to move the body was his own moped, but tests showed that it was not stable enough to transport three people in that area, even without accounting for one of them being dead.

On February 16, the Minister of the Interior Alfredo Pérez-Rubalcaba announced that Carcaño and Benítez were both arrested under charges of homicide and illegal detention.

Also arrested were Carcaño's half-brother and a 15-year old friend of Carcaño and Benítez, later identified as Francisco Javier García Marín, alias "El Cuco".

Specialist Groups, and the Military Emergencies Unit searched the Guadalquivir between Camas and the stuary at Sanlúcar de Barrameda, using 22 vessels, 3 jet skis, 2 helicopters, 13 scent hounds, and a sonar and specialized underwater body retrieval technology lent by the Dutch Police.

A Gelves dock engineer also designed, built and volunteered a rake-like tool capable of removing mud from the bottom of the river.

Three separate tests with pig carcasses weighing 50 kilograms were made.

The bodies submerged several times, but in all three cases, they ended on the surface and stuck in a particular stretch of riverbank that was only 20 kilometers long.

However, no trace of Del Castillo was found.

Police worked with the hypothesis that the large volume of the Guadalquivir in January and the three weeks between the murder and Carcaño's confession had been enough to either wash the body out to sea before the search began or to entomb it in the bottom mud, which can be two meters thick in some areas.

Also searched were over 40 wells, canals, sewage plants, and pipes.

A "bloodstained cloth" found in an irrigation canal near Camas was revealed to be just painted red after testing.

In his own testimony (later recanted), "El Cuco" stated that he arrived in León XIII with Benítez, where they found Carcaño wrapping Del Castillo's body in a blanket under the supervision of Delgado.

Delgado then threatened him and his family to silence him and stayed at the apartment to clean the evidence while the other three disposed of the body.