Murder of Rocío Wanninkhof
Background information – victim | |
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Born | Rocío Wanninkhof Hornos 9 November 1979 Mijas, Málaga, Spain |
Died | 9 October 1999 | (aged 19)
Burial | 21 November 1999 Arroyo del Ojanco, Spain |
Case information | |
Cause of death | Exsanguination caused by multiple stab wounds |
Perpetrator | Tony Alexander King |
Convicted | Maria Dolores Vázquez (19 September 2001; overturned on 1 February 2002) Tony Alexander King (12 December 2006) |
On 9 October 1999, Rocío Wanninkhof Hornos, a 19-year-old
This
Three months after Vázquez's conviction, the
The affair is popularly known in Spain as the Wanninkhof Case (Caso Wanninkhof) or Wanninkhof-Carabantes Case (Caso Wanninkhof-Carabantes). Vázquez's conviction has been named as the biggest miscarriage of justice in the judiciary history of Spain since the 1910 "Crime of Cuenca".[3]
Background
Alicia Hornos and Dolores Vázquez
After her divorce in 1983, Hornos kept legal custody of the children and she raised them with Vázquez as the couple's own. Rocío and her sister Rosa said that they had
Though Hornos and Vázquez ended their relationship in 1988, they continued to live together for a while and generally remained on good terms until around 1994. The cause of their enmity may have been a dispute over the ownership of the house and other properties, according to Hornos's sister-in-law. Hornos continued to reside in Mijas with her children, and later began a new relationship with a Spanish man, Juan Cerrillo, that was ongoing at the time of Rocío's murder and Vázquez's trial.[3]
Tony Alexander King
Tony Alexander King | |
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Born | Anthony Bromwich 1967 United Kingdom |
Other names | Tony Bromwich The Holloway Strangler The Costa Killer |
Criminal penalty | 10 years in a youth detention center (1986) 5 years in prison (1991) 36 years in prison (2005) 19 years in prison (2006) |
Details | |
Victims | 2 (plus 13+ non-fatal attacks) |
Span of crimes | 1986–2003 |
Country | United Kingdom Spain |
State(s) | England Málaga |
Date apprehended | 18 September 2003 |
Tony Alexander King was born Anthony Bromwich in 1967. He claimed he was
However, King was rearrested six months later for robbing a woman at gunpoint. King was then recluded in regular prison until 1996. Shortly after his release he changed his name, which is allowed to people convicted in cases of great public notoriety in the United Kingdom. The same year, King married Chilean-born Cecilia Matilde Pantoja when she was two months pregnant with their daughter, Sabrina. He told Pantoja that he had a criminal record for armed robbery, but claimed that he had been forced into it because of poverty.[7]
In August 1997, King threatened a Hungarian woman with a knife and attempted to
Pantoja (who continued to use her surname, as per Spanish and Latin American custom) abandoned him in 2000, citing economic problems and her own fear that he was involved in Rocío Wanninkhof's murder. However, she didn't report her suspicions to police and they were reported to have remained in contact and on good terms by other people. In 2001, King began to work in a local English pub called "Chicken Shack," where he became friends with a co-worker named Simon Bowers. Bowers later moved to
Following King's arrest in 2003, the British tabloid newspapers News of the World and The Sun claimed that British police were investigating King as a suspect in twelve unsolved murders of women in the UK that had taken place between 1987 and 1994. Scotland Yard dismissed this information as "pure speculation".[10][11] However, it was later announced that King would be interrogated as a suspect in the 2002 murder of Milly Dowler.[12]
Murder
Disappearance
Rocío Wanninkhof said goodbye to her mother and sister around 17:30 of 9 October 1999. She walked the 500 meters between her home in the Mijas residential area "La Cortijera" and her boyfriend's home in La Cala de Mijas, where she stayed until 21:30. According to her boyfriend, she left then with the intention of taking a shower and changing clothes in her home, before reuniting with him and other friends at a fair in Fuengirola later that night. This was the first and only time that Wanninkhof made the return trip alone and on foot; usually she would either be driven home by her boyfriend or picked up at his home by her mother or sister. A foreign resident that passed away before Vázquez's trial was the last person to see her alive, walking from La Cala to Mijas.[3]
Wanninkhof's mother and sister contacted her boyfriend and friends the next day, all of whom denied having seen her at the fair. Though already alarmed, Hornos decided to go for a walk with Cerrillo to put herself at ease rather than reporting Wanninkhof's disappearance right away. During this walk, the couple found a pair of running shoes that they identified as Wanninkhof's, a napkin, and several blood stains in a vacant lot next to the road used by her. They alerted the Civil Guard, who cordoned off the area and started the search with the help of her family and over one thousand neighbors. Despite the absence of a body, it was immediately apparent to law enforcement that Wanninkhof had been murdered. A blood trail began at 1.10 meters from the sidewalk and continued to a blood pool large enough to have caused her death from exsanguination. Next to the pool were dragging marks, and crossing over them and the blood, there were tire tracks made by a small vehicle with a tire model that went out of production in 1993. Because the dragging marks continued over severely inclined terrain that would have made it difficult for one person to drag a body alone, it was believed that the body was dragged by at least two people, then left in a less exposed area of the vacant lot before the vehicle was brought in to transport the body to another location.
"Three or four days" after the disappearance, a taxi driver came forward to say that the night of the crime, at 22:00, he dodged an off-road vehicle driving on the wrong lane at the exact point on the road where the running shoes were found. When the vehicle passed his own, he heard a high-pitched "shriek or scream" that scared him. On 16 October, DNA testing confirmed that the blood belonged to Wanninkhof.
Despite the evidence, the family and friends of Wanninkhof stated that they believed she was still alive. Cliff Stanford and Sylvia Spruck Wrigley, who had employed her as an au pair for Wrigley's five-year-old child, offered a reward of ten million pesetas (£40,000) for any useful information about her disappearance [13] Later, Stanford increased that to twenty-five million pesetas (£100,000) for information that could lead to the arrest of her killer. [14]
Discovery of the body
Wanninkhof's nude body was found on 2 November near the sporting club "Los Altos del Rodeo," between
Because a number eight was drawn on one of the bags, it was believed that the bags were not acquired with the intention of using them in a murder, but that they had been repurposed after being already used. The killer was also believed to be familiar with the area where the body was abandoned, as it was only accessible by a trail perpendicular to the
Trial of Dolores Vázquez
The trial was by jury, which is a system with no tradition in Spain, having been newly implemented.[citation needed] Most factual evidence exculpated her but the prosecutor relied heavily in attacking the character of Dolores and her lesbian relationship with Rocío's mother Alicia.[citation needed] The verdict repeated word for word the prosecutor's allegations and found Dolores guilty of the murder of Rocío. She was sentenced to serve 15 years in prison. All this was conducted in the middle of a media circus and feeding frenzy.[citation needed]
Dolores appealed and the higher court agreed and declared the case should be retried.
Murder of Sonia Carabantes
While Vázquez was in prison awaiting her new trial, on 14 August 2003, 17-year-old Sonia Carabantes was reported missing in Coin, Malaga. Her mother, Encarna Guzman, found her daughter's sandals, purse and phone in a street, next to a large blood stain.[5] The search to find Carabantes was extensive with more than 700 volunteers.[5][6] On 19 August, during the search, Carabantes' body was found near a stream, naked and covered with stones. The autopsy revealed that Carabantes was killed by asphyxiation.[5] The disappearance and murder of Sonia Carabantes made national news, receiving press coverage before and after the discovery of connections to the Wanninkhof's murder.[6]
In their investigation of this case the police discovered DNA which matched DNA found at the scene of the murder of Rocío. A woman soon told police that she suspected her ex-husband and when the police questioned him it was soon discovered that it was, indeed, his DNA. His name was Tony Alexander King and he was an English immigrant who, with his wife and daughter had come to live in southern Spain. It turned out he had a long criminal history and had served time in England for sexual crimes before changing his name and settling in Spain.
Vázquez's upcoming trial was first suspended and then the case was closed and she was set free having spent 17 months in prison.
Trial of Tony Alexander King
In 2005 Tony Alexander King was sentenced to 36 years in prison for the death of Sonia Carabantes and to an additional seven years for an unrelated sexual attack he had committed. In 2006 he was found guilty of the death of Rocío Wanninkhof and was sentenced to 19 years in prison for that crime.
Aftermath
Despite Vázquez's exoneration and subsequent conviction of King, Hornos remains convinced that Vázquez was involved in her daughter's murder and has stated this belief repeatedly. She also denies being homosexual or
Criticism
Press coverage
Self-isolation of British communities in Spain
In 2003 it was estimated that the whole province was home to 180,000 permanent British residents and four or five times more transient ones, in addition to seven English-language newspapers, eight English-language radio stations and numerous real estate firms and pubs staffed and catered to British customers only.
In media
In 2008, a miniseries titled El Caso Wanninkhof was released by Televisión Española, with Valentina Burgueño starring as Rocío.[16]
In 2021, Netflix released the feature length documentary film Murder by the Coast (El Caso Wanninkhof-Carabantes in Spanish) narrating the events, timeline and aftermath of the case.[17]
Also in 2021,
See also
- List of solved missing person cases
- Alcàsser Girls
- Disappearance of Amy Fitzpatrick
- Murder of Meredith Kercher
- Murder of Lindsay Rimer, unsolved 1994 murder in England once linked to Tony King
References
- ^ Antolín, Matías (18 September 2008). "El linchamiento de Dolores" [The lynching of Dolores]. Diario de Burgos (in Spanish). Burgos, Spain. Retrieved 20 September 2017.
- ^ Rodríguez, Mercedes (17 June 2008). "'El Caso Wanninkhof', la historia de un linchamiento" ['The Wanninkhof Case', history of a lynching]. El Diario Montañés (in Spanish). Santander, Spain. Retrieved 20 September 2017.
- ^ a b c d e f g Gimeno Reinoso, B. (2008) La construcción de la lesbiana perversa: Visibilidad y representación de las lesbianas. GEDISA, 256 pages.
- ^ Gómez, Luis (3 June 2013). "No hay perdón para Dolores Vázquez" [No mercy for Dolores Vázquez]. El País (in Spanish). Madrid, Spain. Retrieved 20 September 2017.
- ^ a b c d Acal, Carmen (8 April 2023). "Crimenes de Andalucía: tercera parte del caso Wanninkhof y su relación con el asesinato de Sonia Carabantes" [Crimes of Andalusia: third part of the Wanninkhof case and its relationship with the murder of Sonia Carabantes]. Diario de Sevilla (in Spanish).
- ^ a b c Acal, Carmen (18 July 2023). "Las claves del crimen de Sonia Carabantes, 20 años después de ser asesinada en la feria de Coín (Málaga)" [The keys to the crime of Sonia Carabantes, 20 years after being murdered at the Coín fair (Málaga)]. Cadena SER (in Spanish).
- ^ Cruzado, María José (24 November 2006). "La ex mujer de King declara que no lo denunció antes porque no tenía pruebas" [King's ex-wife testifies that she didn't report him earlier because she had no evidence]. La Voz de Cádiz (in Spanish). Cádiz, Spain. Archived from the original on 21 September 2017. Retrieved 26 September 2017.
- ^ Olmedo, Ildefonso (21 September 2003). "Durmiendo con el asesino (presunto)" [Sleeping with the killer (presumed)]. El Mundo (in Spanish). Madrid, Spain. Retrieved 24 September 2017.
- ^ Peregil, Francisco (28 September 2003). "El mérito de pasar desapercibido" [The merit of remaining beneath suspicion]. El País (in Spanish). Madrid, Spain. Retrieved 22 September 2017.
- ^ Oppenheimer, Walter (23 September 2003). "Interpol revela que King fue condenado en su adolescencia por dos intentos de violación" [Interpol reveals that King was convicted as an adolescent of two rape attempts]. El País (in Spanish). Madrid, Spain. Retrieved 20 September 2017.
- ^ "El asesino de Sonia y Rocío estranguló a cinco mujeres en Reino Unido" [The murderer of Sonia and Rocío strangled five women in the United Kingdom]. El Mundo (in Spanish). Madrid, Spain. 23 September 2003. Retrieved 21 September 2017.
- ^ Clennell, Andrew (27 September 2003). "'Costa Killer' linked to Millie Dowler case". Independent. London, UK. Archived from the original on 18 June 2022. Retrieved 20 September 2017.
- ^ "Murder in an expat paradise".
- ^ "Reward raised to find au pair's killer".
- ^ "La navaja que mató a Rocío Wanninkhof coincide con la que describió Tony King" [The razor that killed Rocío Wanninkhof is coincident with the one described by Tony King]. El Día (in Spanish). Málaga, Spain. 30 November 2006. Retrieved 14 October 2017.
- Radiotelevisión Española(in Spanish). Retrieved 27 March 2018.
- ^ "Murder by the coast: The shocking story behind Netflix's true-crime documentary". Independent. 23 June 2021. Archived from the original on 18 June 2022. Retrieved 27 June 2021.
- ^ "HBO Max Commissions Wanninkhof Case Docu-Series with Unicorn Content". Variety. 1 July 2021. Retrieved 23 November 2021.
External links
- El Mundo, 18 septiembre 2003 Trial postponed due to discovery of new evidence
- 20 Minutos, 2 feb 2005 Dolores Vázquez cleared of all charges (Spanish)
- La Rioja, 21 dic 2006 Tony King found guilty (Spanish)