On January 24, 2009, 17-year-old Marta del Castillo Casanueva (born July 19, 1991), a Spanish high school student went missing after leaving her home in Seville, Andalusia. Her disappearance led to an extensive search and garnered national publicity surrounding her case. The prime suspect, Del Castillo's ex-boyfriend Miguel Carcaño Delgado, has made different statements over the years about his involvement in her murder and the location of her body. Despite numerous searches, Del Castillo's remains were never found. Five people were arrested in connection with the disappearance, but only two were convicted. In 2011, Carcaño was convicted for the murder of Del Castillo and sentenced to 21 years in prison.
Disappearance On January 24, 2009, Marta del Castillo was engaged in an online chat with a friend, Silvia Fernández, through Microsoft Messenger. Del Castillo 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 left her home on Argantonio Street in Seville. When Del Castillo failed to return home, her family called her cellphone, but she didn't respond. They then contacted her friends, including eventual suspects in her disappearance, including Carcaño and Samuel Benítez. Carcaño admitted that he had seen Del Castillo 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 had happened to her daughter. Carcaño attracted further suspicions from the family when he suddenly moved to nearby Camas instead of joining the search effort. There he resided with a new girlfriend, 14-year-old Rocío P. G., and her family. Del Castillo's friends subsequently searched the Seville apartment Carcaño had previously occupied with his older half-brother, Francisco Javier Delgado Moreno, where they noticed a strong smell of bleach and ammonia.
Investigation The case was investigated by the Underage People Task Force (Grupo de Menores) of the Spanish National Police (CNP). After Carcaño's confession, it was joined by the Homicide Task Force (Grupo de Homicidios). Carcaño initially denied any role in Del Castillo's disappearance under repeated interrogations. However, P. G. claimed to have seen blood on Carcaño's pants, and blood found in the lining of Carcaño's jacket was matched to Del Castillo. A luminol test at Carcaño's former apartment also revealed a large bloodstain on the bedroom floor.
Carcaño's first version of the murder Upon hearing of his P. G.'s testimony and of the existence of forensic evidence, Carcaño collapsed and confessed to the murder on February 14. According to this first testimony, Carcaño murdered Del Castillo during an argument on the night of January 24 over his relationship with P. G. The murder weapon was a heavy ashtray which was never found, but which Carcaño claimed to have used to hit Del Castillo on the left side of the parietal bone, killing her. He also claimed to have called a friend, Samuel Benítez Pérez, from a payphone outside his apartment, requesting his help moving the body to Camas. Once there, Carcaño and Benítez threw the body in the Guadalquivir River near a point called Charco de la Pava. Despite this admission, 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.
Arrests On February 16, Spanish 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 Delgado and a 15-year old friend of Carcaño and Benítez, later identified as Francisco Javier García Marín.
Guadalquivir River search
Specialist Groups, and the Military Emergencies Unit, searched the Guadalquivir between Camas and the estuary at Sanlúcar de Barrameda, using twenty-two vessels, three jet skis, two helicopters, thirteen scent hounds, 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 fifty 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 twenty 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. A "bloodstained cloth" found in an irrigation canal near Camas was revealed to be just painted red after testing.
"El Cuco"'s version In his own testimony, which he later recanted, García stated that he arrived in Carcaño's apartment with Benítez, where they found Carcaño wrapping Del Castillo's body in a blanket under the supervision of Delgado. Delgado then threatened García into silence and stayed at the apartment to clean the evidence while the other three disposed of the body. Police believed Delgado planned the strategy to follow after the murder, based on this testimony and phone conversations between Carcaño and Delgado while both were in remand. In one conversation, Delgado told Carcaño to "say nothing, because the police has nothing."
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