Daniel Sancho and Edwin Arrieta: Where the two met up in the last six months | International

Talk shows in Spain broadcast a clip of Daniel Sancho breaking away from his police escort for a second — a digression in the reconstruction of the crime — and wetting his feet on the shore of the Thai island of Ko Pha-ngan, staring blankly into the horizon. “What’s he thinking?” the presenters wonders. The same question was being asked by an audience comprising half of Spain and part of Colombia, which has spent the past week gripped by the news of the murder and dismemberment of the Colombian surgeon Edwin Arrieta, 44, at the hands of the Spanish chef Daniel Sancho, 29.

In the media, here is plenty of speculation regarding the motives of the confessed murderer. Sancho’s version of what happened and the Thai police investigation coincide on the…