NIGHTMARE IN THE SUN Their Dream of Buying a Home in Spain Ended in Their Brutal Murder

Hardback. In September 2002, house hunters Anthony and Linda O'Malley from Llangollen, North Wales, arrived in Benidorm on Spain's Costa Blanca to bid for a house at auction that they'd earmarked for their retirement. Within a week of their arrival, the couple vanished. Welsh detectives, alerted by large sums of cash withdrawn from the couple's UK bank accounts, launched their own missing persons inquiry. Daughter Nicola Welch, frantic with worry but with no idea of what really happened, made an appeal on 'Crimewatch' for her parents to get in touch. Six months after the disappearance, following emailed ransom demands from a mysterious figure codenamed Phoeni, Spanish police recovered the bodies of the couple from under the cellar floor of a villa in Alcoy. 40km inland. The full horrifying story was pieced together in a painstaking investigation. The O'Malleys had been tricked into viewing the property, held captive for 5 days and forced to hand over the money they'd saved for their deposit. When they were no longer of use, they were callously disposed of in the cellar of the very house they'd hoped would be their dream home. In April 2006, two men from Venezuela were found guilty by a Spanish court of kidnap, robbery, torture and murder. Jorge Real Sierra was jailed for 62yrs and Jose Antonio Velazquez Gonzales for 54yrs. The author, an investigative reporter, helped North Wales officers track down the killers in a tense search that saw his life threatened and took him into the rough and tumble of a Benidorm underworld never seen by tourists. Illus. in colour. With Afterword and Appendices. 286pp. 8vo. h/back. From the library of true crime writer, Wilfred Gregg, with his personal b/plate. Review copy with loosely inserted slip. F. in f. dw.