Pascuale Ferrato, an Italian kitchen cabinet installer, took his own life after killing his 45-year-old Belgian-born wife

49-year-old man died Friday after apparently throwing himself off the second-storey balcony of his apartment in Los Olivos de Adeje in Tenerife where police later discovered the blood-soaked bodies of his wife and two children, authorities said at the weekend.Investigators suspect that Pascuale Ferrato, an Italian kitchen cabinet installer, took his own life after killing his 45-year-old Belgian-born wife, his seven-year-old son and his four-year-old daughter. All three were found stabbed to death in the apartment.

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Roman Stanislaw Szalachowski, a 40-year-old Polish man, to six years in prison for killing one of his five housemates

On Tuesday, a judge in Alcalá de Henares, northeast of Madrid, sentenced Roman Stanislaw Szalachowski, a 40-year-old Polish man, to six years in prison for killing one of his five housemates, the Ukranian Mykola Stelmakh, on April 10, 2004, and hiding the body for almost two weeks before disposing of it.
An argument about who was going to do the household chores ended in murder and the subsequent quartering of a housemate's body for convenient disposal.
According to testimony during the trial, an argument broke out because Stelmakh "did not cooperate in the household chores."Then Szalachowski, who was drunk, "began to punch and kick the victim in the face, head and abdomen."Next he took him to the yard behind the house, where he went on beating him, and tied a cord around his neck, attaching one end of it to an iron set in the wall.
"Szalachowski raised his head from the ground and held it in the air," killing his housemate, in the words of the sentence released on Tuesday. Szalachowski's rage did not end there. The convicted man "moved the body to a tool shed and left it there, covering it with a board." There it remained until 19 April, more than a week after the murder.Then Szalachowski hacked the body into pieces to dispose of it. He separated the head from the trunk, cutting off the arms and the lower part of the legs. During the night of 20 April, Szalachowski "put the trunk in a sports bag, and dumped it in a garbage bin near the house." The next day, at six in the morning, he disposed of the rest, dropping it in another garbage bin about 200 metres away from the house.Six hours later, about noon, two women found the remains in the bin, when they lifted the lid and saw a man's head inside. Shocked, they ran to a nearby cafeteria and called the police.Two days later the police arrested the five housemates of the victim, including Szalachowski, who turned out to be the killer.
During the trial, the man confessed his crime.
The judge gave him a six-year prison sentence after ruling that his intoxicated state was an extenuating circumstance."His intellectual and volitional faculties were seriously impaired due to the previous consumption of alcoholic beverages," was the judge's reasoning.

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Demolition orders are being served on unwitting home-owners across the region.

Antonio Banderas actor and his wife Melanie Griffith have had a demolition order served on their luxurious Marbella beach house.
But it is only one wing of their home La Gaviota, in Los Monteros, that is in for the chop.Their appeal against an original 2003 ruling to demolish the newer wing, which impinges on public beach land, has been rejected.Now their neighbours are insisting that the sentence of the High Court be carried out. The celebrity pair were accused of encroaching on public land despite having received planning permission for the extension in 1995 from Marbella town hall. At the same time more than 300 residents of Mijas have joined together to fight demolition orders on their homes.The group, who number a few expatriates, has been threatened with fines of up to 180,000 euros.In total some 3000 fines have been issued by Mijas town hall.Some of those affected are old and unaware of the latest demands of urban planning laws in the area. Many have also failed to get their projects signed off by either the Junta or water board.A number, such as one man in the Macorra area, built a small home despite being refused permission by the town hall many times.Juan Antonio Ruiz applied to build a tool shed next to the house his father owned in 1996.But, like many homes, built with this type of licence, it turned into a fully-fledged home.
In 2000, he received the first of three official complaint against the home and he has finally been ordered to knock it down, at a cost of 12,000 euros.He is also awaiting confirmation of the fine he will have to pay, but it is likely to be around 65,000 euros.At the same time a large group of illegal houses is to be demolished in the village of La Chorrosquina, near Algeciras.The 30 houses have been built without proper paperwork on the outskirts of the town.The moves have come after new rules were agreed at a high level Junta meeting in November.
The regional authority is now even beginning to carry out the forced demolition of homes built with permissions from local town halls, which have later been found to be illegally built on protected land. Hundreds of miles of illegally built houses face demolition in Spain with many of them belonging to British owners. The illegally built developments are on 480 miles of Mediterranean coast from Barcelona in the north to Marbella in the south, including the Balearic and Canary islands.
It is anticipated that over one million Britons live in Spain for part of or all of the year, having purchased tens of thousands of holiday homes along the shoreline.
Spanish law says beaches are public property and construction is banned within 100 metres of the coastline, however, this has clearly been ignored by builders and local authorities. Government officials are to negotiate with home owners and regional authorities over the sale of illegal properties rather than expropriate them.
There is uncertainty over whether homes are safe as the government has refused to give details. One government official said mass demolition will not take place, it will be done on a case-by-case basis.
Officials still need permission of Spain’s powerful regional governments and town halls, however, there are concerns that the plans will hurt British investment in the area.

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Club Class Holidays offering cheap luxury breaks which buyers claim fail to materialise.

Club Class Holidays, based in Fuengirola, is reported to be taking between 3,000 and 30,000 euros to join holiday clubs offering cheap luxury breaks which buyers claim fail to materialise.The company, which has links to former timeshare salesman Costa Killer Tony King, uses a training manual that teaches staff how to crudely fool customers.In a sales manual for staff, trainees are told to treat customers “as if they have the intelligence of 10-year-olds” and to use “bribery, intimidation and lies” to get customers to the presentations in the first place.Middle-aged and elderly couples are the main targets of the holiday-club sharks, who promise a lifetime of five-star hotels anywhere in the world at knockdown prices.But instead of a dream holiday in the Caribbean, they are being offered low-grade hotels and apartments on the Costa del Sol that can be bought just as cheaply at any travel agent.Other buyers find they cannot choose holiday dates and are committed to annual subscriptions even if they do not go away.
In a ruse identical to the timeshare salesmen, many victims are approached while on holiday by sales reps who give them scratchcards saying they have won a bottle of champagne or a free holiday.To collect the “prize” they must attend a presentation, which turns into a high-pressure sales pitch lasting five or six hours.
Consumer watchdogs are so concerned about the hard-sell tactics used by some club reps that they are leafleting UK and foreign airports warning holidaymakers about the one-billion-euro-a-year business.David and Lesley Sylvester, both 60, from Derbyshire, in the UK, agreed to go on a cut-price £99, one-week holiday to Tenerife.As part of the deal, they had to attend a five-hour sales presentation by agents representing a company called Club Class Concierge - and ended up handing over thousands of pounds.“The next morning we recognised its implausibility and asked for our money back,” said David.But unlike timeshare sales, where clients can cancel within 14 days, the Sylvesters say there was no cooling-off period, and they could not cancel.The couple paid £10,050 to join a holiday scheme called Estrella Dorada Mediterrenees.When they tried a “castle holiday” in Austria, they were taken to a rundown students’ hostel in Vienna.They have now successfully taken the company to court in Barcelona, where a judge ruled the couple should get a refund.New EU laws recently announced by the European Commission will bring holiday clubs into line with rules that now protect timeshare buyers – but these will not come into force until 2010.Steve Wright, 48, signed a £5,000 deal with a company called Designer Way Vacation Club, after attending a sales presentation in Huddersfield.
He said: “I was fortunate because I found out in time and I wrote off the £950 deposit.”British members of the Designer Way Vacation Club, operating in the Canary Islands, were charged between £8,000 and £12,000 for a website “key” giving them access to “huge” discounts.Instead, they mostly got normal online travel agencies whose offers they could have found themselves on the internet.The UK’s Office of Fair Trading reckons 400,000 Britons get sucked into holiday-club scams every year.
Sandy Grey, of the Timeshare Consumers’ Association, said: “I would urge people not to go anywhere near these scams.”No one was available to comment at the Spanish HQ of Designer Way Vacation Club.Both Club Class and Designer Way have close links to timeshare millionaire Garry Leigh, who is the brother in law and former employer of Costa Killer Tony King.
Leigh, who has been operating on the Costa del Sol for over a decade, has a shady past.His companies are well-known to the Office of Fair Trading.
Leigh started making his fortune in the 1990s, when he and his father, Tom, ran a Yorkshire-based pyramid-selling scheme called the FPW Club.
They advertised with the slogan ‘Turn £140 into £600 as many times as you like! It’s as simple as that! No catch, no limits.’
Garry and his father reportedly tricked 8,500 investors out of more than £8 million before the Department of Trade & Industry won a court order to stop them.
One of his companies, Matchoption Ltd, went bust owing £300,000. His “silent backers” are said to include notorious Costa gangsters Dennis New and Mohammed Derbah, who helped him get his early Spanish scams off the ground.
It is a dirty business that saw Leigh’s Málaga offices teargassed in 2002 and Leigh seriously injured by knife-wielding thugs.His Incentive Leisure office in Fuengirola in southern Spain is a large impressive building.Leigh and co-director Kim Bambroffe turn up in luxury Bentley cars.
In a recent investigation, the Sunday Mirror claims workers were told to treat customers as practically subhuman.
The bible of shame instructs staff to “sell the sizzle not the sausage” and refers to customers as “UPs” - industry slang for gullible punters.

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Court investigation into the false Bills which were issued during the GIL administration in Marbella

Ángeles Muñoz, the Partido Popular Mayor of Marbella, presented a document at a press conference on Tuesday, which comes from the Tribunal de Cuentas, the National Court of Auditors, and is their report on Town Hall accounts between 1991 and 2006. It covers the time when the town was run by first the GIL Party, and then by the tripartite government led by Marisol Yagüe, with the Partido Andalucista, and former members of GIL and PSOE.The court notes hundreds of millions transferred to municipal companies without any type of controlEFE notes that the report highlights payments made for building work which had either already been previously completeor had not been carried out, and also noted prices paid well above the market price. Property expropriations were also well below market price. The court said 653 million € was transferred to municipal companies during that time ‘without any type of control,’ and conclude that those years of government saw ‘the structuring of an administrative organisation which allowed funds to be misappropriated from Marbella Town Hall,’ with the governing team at the Town Hall abusing their majority position on municipal bodies to do so.Other irregularities noted in this damning document include contracting of personnel and staffing levels, the lack of any specific budgets, and negotiating planning agreements with property which no longer belonged to the Town Hall.There was news earlier this month of a new court investigation into the false Bills which were issued during the GIL administration in Marbella, where three ghost companies invoiced the Town Hall for work which was never carried out. The investigating judge has already charged ten people for misuse of public funds and forgery.

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House Jacking in Ciudad Quesada

A gang of robbers broke into the home of 80 year-old promoter Justo Quesada in Ciudad Quesada, while he and his wife were in the house. The gang of at least 3 men threatened a guard on duty at the house with a pistol, which allowed them to gain entry and once inside they stole 30,000€ in cash plus other valuables. Fortunately nobody was injured at the hands of the gang, which is believed to be the same band of foreigners which have struck recently at San Miguel and Almoradí. on 15th January an armed gang of 8 entered a house in San Miguel and threatened the occupants and their children in order to steal jewellery and cash. The same bunch are thought to have been responsible for a robbery in Almoradí on 1st February, when a woman, alone in her house with her children, was injured after resisting the robbers, who stole jewellery and other items of value

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‘El Ardilla’ (The Squirrel). Major Drugs Gang Arrested In Torrellano

National Police raided a house in Torrellano used by an organised gang which distributed drugs throughout the province of Alicante and the surrounding regions. The same house was attacked 2 years ago, almost to the day, by another gang from France, which resulted in the death of one of the attackers.The police raid resulted in the detention of 9 gang members, including it’s leader Enrique C, known as ‘El Ardilla’ (The Squirrel). A search of the premises revealed a cache of firearms of various descriptions, 1.6 kilos of cocaine, a kilo of hashish and other drug related paraphernalia, plus 26,000€ in cash. Two jackets bearing the crest of the Guardia Civil were also found, which may have been used by the gang in attacks on their rivals. A stranger item found was a coffin – in a raid on the same premises some years ago, a live deer was found inside! All the drugs were hidden underneath the house and were located by a police drugs dog.The police had been tracking the gang for some time and built up a picture of it’s structure, which was well organised in pyramid form, with precise orders relating to it’s operations passing from it’s leader down through the various branches which dealt respectively with the transport, distribution, sales and packaging of drugs. Security measures it used made it the police operation very difficult but they gradually built their case before striking.
The house is one of two on a finca in Torrellano, where accommodation was provided for gang members by El Ardilla and his family. The nine people arrested are aged between 27 and 44, three of whom come from Alicante and 2 from Elche. After appearing before a court, El Ardilla and his son were remanded in custody while the other 7 were given bail.

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60 suspects have so far been called in for the final round of declarations in Marbella

Marisol Yagüe,ex Mayor of Marbella was the first suspect to appear before the Malaya judge, Óscar Pérez, on Monday, in his final round of court declarations before the corruption case is handed over to the provincial court in Málaga for trial. As with all the suspects who will appear before the judge, Yagüe was formally notified of the charges against her, but, in her case, refused to answer any questions.Also before the judge on Monday was the former Deputy Mayor, Isabel García Marcos, who told journalists as she left that she has nothing to hide, and said her former colleagues who appeared were optimistic and unworried, because ‘they can at last express themselves and because what they say is noted down, not what is invented.’ She spoke of the judge as a ‘professional with manners,’ which she referred to as an ‘important difference.’ The EFE news agency interpreted that as a comparison with his predecessor at the head of the Malaya case, Judge Miguel Ángel Torres.Four former Marbella councillors were also in court on Monday, and another six come before Óscar Pérez on Tuesday. It is the first time that defence lawyers have the chance to ask questions or to request new evidence.It’s understood that around 60 suspects have so far been called in for the final round of declarations.

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1.5 million € Armed Robbery in Puerto Banus

Three armed men waved pistols as they attacked a Jewelery Store 'Boutique Tourbillón'in upmarket Puerto Banus close to Marbella. the home of the superrich. The armed robbers overpowered the security gaurd in a well planned Hiest.They stripped the fitting of jewellery and watches.1.5 million € worth of top name watches have been stolen from a jewellers in Puerto Banús, Marbella, according to police sources. Three or four people, thought to be from Eastern Europe, took part in the attack after smashing the windows of the establishment with large hammers. The National Police in Marbella are now investigating the robbery and are waiting to see the recordings from security cameras in operation in the area.It happened around noon yesterday and the thieves were armed with pistols which may have been fake. They wore hats and large sunglasses and managed to overpower the security guard at the Boutique Tourbillon in Muelle Ribera before he could react. He was unhurt in the attack.
It all took a few minutes and the men escaped in a large car on the A7 motorway direction Málaga.

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Spanish society’s sick and tired of crime and corruption

In Spain, the crime rate is obviously on the rise under the Zapatero Administration. While the ones in charge mess around with conveniently fabricated numbers and statistics, one thing has become increasingly clear. In recent years, Spaniards have started to feel more and more insecure, not only out in the streets, but within their own homes. Facing the passivity of this Administration, Spaniards see a sort of quiet terror settling in which will most likely escalate.
For one thing, the downtown areas of the big cities are breaking down at a remarkable rate. In the name of multiculturalism and coexistence, entire neighborhoods are becoming black holes of crime, prostitution, drug trafficking, and consumption, as well as mafia-style contracts. It is no longer about petty theft or misdemeanors; we speak about real crime in the middle of the streets, wild assaults to jewelers, gang raids. The law of the jungle reigns; police stations are jammed with complaints pressing charges; officers cannot cope with the load. In addition to the lack of human resources and equipment, there is legal apathy; never before had it been so clear the feeling of a legal revolving door.

On the other hand, crime has gone out of control in qualitative and quantitative fashion outside downtown areas. It is characterized by violence with no limits; it is no longer about sneaking into houses, and running away with the booty, but instead entering forcibly to torture and murder in order to reap maximum benefits. Some housing developments in Madrid’s surrounding areas already live in fear, and rightly so; the citizens know intuitively that, when facing paramilitary assaults, they lack access to adequate security measures.
The Guardia Civil (Civil Guard) cannot keep up with the task of patrolling extensive rural areas. Given the circumstances, this body’s performance has been better than expected; gangs take advantage of the scarce human resources and equipment available, they rely on preparation, money and lack of scruples. Without the necessary means, the security forces always come out on the losing end. Facing the passivity of this Administration during all the legislative term, there are more crimes every day, and each time they become more violent. The autonomous communities try to lessen with great difficulty this untenable situation. Thus, the government winning in March will undoubtedly have to undertake the necessary reforms.
The next administration must equip the National Police and Guardia Civil with the necessary means and human resources to fight this type of crime. They should spare no effort. In addition, it is urgent to reform the law in order to adapt it to this new reality. We must speed up judicial proceedings, take a tougher stance on the matter of sentencing till the bitter end, or proceed to deport all foreign criminals with expediency; these are necessary measures. Between Alonso and Rubalcaba we have lost four years. Regardless of what new policy is put in place, it will have arrived late. However, if the next Administration puts its nose to the grindstone and makes a real effort, it will not be too late to reverse the situation.

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