Parents of Marta del Castillo, the 17 year old who disappeared in Seville this January, were greeted with applause by the crowd waiting outside Instruction Court No. 4 in the city this Wednesday morning, as they arrived to hear the four accused in their daughter’s death formally informed of the charges against them.Inside the court, the private accusation brought by Marta’s parents added an additional charge against the four adult suspects in the case: desecration of the teenager’s body, which an intensive search has been unable to locate. Her self-confessed murderer, Miguel Carcaño, first claimed her threw the body in the Guadalquivir River, then changed his story to dumping it in a rubbish bin near the flat on Calle León XIII where Marta died.The family’s lawyer charges Carcaño with murder and rape, with a maximum prison sentence of 25 years. The other three suspects –his friend, Samuel Benítez, and his elder brother, Francisco Javier Delgado, and María García, Delgado’s girlfriend – are charged by the family with covering up the crimes.The fifth suspect, a youngster known as ‘El Cuco’, is to be tried by a juvenile court.
Security was tight as the four suspects arrived at court on Wednesday, and it’s understood that police had to intervene to protect Delgado and his girlfriend as they left the court to stop them being assaulted by the crowd.Miguel Carcaño remained inside after the other suspects left the building, making a statement to the judge at his own request.El Mundo reports that Carcaño told the judge that he did not rape Marta, but that he did kill her with an ashtray, thus returning to his first version of his confession.