DOLORES VASQUEZ, who was wrongly imprisoned for 17 months in the much-publicised ‘Wanninkhof’ case

DOLORES VASQUEZ, who was wrongly imprisoned for 17 months in the much-publicised ‘Wanninkhof’ case for the murder of her lesbian lover’s daughter, Rocio, has finally managed to clear her criminal record, although she is yet to receive any compensation.Now that her name has been deleted from police records, her lawyers are demanding the sum of four million euros in compensation for false imprisonment and emotional damage although, so far, the government has only agreed to 120,000 euros .On October 9, 1999 the 19-year-old daughter of Alicia Hornos, Rocio Wanninkhof, left her home to visit her boyfriend in Mijas. At about 9:30pm, she left his house to go home and get ready to meet him later at the Fuengirola fair. She was never seen alive again.When she failed to return home, Alicia asked her other daughter, Rosa, to contact Rocio’s boyfriend, Antonio, to find out where she was. He said he had not made it to the fair but that Rocio had been seen there by other friends, so she had probably spent the night at one of their houses.The restless mother went for a walk and found Rocio’s blood-stained clothes. Rocio’s badly-burnt body was found three weeks later, on November 2, at La Cala de Mijas, although forensic evidence indicated that this was not where she had been murdered. An autopsy revealed that she had been stabbed once in the chest and eight times in the back, although, on account of the poor condition of the corpse, it could not be determined if she had been sexually assaulted.Police initially suspected Antonio of involvement but, after he was cleared, their attention switched to Alicia’s former lover, Dolores Vasquez. The media frenzy that followed the brutal murder secured a guilty verdict against Dolores, who has always maintained her innocence.In August 2003, whilst Dolores was waiting for an appeal hearing date, 17-year-old Sonia Carabantes from Coin disappeared and was found murdered in very similar circumstances, five days later, in Monda. Forensic specialists found human flesh under Sonia’s finger-nails from which they were able to recover DNA that matched DNA recovered from a cigarette butt found at the scene of the Wanninkhof murder. Celia Pantoja, the ex-wife of English expatriate, 41-year-old Tony Alexander King, told police she thought her ex-husband may have been the culprit in the Carabantes murder after he returned home on the morning of Carabantes’ disappearance with blood on his clothes and scratch marks on his face. Londoner, King, was arrested in Alhaurin el Grande in September 2003 and convicted of the Carabantes murder in October 2006, when he was sentenced to 36 years in prison.

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