I was aware of three youths being detained by the Police in Torremolinos the day after the murder, but that the person they wanted for the murder was in hiding. I was actually told by the Police in Torremolinos that they were happy to wait for him to make a mistake and they would then arrest him. A police Inspector even said to me that the murder was “a sort of social thing that happens and Spanish boys are racist towards white English boys”. I found this an incredible statement coming from a Police Inspector; he was so unconcerned that it gave me great misgivings as to whether they would catch the murderer.
On July 28th 2006 I got a phone call from a friend in Spain asking us if we were happy that the person who murdered Gary had been caught! We knew nothing about this and were completely amazed that we had not been informed by the Spanish Police or the British consulate. We made a few calls and soon found out that a Spanish male aged 22 years had been arrested at Schipol airport in Amsterdam whilst trying to board a flight to South America on a false passport. We have since been told it was actually Interpol who had been tracking him. This was great news to my family ironically it was Ashley’s birthday and she said it was the best birthday present she could have had. The Spaniard was extradited back to Spain where he is being detained in prison awaiting trial.
In November 2006 I got a phone call from the British Consulate in London asking me and my wife to go to court in Torremolinos the next day, they did not have a reason as to why it was so sudden or what it was for. My wife and I got a flight the next day (Tuesday the 14th), and went into the court at 10.30am. After waiting for a legal translator to arrive we were amazed to find out it was only to ask us if we did want to issue proceedings against the defendant and to sign the relevant forms.
We then spoke to a person in the office of court Number 5 only to find out that he was in fact the judge who would be residing over the case. He shook my hand kissed my wife on the cheek and told us we could contact the funeral company in Benalmadena to tell them that he was releasing Gary’s body immediately and to make whatever arrangements we wanted. We met up with the Spanish funeral company and they said they were very happy for us and they would call us in a couple of days. We made several phone calls to family and friends in Spain and in the U.K everyone was delighted that we were soon to have Gary home for a proper funeral but this was not to be.
A couple of days later the funeral company contacted my wife and I to say that the judge had changed his mind and that Gary’s body was not going to be released for sometime. We were totally distraught and very angry; we booked a flight and returned to the U.K. Whilst we had been speaking to the translator I told him that the need for us to travel to Spain to sign court documents to confirm that we wanted to issue proceedings simply would not happen in the U.K, as it’s the purpose of the Crown Prosecution Service. My wife and I were amazed to hear him tell us not to trust the Spanish public prosecution system courts as money talks and it’s quite common for a defendant to pay off a prosecutor or for the Spanish courts to drop a case to save prosecution costs! This has been confirmed to us by a journalist named Wensley Clarkson, who has a vast knowledge of the Spanish legal system having done many television programmes and written several books on the subject. The translator advised us to instruct a private Spanish solicitor to make sure the prosecution lawyers carry out the prosecution in the correct manner.
We have employed a Spanish lawyer to help in the prosecution against the thug who murdered our son. We want a life sentence but we have been told by our lawyers that the maximum the murderer will get is 14 years. This is not a life sentence!! The defence lawyer has already contacted our Spanish lawyer to ask us if we would agree to a six year sentence this is an unbelievable situation.
The thug who murdered Gary did so with a machete, a huge evil weapon it was his intention to seriously harm an innocent victim that night and the fact that Gary was a white British male was even better for him from a racial point of view. He has also told the courts in his defence that he did not know Gary therefore the offence was not premeditated so would carry a lesser sentence. I find this to be totally wrong, the fact that he did not know Gary means that the general public were all at risk as he just wanted to commit a horrific crime and therefore an even longer sentence should be imposed. Surely the premeditation is for the act as he wilfully set out to harm an individual regardless of his/her identityIt is a crazy situation that a case can take up to four years to get to court and the defendant can then be released just to save prosecution costs, this just would not happen in the U.K, and it should no longer be allowed to happen anywhere.
It is obviously clear that the Spanish laws regarding violent offences are not strong enough and that all offenders should face much tougher penalties. The present situation does not deter youngsters from getting into trouble, approximately one in eight tourists are attacked or robbed at knife point in Spain every day, do the Spanish authorities not realise that sooner or later this will have serious consequences with tourism?
The whole of 2007 was spent trying to get Gary’s body home with numerous phone calls, e-mails, letters and meetings with our local solicitors (Rex Makin of Liverpool), Arlene McCarthy MEP for the North West and our Spanish solicitors. We were originally told that the Spanish authorities would only release Gary when the murderer was caught; I thought this was nonsense and so it proved because when the murderer was caught the next excuse was in case they needed Gary’s body for any DNA or forensic evidence. This proved to be more rubbish as the hospital had all the medical and DNA reports that would be of any use to the courts if required. The next excuse was actually given not to me but to a reporter for the Liverpool Echo a guy named Greg O’Keefe. Greg has covered the story of this case from the beginning and took it upon himself to make enquiries regarding the release of Gary’s body. During a phone call to the funeral company in Spain he was told by them that Gary’s body was in fact being kept in the niche for a period of five years, this apparently is an ancient Spanish health and hygiene law and the purpose is for full decomposition to take place before the coffin can be reopened for expatriation.
None of this had ever been explained to me or my wife by the funeral company, the Spanish solicitors, the Spanish courts, the British or Spanish consulates. Had we known about it then we would have never ever have allowed Gary to be buried in the niche we would have kept him in the mortuary this way decomposition would not have set in and we could have had Gary’s body returned to the U.K when the judge gave permission to do so.
We have asked Arlene McCarthy MEP to take this case to the European Courts as the Spanish authorities have breached our Human Rights in denying us our son’s body. To this day we have never had a single phone call from the Spanish police, the courts or the British consulate in Spain and we are still waiting for our son’s body to be released by the Spanish courts. All we want is to have him flown home and to have a proper funeral so all family and friends can say their prayers and goodbyes to Gary.
We have been treated in a shocking way by the Spanish and this is the reason why we are now getting help from the British Government, the case has been widely reported by our local radio stations Radio City, BBC Radio Merseyside, CenturyFM and on television with BBC North West and ITN Granada Reports, our local evening paper the Liverpool Echo and the Daily Post. Radio City have had an appeal to help raise funds that we need and on the morning of the appeal the radio broadcaster Kev Seed and his crew should have called it the Gary Dunne Show they gave it so much air time. You can see messages of support on the Radio City website by clicking the link on the right hand side of our site on by clicking here .
The day after Gary was murdered three youths were arrested and later sentenced to a detention centre in Malaga. The murder trial is due to take place in June 2008 but the way the Spanish are we can only hope that the thug gets a lengthy sentence and we get our sons body back. Then and only then can we try to get some sort of normality back to our lives but it will never ever be the same without Gary. Ashley is doing a tremendous job and being so brave in bringing baby Kieran up on her own and we have him three days a week. Gary has left us a little boy to treasure it’s only a pity he is not here to see his son grow up himself and do all the things I used to do for Gary like taking him to school, play football, going on holidays, starting his working life and going out for a family meal so many things like this. My wife and I are 50 years old and if we live another 20 years then we will have seen Kieran grow into a young man and I know Gary would be so proud.
No parent should ever have to bury their one of their children either through illness or an accident but it does happen, and my heart has always gone out to those parents. When its an avoidable death like murder, you read about it or see it on television and it is something you never think will happen to you, you ask yourself how can a human being just take the life of another for no reason at all and with no conscience or guilt? It is bad enough losing Gary the way we did but having to wait for his body to be returned to the U.K is totally unforgivable. I will never ever forgive the Spanish authorities for the mental torture they are putting me and my family through, we know that a life sentence will not be imposed on the thug when he has done his time he will get out of prison in his early thirties still young enough to have a life in front of him. Gary wont be coming back to us so it is actually us who’s serving a life sentence we will never get over this birthdays, anniversaries and Christmas are times when it’s hardest but it’s always on your mind.
When the court case starts it is going to be so very hard to face the animal who took our sons life, our grandson’s father and Ashley’s husband to be away. I will ask him a question, WHY,WHY,WHY have you wrecked so many lives??
Gary was just walking down the road minding his own business on his way home when he was confronted by a gang of about twelve thugs out with one thing on their mind, violence. They didn’t steal Gary’s money, watch, phone or ring they just ran away having had their fun.
