Torrevieja judge, Juana López Hoyos, has heard that Carl Carr, the Irishman who disappeared last September in the Orihuela Costa and whose body was unearthed last week in Rojales, was beaten to death.
The four people in custody, and charged with his murder and concealment of the body, are two men and two women, understood to be of British, Irish and Spanish Nationality. The Spanish press reports that one of the individuals is being investigated for the murder of Carl Carr while the other three are said to have helped bury the body along the motorway between Benijófar and Algorfa, close to Rojales. All four have been detained in custody following their ‘behind closed doors’ court appearance.
A fifth person, a woman, was arrested, charged with a crime of false testimony, although she was later released.
Formal charges are usually laid just before the start of the trial as those in custody are still under investigation’.
The investigation, which is still being carried out by the Civil Guard, has yet to rule out a settling of accounts for drugs, given the background of the 38-year-old Irishman, who was imprisoned for 8 years in Dublin in 2008 for possession of cocaine and heroin.
However, Carr’s heartbroken mum, in confirming that her son was the man Spanish police had found dead, insisted that his killing had nothing to do with drugs.
She said that his description by the media as a drugs baron was a long way from the truth and that his arrest in 2008 was simply a case of him being in the wrong place at the wrong time. “He was paid to pick a bag up for a colleague and he had no idea that it was full of drugs”. “Indeed the Spanish police have now told me his death has nothing to do with drugs”.
Once he served his sentence Carr moved to the Vega Baja where he hoped to make a fresh start. He was believed to be working in bars and doing odd jobs in order to pay his way.
The dead man was last seen in Cabo Roig in the early hours of September 16,with his British girlfriend Danielle Coupe, who has since appealed on social media for information about his whereabouts. The expat hairdresser confirmed that she was aware that arrests had taken place but added: “I can’t say anything, I’m not allowed.”
A secrecy order preventing officials from making any official comment, and designed to protect the ongoing criminal investigation which is still in its early stages, is understood to have been placed over the case.
Carr’s body was found a short distance from a concrete tomb that was discovered in 2006 in Catral containing the bodies of two Dublin criminals, the leader of the infamous Westies crime gang Shane Coates, and his friend Stephen Sugg.
Carl’s family says that they are in touch with the Irish Embassy in Madrid as they are trying to find out when they can take his body back home.
