Spanish police fear missing Welsh couple were murdered
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Your support makes all the difference.Spanish police fear that a Welsh couple who went missing three months ago while house hunting on the Costa del Sol, may have been kidnapped and murdered for their money.
Linda O'Malley, 55, and her husband Anthony, 42, from Llangollen, north Wales, were last seen in Benidorm on 13 September, when they asked their daughter to meet them off a charter plane at Manchester airport.
That day Mr O'Malley withdrew nearly £21,000 in cash from a bank account they held in Benidorm for a deposit on a property. Police think an informant at the bank may have tipped off the kidnappers – suspected of being from Eastern Europe – who then killed the couple.
A source close to the investigation said: "Maybe someone heard them talking in a bar about looking for a dream home, got chatting to them and offered to show them some property. They could even have put them up which explains why we have been unable to trace where they stayed."
The police theory will come as a further blow to the families of the couple after the recent death of Mr O'Malley's mother, Josephine, 75, from heart problems.
Mr O'Malley's brother Bernard told this week's Costa Blanca News: "This terrible business deeply affected my mother's health. She feared the worst for Anthony and Linda and was grief-stricken. We still have no idea of the circumstances of their disappearance."
Officially, police say they have no idea what happened to the couple, who told family and friends they wanted to buy a home in Spain. "The investigation continues, but we have nothing more to go on than we had when the case started in September," said a spokesman.
Police are investigating the possibility that a kidnap gang might have used the couple's credit card to withdraw large amounts from cash machines until the card was blocked by a bank in Wales.
It is thought the couple's hire car, a blue Fiat Stylo which is also missing, might have been passed on to one of the many gangs in the area that specialise in stealing and rebuilding cars to be smuggled to the Balkans.
"Police admit they have no firm evidence. What they need is a break, such as a tip-off from an underworld informant, or the arrest of someone in connection with another crime, or the discovery of a body," the source said.
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