Supreme Court turns down appeal by two Britons convicted of Costa Blanca murder

It means the two men will each spend 16 years behind bars for the 2006 murder of Colin NobesThe Supreme Court - EFE


Two British men found guilty of murdering Colin Nobes, a convicted crook who escaped from the UK’s Winchester Prison in 1996 and fled to Spain, have had their appeals against their sentence turned down by the Supreme Court.

The court has confirmed, in a decision made public this Wednesday, an earlier ruling by the Alicante provincial court which sentenced both Lindsay George Frampton-Slade and Adrian Marshall to 16 years in prison. It has also confirmed compensation of 60,000 € to the victim’s family.

Adrian Marshall’s wife, Bridget Stokes, who was found guilty as an accomplice, has also had her sentence of 1 year and 9 months ratified by Spain’s highest court.

Colin Nobes was killed in June 2006 and it was not until the following month that his badly decomposed body was found beneath a motorway bridge in Ondara.

The provincial court said in its original ruling that the two men hit the victim with such force that his skull was fractured into 19 pieces. Thinking he was dead, they put his body into the boot of their car, and then took him out again to finish him off when they heard his cries from inside the vehicle.