Spanish investigators believe a German man suspected of killing his female ex-partner and eldest son in a Tenerife cave had planned the crime well.
The suspect, named Thomas H, 43, has been taken by police to a magistrate’s hearing in Arona, police told the BBC.
The remote cave lies between ravines outside Adeje, a small resort. The man’s youngest son, aged five, told locals he had fled from the cave.
“Everything indicates that this [crime] was planned,” Adeje’s mayor said.
In a statement carried on the Guardia Civil (police) Facebook site, Mayor José Miguel Rodríguez Fraga said (in Spanish) “the indications are that he had prepared it very well and that, had it not been for the little boy, we wouldn’t have found out about it, or found out God knows when”.
The boy’s description of what happened led police and volunteers to the cave, after a lengthy search. There they found the two bodies with severe injuries consistent with an assault.
Locals had found the boy on Tuesday evening, wandering distressed in the mountains.
A Dutch woman called Annelies translated for the boy and quoted him as saying his father had hired a van and taken the family off for what he called a picnic excursion.
Annelies has been looking after the boy at her home, the Spanish daily El País reports. He does not yet know that his mother and brother are dead.
Police traced the Volkswagen Caddy van, seized it, and arrested the suspect at his apartment in Adeje.
