Rodolfo Sancho is going to spend three episodes of public television chasing a criminal. RTVE has started shooting Casper, a police thriller about Ángel Suárez Flores, the robber known across Spain as Cásper, with Roberto Álamo in the title role and Sancho as Inspector Pablo Losada, a detective the broadcaster describes as obsessed with bringing him down. For an actor with a long career on Spanish screens, that is routine casting news. It did not arrive as routine news.

¡HOLA! announced the role under a headline about money Sancho refused to send his son Daniel, who is serving a life sentence in Thailand for the murder of the Colombian surgeon Edwin Arrieta. Our argument is simple. The public broadcaster that once kept Sancho’s work off its screens is right to hire him now, and the press that cannot report the casting without the crime is not honouring Edwin Arrieta. It is using him. The real test for Casper is whether anyone reviews it as television.

The question reaches well beyond one actor. It concerns how far a relative’s crime should follow someone into their working life, and what happens to a murder victim when his name becomes the second clause of a showbusiness story. Most readers will never be in Sancho’s position. Most readers do click on those headlines.

What RTVE is actually making with Casper

According to RTVE, Casper is a miniseries of three 70-minute episodes, created and directed by Joaquín Llamas, written by Manuel Ríos, Mónica Martín-Grande and Ángela Armero, and produced by RTVE with Atlantia Media. Adriana Torrebejano plays Inspector Sara Román, Alain Hernández plays Sapo, one of Cásper’s collaborators, and Cristina Alcázar plays Elvira Marcos, head of the police unit. The shoot moves between Madrid, Murcia, Yecla, Cartagena and the Canary Islands, with the look of Spain in the late 1990s and the 2000s. No premiere date has been announced.

The real case gives the writers plenty. FormulaTV recalls that Suárez Flores’s gang broke into the vault of the Banco Popular in Yecla at Christmas 1998, and that in August 2001 it took 19 paintings, including works by Goya and Brueghel, from the Madrid home of the businesswoman Esther Koplowitz, a case in which the FBI ended up assisting Spanish police. RTVE puts the Yecla haul at 18 million euros and calls Cásper the “godfather” of Spain’s underworld. Its synopsis ends with Losada arresting him at home after the gang began stealing drug shipments from other traffickers, 200 kilos in one case, closing a criminal career of 30 years. Que.es reported in 2021 that Suárez Flores, by then sentenced in 2016 to 89 years as the leader of a gang that robbed other traffickers’ cargo, had died of lymphoma in a Madrid hospital.

That is the whole of what is known about the series. Nothing has been shown. Losada is, so far, a character name, a job title and a synopsis line about obsession.

The broadcaster that pulled his film on the day of the sentence

The casting has a history at the same broadcaster. Diez Minutos reported that on 29 August 2024, the day a Thai court sentenced Daniel Sancho, TVE dropped La piel del tambor, the Arturo Pérez-Reverte adaptation in which Rodolfo Sancho appears, from the prime-time slot on La 1 roughly a day before it was due to air, and ran a repeat of Campeones instead. The magazine read the switch as TVE trying to avoid any accusation of opportunism.

On that day, the decision was defensible. A film moved for one night is tact. A career moved off the schedule for good would be something else: a penalty imposed on a man who was never on trial. Two years later the same public broadcaster has given him a lead role, and that reversal is the correct one.

Sancho kept working elsewhere in the meantime. ¡HOLA! lists the second season of Entre tierras and Trazos ocultos, a series with Toni Acosta that Atresmedia presented at the San Sebastián festival. On Antena 3’s Y ahora Sonsoles, he told Sonsoles Ónega that he had been offered work in the year after the arrest, that “it was the moment for something else”, and that he has “a lot of people who love me in my profession”, as FormulaTV quoted him.

How a casting announcement became a story about Daniel Sancho

The legal record runs as follows. Edwin Arrieta was killed on the island of Ko Phangan on 2 August 2023. A Thai court sentenced Daniel Sancho to life in prison in August 2024. On 25 September 2026, as Infobae reported, the Samui Provincial Court read out the appeal ruling that upheld the life sentence, and Ramón Chipirrás, one of his lawyers, told Europa Press that the appeals of both sides had been rejected. EFE reported in early October that the defence has asked Thailand’s Supreme Court to annul that ruling.

Then came the recordings. Infobae describes a call dated 4 October 2025 in which Daniel asks his mother, Silvia Bronchalo, for around 100,000 euros to buy land in Thailand through a person he calls Alice, promising that the deal would get him out on provisional release: “Get me out of here. By 15 November I’m out.” Infobae also notes that the recordings show only his own account and do not prove that anyone could influence a judge. Carmen Balfagón, the family’s spokesperson, said on Telecinco’s Fiesta that Daniel had first put the plan to his father, and that Rodolfo told him no, that “it’s a scam”. She announced legal action over the leak, which she called a “very serious” breach of secrecy, as ¡HOLA! reported.

That is how a casting announcement acquired its frame. ¡HOLA! put the refused money first and the series second. The other hook writes itself: an inspector hunting Spain’s most wanted criminal, played by the father of a convict whose case Spanish television has followed for years. It is exactly the kind of irony that should be resisted, because it is cheap, and someone else paid for it.

The strongest case for reading Casper through the Sancho case

The opposing view deserves its full weight, and its best evidence comes from Sancho himself. In April 2024, hours before the trial opened, HBO Max released the docuseries El caso Sancho with his first interview, in which, as Vozpópuli reported, he said that “there are two victims, one of them has died”. El Español noted that his statements in the documentary were criticised for showing no empathy for Arrieta’s family. Balfagón explained at the time that he took part for economic reasons, Espinof reported, and Sancho told Ónega this year that legal costs were “the only reason”, adding that some 8,000 pages had been translated from Thai to English at 25 euros a page.

Patricia Pardo, on Telecinco’s Vamos a ver, put the critics’ case in one breath, according to El Español: the documentary was “a compendium of stoic phrases and a rhetorical display of composure, serenity and self-control that he then does not put into practice. If you are consistent you have to keep respect for journalists… Enough, this is a circus.” On this reading, a man who gave a paid platform his account of the case, and who promotes his series on talk shows where the case is the draw, cannot ask the press to keep the two apart. He told Ónega that “the exclusive matters more than the truth” in today’s journalism. In April 2024, he was the exclusive.

There is a second strand, and it is the one that matters most. A public broadcaster casting the father of a convicted killer as the decent detective could look, from where the victim’s family stands, like rehabilitation on screen. In nothing we found has anyone from the Arrieta family commented on Casper. The argument does not need them to.

Why Rodolfo Sancho’s work still has to stand apart

The documentary argument is an argument about the documentary. It justified hard scrutiny of what Sancho said about the case, and critics supplied it. It does not justify turning every job he takes into a chapter of his son’s crime. Losada is a role written by three screenwriters about a police hunt in Spain between the late 1990s and the 2000s. It has nothing to do with Thailand, and the casting tells us nothing about the case.

The argument about the victim points the other way too. When celebrity outlets make Edwin Arrieta’s murder the subordinate clause in a story about a television shoot, his death becomes a traffic engine for gossip copy. The respectful place for Arrieta is in coverage of the case itself: the appeal, the Supreme Court petition, the family’s own legal fight. He does not belong in the twist of a casting announcement.

Sancho drew the line himself, on air. When Ónega asked him what Daniel was like as a child, he cut in: “Sonsoles, I’d rather we talk about me.” You can dislike his manner, as many viewers and presenters have. For an actor promoting his work, the line is the right one. This piece names both men because the pairing is what people are searching for. Writing about that pairing is different from cashing in on it.

What we know about Casper, and what is our reading

On the record: RTVE’s production details, cast and creators for Casper, with no premiere date; the real Cásper’s crimes as summarised by RTVE, FormulaTV and Que.es; TVE’s schedule change on sentencing day as reported by Diez Minutos; the appeal ruling as reported by Infobae and Europa Press and the Supreme Court petition as reported by EFE. The account of Rodolfo Sancho refusing the money comes from the family’s spokesperson and has not been independently confirmed. The recordings show only Daniel Sancho’s version of a plan, as Infobae itself points out.

Our reading: TVE’s decision to cast him is right; the press frame that pairs his work with his son’s crime uses Edwin Arrieta’s death as a hook; and Casper deserves to be judged as a series once it airs. Sancho’s critics, from Pardo to the commentators who found him cold, have a fair point about the docuseries. That point covers the documentary. It does not cover the rest of his career.

Casper will tell the story of a detective who spent years trying to make one case stick. Rodolfo Sancho’s test is smaller and harder: one review that talks only about the detective.

Tags: Casper, Daniel Sancho, Roberto Álamo, Rodolfo Sancho, RTVE, Spanish TV series