Murder by the Coast

latestnetflix.com's take is that In October 1999, nineteen-year-old Rocío Wanninkhof leaves her boyfriend Toni’s house in Mijas, Málaga, intending to meet friends at a heavy metal tent during the local fair, but she never arrives.

The following morning, her mother, Alicia Hornos, searches along the unlit path leading through nearby fields and spots blood on the ground. Approaching closer, Alicia finds discarded footwear and tells her companion, "Those are Rocío's sneakers." Responding forensic teams locate extended blood trails, a larger bloodstain indicative of dragging, vehicle tire tracks, a bloodstained tissue, and a cigarette butt from which analysts extract male DNA.

Hundreds of neighbors, local volunteers, and civil protection personnel search the hills around Mijas. Speaking to television reporters gathered outside her residence, Alicia pleads, "Dead or alive, I just want her back." Twenty-five days after her disappearance, Rocío's skeletonized remains are found concealed inside hedges near the highway to Marbella, placed alongside black garbage bags containing clothing. An autopsy reveals multiple repetitive stab wounds along her back delivered with a single-edged blade.

Because the body was positioned with legs spread apart, investigators conclude that the scene was deliberately arranged to simulate a sexual assault. Concluding that the perpetrator was motivated by personal hatred, investigators shifted focus toward individuals close to the family. Civil Guard officers interrogate relatives and acquaintances, all of whom offer confirmed alibis.

Suspicion gradually shifts to María Dolores Vázquez, known as Loli, who had previously maintained an eleven-year romantic relationship with Alicia and helped raise Alicia's three children before separating four years earlier. Alicia tells authorities that Vázquez remained intensely jealous and held a grudge against Rocío, believing the daughter stood as the obstacle preventing their reconciliation.

Investigators also document an account from a domestic worker claiming Vázquez took a kitchen knife to a public missing-person poster of Rocío and declared, "This is my problem!" Vázquez testifies that she had only pointed to the image with a knife to explain to the non-Spanish-speaking worker that Rocío had been killed. Although tests show Vázquez’s vehicle tires, clothes, and fingerprints do not match the lot tracks, the fibers on the body, or the garbage bags, and the male DNA found on the cigarette butt is omitted from proceedings, public and media hostility intensifies around her.

During her trial before a jury at the Provincial Court of Málaga, Vázquez takes the stand and maintains her innocence, stating, "I did not kill Rocío. I did not see Rocío," before adding, "Whoever did this is out there." The jury returns a majority verdict finding Vázquez guilty of murder, and the court sentences her to fifteen years and one day in prison, where she is placed in solitary confinement.

In August 2003, seventeen-year-old Sonia Carabantes fails to return home from the fair in the nearby town of Coín. Her mother finds Sonia's shoe, handbag, and mobile phone on the ground near their doorstep, alongside bloodstains on parked vehicles. Days later, search dogs discover Sonia's body covered with stones in a stream bed near Monda; forensic examiners determine she was struck, abducted by car, and strangled with a T-shirt.

Investigators recover biological matter from underneath Sonia's fingernails and submit the profile to the national criminal DNA database. The analysis establishes a direct match with the male DNA recovered four years earlier from the cigarette butt at the Wanninkhof crime scene.

A Fuengirola resident named Cecilia King contacts police after seeing an open wound on the left hand of her ex-husband, Tony Alexander King. British diplomatic liaisons confirm that King, previously known as Tony Bromwich, possessed past convictions for sexual assaults in London. Detectives place King under surveillance at his workplace and residence, observe a broken light cover on his Mazda car, and arrest him.

Prior to King's arrest, the High Court of Justice of Andalusia had vacated Vázquez’s verdict and ordered a retrial because the original jury failed to articulate adequate grounds for the conviction. Public scrutiny turns to an unheeded 1998 notification from Scotland Yard regarding King’s presence in Mijas, prompting parliamentary inquiries directed at Minister of the Interior Ángel Acebes.

When King attempts in custody statements to associate Vázquez with the crime, Vázquez addresses the media to deny any connection, stating, "I don't know anything about this man." The court finds King acted alone in abducting and killing both victims. The Court of Málaga officially dismisses all charges against Vázquez, who reflects years later on the enduring stigma and the absence of an institutional apology, remarking, "I'm still waiting for someone to ask for my forgiveness."