Spain: Jilted TV suitor charged with murdering ex
A Spanish suitor whose ex-girlfriend rejected his marriage proposal on live TV has been charged with murdering her.
Ricardo Navarro, 30, begged the Russian woman, identified only as Svetlana, to marry him, getting down on his knees, crying and offering an engagement ring.
“I love you. You only live once, as you told me, and I want to spend mine with you,” Navarro said on a program called Patricia’s Diary on the network Antena 3.
“I want you to marry me. You are everything to me. Everything,” Navarro said, his voice quavering. But she turned him down.
Setlana, also 30, was found with her throat cut four days later in the lift of her apartment building in Alicante, and died on Monday.
Boomerang, the company that produces the programme for Antena 3, said the televised meeting was arranged as a surprise at Navarro’s request so he could try to make up with his girlfriend.
Program staff have tried to contact relatives of the woman in Russia, but Boomerang sees no link between the show and her death and does not feel in any way responsible, said director of programming, Baldomero Limon.
“There is no cause and effect relationship,” Mr Limon said, noting the killing was four days after the show.
The host of the program, Patricia Gaztanaga, began yesterday’s show by expressing sorrow for the victim and her family. The Russian woman leaves behind a small daughter from another relationship.
“None of us who take part in this program could imagine that something like this was going to happen,” she said.
