Body said to be Irish drugs baron has been discovered buried in Alicante

The heartbroken mother of a suspected Irish drugs kingpin Carl Carr has confirmed her son’s body has been found buried beside a Spanish motorway but insisted his death was nothing to do with the narcotics trade. 

Marie Carr, from Dublin, said detectives told her that her son’s remains had been recovered from a shallow grave near a Costa Blanca motorway. 

She said it was likely he was killed over a ‘love triangle’.  

Carl Carr, 38, was last seen in September on a night out at the Cabo Roig resort near Torrevieja

Four suspects, two men and two women, have been arrested in connection with Carr’s murder. They appeared in court in Torrevieja earlier today in an in camera hearing. 

It is understood the suspects are British and Irish. 

Mrs Carr described her son as a ‘well-liked but ‘easily-led lad’ in a poignant tribute to her only son as she grieved his suspected murder and said: ‘His favourite saying was he was a lover not a fighter.

‘He was very funny and very well-liked but too easily-led to be honest. He wanted to please people all of the time. He was a very deep person. He never wanted to worry other people.’

Addressing his past, which included an eight-year prison sentence over a 2008 Dublin drugs bust, she added: ‘Carl’s been described as a drugs baron when nothing could be further from the truth.

‘He was arrested in Ireland simply because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. He was told to pick up a locked bag he had no idea contained drugs. He only did it because he had just come back from Australia and he had no money and he was getting paid.

‘The Spanish police have told me his death has nothing to do with drugs. I believe he was killed because of a romantic triangle, by a man he knew who accused him of dating one of his girlfriends.

‘I want answers, who did this to my son and why they did it, but I also want to set the record straight.

‘I suspect the people who did this to Carl knew about his past and tried to make it seem as if it was something to do with drugs when it wasn’t.

‘The other thing I’m sure about is that he wasn’t dating Danielle Coupe, the hairdresser that claims to have been his girlfriend.

‘Carl had been in a long-term relationship with a fiancee who was back in Ireland and who he had two children with, a daughter of twelve and a son aged three.

‘They had been out to Spain to see him shortly before he died and he was trying to patch things up with her. They went out a couple of times a year to see him. He spoke to his children every night on the phone.

‘He might have been with Danielle but he wasn’t dating her when he died because they had had a fight and he’d finished with her.

‘He moved to Spain three years ago for a fresh start and he was just trying to make ends meet. He didn’t have any money, he was working in bars and doing odd jobs but he certainly wasn’t a drugs baron.

‘I’ve been devastated for months now and I haven’t been able to work even or speak to anyone about this.

‘I talked to Carl the day before he disappeared and he told me his phone had been stolen and it was like it was a set-up.

‘He rang me from a friend’s phone and promised to call me once he’d got a new one.

‘I told him his grandmother was very sick and asked if he’d have time to talk to her when I was with her. He said he’d ring me the day after which was the Saturday he disappeared but that never happened.

‘He told me twice in that last conversation he loved me. Those were his last words, ‘I love you mam.

‘At the moment I’m waiting to speak to the Irish Embassy in Madrid. I’ve spoken to my local police who have been onto Interpol.

‘They’re trying to find out from the Embassy when they’re going to release Carl’s body so we can bring him home.

‘We’ve had it confirmed it’s Carl from tattoos and bars on his legs from a car crash he was in years ago.

‘I was prepared for this sort of ending. On the Monday after he was last seen I had visions. I was lying on my bed and asking Carl to send me a message or a sign.

‘I got a vision of him in his Communion suit straightaway and then his Confirmation suit. That’s when I knew and I started to panic.

‘I knew this was never a voluntary disappearance. He talked to his children every day and he talked to me every second day.

‘Whoever did this to my son must pay the consequences.’

A Spanish source said: ‘Two men and two women have appeared at Torrevieja Court of Investigation Number Two this morning.

‘They have been remanded in custody pending an ongoing investigation. The investigation is being treated at this stage as a homicide or murder probe.

‘The man suspected of being the material author was among the four that appeared in court.

‘The other three are being investigation on suspicion of concealment, although one of the women is also under investigation on suspicion of illegal weapons possession.

‘A fifth person, a woman, also appeared in court this morning after being interviewed by police and she was released but remains under investigation.’  

The body was found buried by the AP-7 motorway between Benijofar and Algorfa, a 20-minute drive north from where the missing Irishman was last seen.

The body was found buried by the AP-7 motorway between Benijofar and Algorfa, a 20-minute drive north from where the missing Irishman was last seen.

Carr's girlfriend Danielle Coupe said she already knew arrests were going to take place today, but when she was asked for further information said: 'I can't say anything, I'm not allowed'

Carr’s girlfriend Danielle Coupe said she already knew arrests were going to take place today, but when she was asked for further information said: ‘I can’t say anything, I’m not allowed’

The court investigation stemming from Carl Carr’s disappearance was initially led by a court in the nearby town of Orihuela.

But local reports said it was moved to Torrevieja a 40-minute drive east on the Costa Blanca because investigators suspected that is where the killing took place. 

At the time of Mr Carr’s disappearance, his girlfriend said: ‘Me, his family and friends are going out of our minds with worry.

‘Anyone who was at Ambiguous can you message with the last time you saw him please.’

The expat hairdresser admitted today she was aware arrests had taken place but added: ‘I can’t say anything, I’m not allowed.’

The local Civil Guard force probing the disappearance of 38-year-old Carr, jailed for eight years in December 2008 after he was caught with £1.25 million of heroin and cocaine in Dublin, has so far made no official comment.

Carr's British girlfriend, Coupe, shared this poster on Facebook in September after her lover went missing

Carr’s British girlfriend, Coupe, shared this poster on Facebook in September after her lover went missing

Local paper Informacion says the police investigation is a murder probe and the detainees have been accused of different crimes including homicide, illegal weapons possession, extortion, drugs trafficking and concealment depending on the level of their suspected involvement.

The body was found buried by the AP-7 motorway between Benijofar and Algorfa, a 20-minute drive north from where the missing Irishman was last seen.

Investigators are said to be trying to formally identify the man’s identity through DNA tests.

The detainees were reportedly handed over to a judge in Torrevieja for further questioning after being held for ‘several days’ in police cells.

A secrecy order preventing officials from making any official comment – and designed to protect the ongoing criminal investigation in its early stages – is understood to have been placed over the case.   

Preliminary court appearances always take place in private in Spain. Only trials are open to the press and public.

The charge of homicidio in Spain is a halfway house between manslaughter and the more serious charge of asesinato and carries a ten to 15-year prison sentence.

All four suspects remanded in custody have not been charged under Spanish law, as is normal in Spain where formal charges are only laid shortly before trial. 

Under Spanish law asesinato – which at present in Spain can carry a life sentence following a controversial reform to the country’s penal code – is also a wilful killing but involves aggravants.

One is the killer making sure his victim does not have the chance to defend himself. Another is that the killer causes his victim unneccesary suffering.      

The Cabo Roig resort in Alicante on the Costa Blanca is popular with British tourists and there is a large ex-pat community there

The Cabo Roig resort in Alicante on the Costa Blanca is popular with British tourists and there is a large ex-pat community there

The same police force which has been leading the investigation into Carl Carr’s disappearance was involved in a hunt for a pair of notorious Dublin criminals whose bodies were found buried below a warehouse on an industrial estate in Catral a 30-minute drive north from where he was last seen.

The leader of the infamous Westies crime gang Shane Coates, and his close friend Stephen Sugg, were kidnapped near the Costa Blanca city of Alicante in January 2004 after leaving their expat apartments and telling their girlfriends they would be back within half an hour.

Their bodies were found in 2006 buried 30ft below a warehouse on Catral’s San Juan industrial estate.

Sugg fled Ireland in mid-2003 after he was shot at by other drug dealers.

Coates joined him at the end of the year after he was involved in a shoot-out with undercover gardai in Virginia, Co Cavan.

Gardai believe the pair were executed because they were trying to muscle in on another dealer’s patch in Spain.

The killer is thought to have tied up both men and then clinically shot each of them in the mouth the day they disappeared before burying their bodies.

An Irishman who had been renting the warehouse was later arrested but released without charge and told he would not face trial after being held behind bars for more than nine months.

Carr was one of three men jailed in December 2008 in Ireland.

Gardai pounced after mounting a surveillance operation at St Joseph’s Hospital in the northern Dublin suburb of Raheny and seeing maintenance man Declan Broderick hand over the drugs to Carr.

Broderick, from Coolock on Dublin City’s Northside, and Carr, then 28, from the Dublin suburb of Marino, were both sentenced to eight years in prison by Judge Katherine Delahunt at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court.

A third man named as Graham Doyle, from Baldoyle, a coastal suburb of Dublin’s northside, was sentenced to three years jail.

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