Denver Man Accused of Murdering Wife on Luxury Eurotrip Nabbed After Global Manhunt

MADRID—The two figures are hard to make out at first on the grainy CCTV footage from a camera outside the posh Sotogrande residential development in Andalusia, Spain. The footage, taken Christmas Day, shows a well-built man dragging who cops would later identify as his 40-year-old wife down the stairs of their holiday apartment by her bare ankles and dumping her into the trunk of his rented Ford Kuga.

Another CCTV camera—some eight hours away in Valencia—would capture the man, now identified by Spanish police as Iranian-born American Michael Hoseyni, buying a shovel, a stick, an axe, gloves, and a knife at a Do-It-Yourself hardware store. Police say he did not stop the car once on the long drive. They believe he buried her body on Dec. 27, according to GPS data from the car they rented in Italy in August.

The badly decomposed beaten body of his Russian-born American wife Yana Rose would be found over three weeks later—on Jan. 21 in a makeshift grave some 1,200 kilometers to the north in Valencia, not far from the hardware store where Hoseyni bought the macabre kit he allegedly used to bury her.

Hoseyni, 55, who was arrested on Jan. 28 when he flew back to Spain, is accused of killing and torturing his wife, concealing her body, and then driving to Italy where he hopped on a flight to London and then back to his home in Colorado.

The Denver-based couple had flown to Milan, Italy in August to start a European holiday, traveling to France, Albania, Macedonia, Bulgaria, Croatia, and finally to Spain to spend Christmas. Along the way, they joined up with Rose’s Russian friends and were supposed to meet once again on Jan. 9. Rose stopped posting on social media on Christmas Day, which raised alarm bells with her friends in Colorado. When she failed to show up for a scheduled rendezvous in Valencia, they called Spanish police, who published a missing person’s alert.

Spanish police

When Rose’s body was found, Spanish police immediately started looking for her husband, searching in Italy and Spain and trailing him to the U.K. where they discovered he had flown to New York City, and then finally to Denver on Jan. 11. Hoseyni then reportedly caught a flight to Spain on Jan. 28 just as the FBI were ready to pounce after suspecting him in his wife’s murder.

Hoseyni, who owns a car workshop in Denver, told Rose’s mother that her daughter had left their apartment in Spain after an argument, and that he had returned to the U.S. alone. He reportedly told her friends a slightly different version when they reached him by phone, which made friends suspect something was wrong.

On Christmas Day, security cameras showed the couple entering and leaving their holiday apartment, but by the afternoon, the film only showed images of him coming and going, which make police now suspect Rose was already dead by then.

A post-mortem did not show the cause of death but police say her body did have the sign of a heavy blow to the head. Police could not ascertain if the blow to the head was caused when her body was dragged down the stairs at their holiday apartment or if it is what killed her.

No traces of blood were found at the luxury rental apartment in Sotogrande, according to police.

When Hoseyni touched down at Adolfo Suárez Barajas airport in the Spanish capital on Jan. 28, police were waiting for him. He was arrested as he stepped off the plane.

“He didn’t say anything, he didn’t put up any opposition, and he has not opened his mouth since,” said a source within the Spanish investigation team. Why he returned to Spain remains a mystery, police sources told The Daily Beast, although several Spanish outlets say he came back to avoid being tried for her murder in Colorado.

“Did he come back to hide something? To cover something up? Was it to report the disappearance of his wife?,” a Spanish police spokesman told the Beast. “We can confirm that Michael Hoseyni has been charged with homicide and is currently in custody awaiting trial.”

In Denver, friends of the couple told local media that they were shocked by the suggestion that she was murdered. “Unfortunately, dear Yana has left her body. Please pray for the peaceful transition of her soul,” a friend who she knew through the Denver Radha Krishna temple community posted on Facebook.

Temple co-president Stephanie Sato said members hadn’t immediately noticed anything suspicious about Hosenyi, who worked on Sato’s husband’s car.

“My husband said he gave really honest, fair prices and seemed like a nice guy, so we certainly didn’t expect this,” Sato told The Daily Beast.

However, after Rose and Hosenyi had been away for a while, Sato began to get “some inklings” that something might be wrong.

“She had extended the trip three times, she would text me and say, ‘I’m going to stay one month longer,’” and then again, ‘We’re staying one month longer,’” said Sato. “And then I just found out today that she told her Russian friend that she wanted to go home and she was done with traveling, and told her husband, who wasn’t really responding to her. So yeah, there were some things that were a little fishy.”

The texts weren’t unusual enough for Sato to be alarmed, she continued, but said the tone of Rose’s messages became less and less enthusiastic each time.

“I got a sense that she was balancing something with her husband, and maybe he wanted to stay and she didn’t,” said Sato. “After the third one, I thought, ‘Why are they staying so long?’ And then I thought, ‘Maybe you guys won’t even come back.’ And then later I was like, Wow, she didn’t come back.”

Rose started visiting the temple in 2018, according to Sato, who was impressed with Rose’s dedication to the message being put forth.

“Normally, people come for the food, but she actually started coming in the mornings for the scripture classes, which was unusual,” Sato said. “And then she’d stay for breakfast, and then she started developing friendships with the temple residents. And then it grew from there, attending more often and helping with services... She was artistic, she was really kind and sort of simplehearted—easy to get along with, also very philosophical, very curious about learning and exploring different things. She felt that traveling really helps broaden one’s perspective on life.”

Hoseyni’s local lawyer has not yet been announced and Spanish authorities have not announced a trial date.