Walter Finch
A WEALTHY American businessman is set to stand trial in Spain for the murder of his Russian wife near Gibraltar and then embarking on a bizarre cross-continental journey with her body.
Michael Martin Hoseyni, 55 at the time of her death, is accused of strangling his wife, Yana Rose, 40, in a rented apartment in La Línea de la Concepción on Christmas Day 2021.
The following day, on Boxing Day, he is accused of dragging his wife’s body by the ankles out of the home and lugging her into the boot of the car.
Prosecutors allege that he then drove for hundreds of miles with her body before burying her in a remote field in Valencia.
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It was the gruesome discovery of Yana’s battered corpse that sparked a major international manhunt involving both Spanish police and the FBI.
Remarkably, despite fleeing the country, Hoseyni returned voluntarily for unclear reasons and was arrested in Madrid on January 28, just a week after the body was discovered.
Among the evidence that mounted up against Hoseyni were the shovel, trowel, axe and gloves that he bought from a hypermarket nearby.
The store’s camera captured his face as he paid for the items with his credit card.
He then dug a grave for her over several days while her body lay concealed under some branches in an isolated spot near Alzira and fled.
However, the authorities in Spain – as well as the US – were already on to him.
The couple, who had been on a globe-trotting holiday from their home in Colorado that took in the Balkans, Italy, and France, found themselves in La Alcaidesa for a week over Christmas in 2021.
Hoseyni, of Iranian descent, and Yana, of Russian, were a prosperous couple who ran a successful car business in Denver.
However, there was a dark side to their relationship, as Hoseyni had a record of beating and mistreating his wife.
It was why, when he told Yana’s mother, who had rung her daughter’s phone on Christmas Day, that she had run out after they had argued, dark suspicions already started to gather.
The mother then received a Whatsapp message from Yana’s phone declaring that her daughter would drive to Milan in a rented BMW and fly back to Denver.
When Hoseyni told the same story to Yana’s friends, one of them reported her missing to the Policia Nacional on January 9, 2022.
But what had really happened to Yana? The prosecution alleges that, in their rented holiday apartment, Hoseyni had taken ‘an extremely aggressive and violent attitude, after hitting her several times and with the intention of ending her life, strangled Yana with his own hands.’
“Yana was on the ground as a result of the great force of the blows used, so she had no chance to defend herself or ask for help,” says the Prosecutor’s Office, according to Spanish newspaper Europa Sur.
“The strangulation was carried out by the accused when Yana was on the ground as a result of the great force of the blows used, so she had no chance to defend herself or ask for help.”
Once the crime was reported, The Missing Persons group of the Central Unit for Organized and Violent Crime (UDEV) took over the investigation, and quickly uncovered a trail of evidence that pointed directly at Hoseyni.
CCTV footage showed the couple entering the apartment on the morning of December 25, but after that Yana is never recorded again.
Police then tracked the BMW through its GPS on the route Hoseyni took to Valencia, and used his credit card records to track his stays and his purchases.
The jury trial is set to begin in January 2025 in Algeciras with prosecutors asking for 22 years in jail.
