Walter Finch
A WEALTHY American businessman has been jailed for eight years in Spain for the murder of his Russian wife near Gibraltar in 2021.
Michael Martin Hoseyni, 55 at the time, admitted to strangling his wife, Yana Rose, 40, to death in a rented apartment in La Línea de la Concepción on Christmas Day.
He then embarked on a bizarre cross-country journey with her body in the boot of his hire car before burying his wife in a shallow grave near Valencia.
The American was also ordered to pay the family a further €75,000 on top of the €150,000 indemnity he had already paid by the Cadiz court.
It was the subsequent gruesome discovery of Yana’s battered corpse that sparked a major international manhunt involving both Spanish police and the FBI.
Remarkably, despite having already fled the country, Hoseyni returned voluntarily 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, an American citizen 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.
READ MORE: Arrest is made over murder of US priest, 80, inside Malaga tourist flat: Two suspects still at large
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 argued 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,” the charging document read.
“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.
