A controlling and violent man who lied about how his girlfriend sustained fatal injuries to try to evade responsibility for her death has been convicted of murdering her.
Holly Sanchez’s body was found in a property in Crawley on the morning of 13 May 2023, following a 999 call from Ryan Evans, in which he claimed she had been alive when he went to sleep and woke to find her unresponsive.
In an attempt to escape responsibility for what he had done and smear his victim, he falsely claimed in the call that she had taken prescription drugs, had fallen over in town, and then been attacked by strangers.
A post-mortem examination found extensive injuries on her body, including significant brain injuries, so severe that they were consistent either with a car crash, falling from a height, or being attacked. Five of her ribs were fractured, and her left lung was damaged, injuries which led her to develop pneumonia, the cause of her death.
Building the Case: Handling False Retractions
An aspect of the case that the Crown Prosecution Service had to deal with sensitively as part of the prosecution was around the denials and false retractions made by the victim – a commonly misunderstood phenomenon in domestic abuse.
Police were called on a number of occasions to arrest Evans, but Holly would deny being assaulted and plead with them not to arrest him. This is extremely common in domestic abuse cases, and the CPS was able to show the jury that these retractions were false. It reflected the coercive control Evans displayed and that instead of weakening the case against Evans, they in fact strengthened it.
Less than a month before her death, Holly revealed to police that Ryan Evans had attacked her, putting out a cigarette on her face and was taking money from her bank account. She told officers that she was scared he would kill her if he found out she had been talking about him and the next morning she tried to retract her statement, claiming she had fallen out of a car.
The CPS also used wider evidence from witnesses to prove Evans was lying about what happened to Holly, which the in-house CPS barrister was able to present in court.
Ryan Richter from the Crown Prosecution Service South East said: “Ryan Evans engaged in a relationship with Holly Sanchez where he sought to control and coerce her. He regularly subjected Holly to violence in the short time that they were together and he caused the injuries that killed her just a few days before her death.”
“Despite his lies, which were designed to smear her in a bid to evade responsibility for his crimes, we were able to prove to the jury that Evans was responsible for her murder by carefully piecing together what had happened to her over the previous few weeks.
“Holly’s confession to officers that Ryan had subjected her to physical violence was crucial in bringing her killer to justice. Our thoughts are with her friends and family at this difficult time.”
