Tuesday, April 29, 2025 - The British consul and his Colombian mistress kidnapped by a gang of 15 armed men in Ecuador have spoken for the first time about their terrifying ordeal.
Colin Armstrong, now 79, was abducted
from his weekend home outside Guayaquil along with his partner Katherine Paola
Santos, 30, in December 2023. Ms Santos was strapped into what she believed was
an explosives vest and told it would detonate unless she obeyed orders.
Police initially questioned why Santos was released early, probing whether she had been part of the scheme. She has strongly denied any involvement, and investigators found no evidence linking her to the crime. "People were cruel. I felt very sad that they could make jokes and lie about us at such a terrible time," she told The Times.
Armstrong, a businessman from North
Yorkshire and former British Consul in Guayaquil, was freed after agreeing to
pay $2 million for his release. Speaking about the ordeal, he said:
"People had warned me not to take the same route to work or the ranch and
to use an armoured vehicle with an escort. But I always laughed off the threat
of kidnap. Then it happened."
He described being taken from his
4,000-acre cattle ranch after gunmen burst in, bound his wrists, and bundled
him naked, wrapped only in a sheet, into his own car alongside his girlfriend.
They were driven for hours to a remote farmhouse where they were held hostage.
Ms Santos had volunteered to accompany
him. Armstrong, who met Santos in 2013 and fell in love, said their affair
caused friction with his Ecuadorian wife of 50 years, Cecilia. "I still
love my wife," he said, adding he has never considered divorce.
During the kidnapping, Armstrong said
the gang appeared uninterested in Santos, but she insisted on staying with him,
telling them: "He's an old man. I need to look after him or he'll
die."
The two were kept for four days in a
small room with mattresses on the floor and furniture barricading the windows.
Armstrong feared his captors might check their bodies for implanted tracking
devices — a growing tactic in Ecuador’s crime wave — and possibly harm them if
they found any.
At one point, the gang strapped a jacket to Santos that they claimed was rigged with explosives. She was tasked with delivering a phone to Armstrong’s son, Nick, who had taken over as British Consul. Threatened with detonation if she approached police, Santos carried out the mission. Police explosive experts later determined the vest was a fake.
Meanwhile, Armstrong remained captive.
His captors initially demanded $5 million. Nick pretended to agree, alerting
the British Embassy in Quito. With mounting pressure from Ecuadorian
authorities, several gang members were arrested in Guayaquil. The gang leader
threatened to kill Armstrong in retaliation.
Hostage negotiators worked carefully to
bring down the ransom demand. Eventually, the captors agreed to Armstrong's
release in exchange for a promise to pay $500,000 a week over a month.
Armstrong was freed by a roadside near a
brothel and picked up by police. Apart from some minor exhaustion, he was
declared in good health. A photo released by police showed him wearing a
baseball cap, standing between two officers.
He reunited with Cecilia and his two
daughters just days before Christmas, sharing the harrowing story over a bottle
of wine.
Police said the motive behind the
kidnapping was purely financial. They later seized a cache of weapons from the
gang, including grenades, firearms, ammunition, detonators, and large
quantities of controlled substances.
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