Tenerife Double Murder Unsolved 20 Years On

Twenty years have passed since William and Florence Robinson were murdered in southern Tenerife, and those responsible for their deaths are still free.

On the night of January 12, 2006, in San Miguel de Abona, Tenerife, a car crashed into the back of a silver Mercedes SL 55 AMG. Fifty-five-year-old British woman Florence Robinson was driving the luxury sports car.

When she got out to check the damage, she was brutally beaten and had her throat cut. Her blood stained the car's tailgate and the asphalt of a nearby track, which linked the Oroteanda Alta area to Las Chafiras and the Southern Highway. Her body was discovered at 11 PM.

A passerby alerted emergency services after seeing a woman lying motionless in a large pool of blood.

The next morning, January 13, William Robinson's body was found in the back seat of his gray Porsche Cayenne, about a mile from where his wife's body was discovered.

The German SUV was neatly parked on a street in the Llano del Camello industrial estate, very close to Las Chafiras. William, known as Billy among the British community in Tenerife, was also 55. He had also been brutally beaten and had his throat cut.

Twenty years later, police have still not caught those responsible for a crime that shocked Tenerife, especially the many British people living there.

Civil Guard investigators worked hard to find fingerprints or DNA from the killers in the couple's cars or home.

But the forensic lab's extensive work never led to identifying or catching those responsible. Further investigations by the Judicial Police Organic Unit and the Central Operative Unit (UCO) also failed to shed any light on the case.

Autopsies revealed signs of torture. It's believed Billy was tortured, suffering blows and shallow cuts to various parts of his body before a precise gash to his throat killed him.

Days later, reports emerged that William had survived a brutal assault in Tenerife two years earlier, an attack that nearly killed him. However, that incident was never investigated because no complaint was filed.

The couple's son, then around 30, survived. He reportedly learned of his mother's murder from a journalist at the crime scene and immediately sped away in another Porsche Cayenne.

Media reports at the time stated that a daughter living in London travelled to the island for the funeral. Police officers recall that the son left Tenerife shortly after to start a new life.

The Robinsons lived in a villa in Oroteanda Alta, an isolated cul-de-sac with a few luxury homes in San Miguel de Abona, less than a kilometre from the main highway.

The idea that the couple was robbed was quickly dismissed. Billy was wearing a high-end watch, valued at €125,000, which was left untouched after he was killed.

From the 1990s until the early 2000s, William and Florence Robinson worked for British businessman and mobster John Palmer. They handled some of his accounting.

This was during the peak of Palmer's timeshare empire, which involved selling countless apartments, pressuring tourists on the streets, holding meetings to sell holiday weeks to British citizens in southern Tenerife, and employing security thugs to control staff and rival gangs.

Violent deaths linked to this business were not uncommon. A source recalls seeing William with another British man, described as very large and unfriendly-looking, around Las Américas and Costa Adeje.

In 2001, John Palmer was convicted at London's Old Bailey for conspiracy to defraud, following a large-scale timeshare scam that defrauded an estimated 20,000 clients.

Many victims were British pensioners, and the fraud was estimated to be worth €45 million. Palmer was jailed in the UK and served less than five years.

While Palmer was in prison, William and Florence decided to leave Palmer's network and set up their own company, focusing on timeshares and holiday packages. They founded Global World Travel, based in Playa de las Américas, near the Mare Nostrum hotel and what is now the Golden Mile (Avenida Las Américas).

Palmer was released from prison just days before Billy and his wife were murdered. It was never proven that Palmer had any involvement in the deaths of his former employees.

However, from the start, speculation linked the victims' past work with Palmer, the 'capo' who built an economic empire in Tenerife. Palmer himself was shot dead in 2015 at his home in Essex.

One theory investigated by the Civil Guard was that professional killers were hired to murder the couple, leaving the island just hours after the crime without a trace. To this day, they have never been brought to justice.