A British helicopter pilot has been jailed for the chemsex murder of a man he had arranged to meet for a weekend in Spain.
Aaron Rainbow, 50, ‘violently and intentionally’ stabbed Oscar Tornero, 38, to death, according to the jury.
Rainbow, originally from Surrey, stabbed Tornero six times in different parts of his body after they binged on drugs.
Rainbow was jailed for 20 years despite claiming he was acting in self- defence.
Today, trial judge Carmen Sucias Rodriguez confirmed his punishment in an 87-page deferred sentence ruling, handing him the maximum penalty for his crime under Spanish law by refusing to take into account the mitigating factor of drug use that the Brit’s lawyers had wanted applied.
She also ordered Rainbow to pay Tornero’s family and ex-partner a total of nearly £470,000 in compensation, with the lion’s share of more than £300,000 set to go to his daughter.
Rainbow claimed before the start of his trial on October 8 that he acted in self-defence and ‘fight or flight’ kicked in when he became confused and paranoid with the crystal meth and GHB he had taken at his victim’s house in Vallgorguina, 30 minutes north of the Catalan capital.
The pilot took the stand on the second day of the public hearing to insist: ‘I have the feeling I have not been responsible for this.’
He alleged he had felt frightened at the idea Tornero was recording and live-streaming their drug-fuelled sex session and believed strangers were waiting outside to rape him.
Rainbow told the nine-strong jury he went to the kitchen to look for a knife for protection before locking the door.
Claiming he didn’t remember how many times he had stabbed his victim, Rainbow said: ‘My instinct told me I was in serious trouble.’
A neighbour who called 999 as Tornero, a fashion store worker who also hired himself out as an escort, tried to flee his home critically injured reported hearing the Brit shout: ‘I’ll f*****g kill you.’
In reaching their 8-1 majority verdict, jurors took into account the testimony of a man who had a drug-fuelled sex session with Aaron in London three days before the fatal stabbing on October 17, 2023.
He told the pilot in a WhatsApp message after he confused him with someone else and also turned violent after taking the same chemsex drugs: ‘I thought you would grab a knife to kill me.’
Tornero’s family lawyer told the trial: ‘It was a macabre prelude.’
In a pre-trial summary of the allegations that went before Barcelona’s Provincial Court, officials said: ‘According to the prosecutor, the accused and the victim had arranged to meet for sex and to consume narcotic substances for sexual purposes.
‘Once at the accused’s home and after consuming narcotics, the defendant took a knife and stabbed the victim several times.
‘In order to escape, the victim jumped from a height onto the street and fled on foot until he finally collapsed and died.
‘The prosecutor is seeking a 19-year prison sentence for the accused.’
State prosecutor Felix Martin increased his prison demand from 19 to 20 years after the jury verdict, in line with a private prosecutor acting on behalf of the victim’s family.
Rainbow’s defence lawyer Pedro Javier Gomez Martinez had requested his client’s acquittal at the start of the trial, claiming that at the time of the murder he was suffering from temporary insanity, drug intoxication and insurmountable fear and he had acted in self-defence.
The convicted killer’s family had compared the case to a ‘Netflix thriller’ before it got to trial, alleging Spanish police had botched the investigation and failed to look into electronic devices they claimed could back up his fears he was ‘being watched by others and set up’.
Rainbow’s brother Dan, from Weybridge in Surrey, said: ‘After his arrest, Aaron said that he had been drugged, and he was aware of people watching online via cameras and he feared for his life.
‘He wanted to get out of there because he had an uneasy feeling. He grabbed the knife in self-defence and that’s when he fatally stabbed the guy he was in the house with.
‘It really is like something out of a Netflix show, but this is real life here.
‘Aaron said what made him think people were watching is that Oscar started making hand signals to the camera and he thought “s**t – someone is watching, I need to get out of here sharpish”.
‘The guy made a dash for the door, my brother thought he was letting people into the house, so he grabbed a knife, the fight has started and he’s then fatally stabbed him but we say he was put into a position of fear, and the fight or flight response just kicked in.’
He added: ‘The main focus is that they are not looking at some serious evidence and the standout is the router that was removed from the crime scene the day after the incident by a friend of the deceased.
‘We believe people were connected to that router at the time, but it’s been professionally sabotaged, and the data cannot be extracted but the prosecution just don’t seem to be concerned.’
The two years the pilot has been held in prison on remand since his arrest will be taken into account in determining his eventual release date.
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