Friends Speak Out After British Couple Found Dead in Spanish Villa Hot Tub

Castleblayney, the close-knit Co Monaghan market town where family names run deep and generations remain closely connected, is united in grief. In a community of this size, personal tragedy is felt far beyond one household.

That shared sense of loss is expected to bring a large turnout to Our Lady of Knock Church next Friday, when former local woman Thomasina Tobin, née McArdle, and her husband Patrick are laid to rest. Many in the town are anticipated to attend.

The deaths of the highly regarded couple have stunned residents. Thomasina was born and reared in Castleblayney before relocating to London, where she met and married Patrick, a New Zealander. Their family and friends have been left searching for answers following the devastating events of a Spanish summer holiday two weeks ago.

Thomasina and Patrick were found dead in the early hours of August 25 after using the hot tub at their luxury holiday villa in Cullera, a Mediterranean coastal village south of Valencia.

Their bodies were discovered by their children, a 14-year-old boy and a 16-year-old girl, both of whom have mild special needs. The teenagers are now being cared for at the family home near Greenwich Park in London, with relatives taking turns to support them.

The traumatic circumstances of the past several weeks have been hard for the family and wider community to comprehend, particularly for the couple’s devastated children.

However, the family may now be moving closer to an explanation for the deaths of their loved ones.

A number of possible causes had been considered, including chemical poisoning and overheating. The leading theory was that the pair drowned after becoming trapped in the hot tub when a fault allegedly caused a powerful suction effect.

Foul play, and the involvement of any third party, were quickly ruled out.

Now, however, a family friend, speaking exclusively to the Daily Mail, has revealed that the Spanish coroner investigating the deaths has informed grieving friends that electrocution is the most likely cause of death, and that it seems that Patrick died trying to rescue his wife of almost two decades, after she got into difficulty in the water.

‘There was total confusion about how such an awful thing could have happened and to some extent there still is,’ the friend said.

‘The police said it was some sort of [hot tub] accident, but we could not figure out how this could have happened and taken both of their lives.

‘I understand now that the coroner’s report puts the cause of death down to electrocution and that one of them was found in the [hot tub] and one of them was next to it.

‘The assumption is that Paddy was trying to drag Thomasina out. She was really small, but he was still wet and was then electrocuted himself.’

The family, he said, are still trying to piece together the chronology of this unthinkable tragedy as they wait for answers on who – if anyone – is ultimately responsible.

The source added: ‘The family don’t have a clear picture of what happened yet but electrocution sounds more plausible than a suction issue.’

He added: ‘Of course this should never have happened so I am sure there will be further action in the future.’

In Cullera, as the holiday season draws to a close, the luxury, cliff-top, £2,600 a week three-storey villa Mr and Mrs Tobin had booked for their two-week summer break, remains closed, its shutters drawn.

Spanish families have left the town, returning to their city lives and the daily grind.

Tourists have been replaced by a steady trail of investigators and police officers, all tasked with trying to piece together the final hours of the Tobin family.

The hard facts, such as they are, are these: Thomasina, Patrick and the two children left London on August 22, two days before the fatal accident occurred. They had planned to stay for just over two weeks to make the most of the children’s summer holidays before the start of school term this week.

Both hardworking professionals, Mrs Tobin, 51, was a high-flying quantity surveyor for luxury hotels at the consultancy firm Turner & Townsend, while Mr Tobin had recently been promoted to manager at the London branch of HCLTech, an Indian company that specialises in digital engineering, cloud and AI products.

Villa Luna undoubtedly offered an escape from the couple’s hectic working lives. Spreading over 2,691 sq ft, the home offers panoramic views of the Mediterranean alongside a private pool, an outdoor BBQ area, as well as the romantic indoor spa area.

Photos of the ground floor ‘oasis’ show the inviting hot tub with a bottle of champagne and two glasses on the side, as a powerful marketing tool, while the property’s website describes the space as being made for ‘moments of pure relaxation’.

Relaxing is what Mr and Mrs Tobin had planned to do on that fateful afternoon of August 24. According to police, the family had enjoyed a BBQ on the terrace, followed by a swim in the pool.

Later in the day, the children headed up to their rooms while the couple made the most of the spa facilities in the basement.

While the timeline of how their quiet downtime turned to disaster is still incomplete, initial autopsy results, reported by local media, said both died from cardiopulmonary arrest.

Investigators are now going with the theory that this was caused after both suffered a fatal electric shock.

How and why this occurred – whether it was caused by a malfunction in the hot tub itself or from an outside source – is still unclear.

Early findings from the scene, however, seem to indicate that Mrs Tobin was in the water when the shock occurred while her husband was fatally injured while desperately trying to drag her out – his still wet arms acting like a conductor for the electrical current. He died outside the water, at the side of the tub.

Superficial injuries allegedly found on their bodies seemed to suggest some sort of struggle or rescue attempt.

It is not the first time that a couple have been electrocuted in a hot tub on holiday.

In July last year, Estephania López and her children watched her husband Sagid, 36, die at a hotel resort in Ixtapa, Mexico, after he was electrocuted in the water. His wife claimed the hotel was negligent due to the ‘lack of maintenance’ on the tub.

Similarly, in June 2024, Lizette Zambrano filed a $1million lawsuit after her American husband Jorge was killed in a hot tub of a Mexican hotel, alleging faulty wiring caused his death. Ms Zambrano was also dragged out the tub with no pulse, only surviving after bystanders successfully carried out CPR.

For almost 12 hours, the lifeless bodies of Thomasina and Patrick remained in the spa until their son made the grim discovery at around 5am the next day. The teenager had gone to wake his parents for their planned sunrise trip to the beach but found their bed still made up from the previous day.

After searching the house, he found them in the spa and quickly alerted his older sister. Together, the siblings rang a family member before searching the streets of the gated community until they found a neighbour who helped them call emergency services.

Paramedics, along with local police and the Guardia Civil, quickly arrived at the property, but the couple were pronounced dead at the scene.

The understandably shocked and speechless children were then taken into the care of the Spanish Red Cross and Cullera City Council, with psychologists offering support, until relatives in the UK and Ireland could be reached.

The children were reunited with three family members in the early hours of Wednesday morning – with their parents’ bodies being removed from the property late that night. The family initially remained in Cullera while investigations continued but returned to the UK at the beginning of this week.

It is not known whether Thomasina and Patrick’s bodies have already been repatriated to Ireland.

Almost three weeks on, the Guardia Civil refuses to give any further insight into their version of events and insist they are still waiting to hear back on toxicology reports, sent to a lab in Barcelona.

Local newspaper, Las Provincias, reported earlier this week that the investigation will now focus on whether there are any criminal or civil liabilities: either on the part of the owners of the holiday home or of the hot tub manufacturer.

The judge overseeing the case ordered an expert to inspect the hot tub to identify any potential malfunction and on Thursday an individual from Andrey Pool Service, thought to have been brought in to investigate the working of the tub, was seen leaving the property but refused to speak to journalists.

The CEO of Goccia Spa – the company that supplied a hot tub installed at the villa in 2019 – last week insisted the spa bath shown in images online was not from his company. Even if it was, he said, the warranty would have run out more than two years ago.

Carlos Navarro told the Daily Mail: ‘Our hot tubs have a two-year warranty and the one we sold to the owner was over eight years ago, so the liability lies with them.’

Meanwhile the owners of the Colina Del Sol holiday complex – where Villa Luna sits alongside two other properties behind electric gates – continue to refuse to speak about the case. The brothers and business moguls Adam and Michal Markuszewski, however, have this week instructed lawyers who specialise in both civil and criminal law.

When approached by the Daily Mail, lawyers for the owners said there were no criminal charges or civil law suits against their clients and added, ‘We maintain and reiterate that the unit was functioning correctly. No customer ever reported any malfunction.’

Worlds away back in Ireland and Greenwich, however, the heartbreaking task now begins of laying the couple to rest and deciding the best future for their children, who returned to their family home this week orphaned.

‘After the news spread, there was a rush to get over to Valencia and support the kids. Now the family have all gathered back in Ireland and I believe one of Thomasina’s sisters has gone to London to look after the children,’ the family friend added.

‘I don’t know what will happen with them. Obviously social services are involved and maybe they’ll end up moving to Ireland or someone will move to them — it’s just too early to say. They were a lovely, really close family.’

Mr and Mrs Tobin, described as the ‘perfect couple’ by friends, had first met almost 20 years ago, when both were working at Nokia in London. While neither native to the capital, they decided to stay put, raising their children in a four-bedroom house close to Greenwich Park.

‘They were such a super chilled couple and family. I can’t believe it,’ one friend in the neighbourhood said this week.

‘They’ve lived in London for years. I think it was a very happy marriage. They seemed the perfect couple. It always looked like they loved each other.’

It was only a few weeks ago that Mrs Tobin, who is one of nine children, had been back to Ireland to celebrate her sister’s 60th birthday. She’d been in ‘really good form’, the family source remembers, and had been looking forward to her forthcoming holiday.

The McArdle family are well known throughout Ireland due to Mrs Tobin’s father, Tommy McArdle, 87, who is the former director of Irish broadcaster RTE and goalkeeper for the Monaghan Football Team in the Fifties and Sixties.

It is unsurprising then how the community of Castleblayney have gathered to support the popular and well-loved family, with hundreds of tributes flooding in memory of the ‘loving and devoted parents’.

A planned ‘Class of 91’ school reunion, organised by Thomasina’s old classmates at the Our Lady secondary school in Castleblayney, the weekend after the tragedy, was called off, with everyone instead meeting for a quiet drink to be ‘mindful of the bereaved families’.

Meanwhile, the former President of Ireland Mary McAleese offered deepest sympathies to ‘all the clan’ adding: ‘what awful grief you all have to bear’.

For while hundreds of mourners expected to gather at the end of next week are still coming to terms with the shock, everybody’s thoughts remain with those two teenagers, navigating their new reality in a family suddenly torn apart.