The last voice note I ever got from Andy was typical of him. Cheerful, rushed, full of plans. “Hi, Nat. Sorry, I’m off to Marbella.
Let’s catch up when I’m back. ”
That was it. The next time I heard about him, he was dead. Andy Bush was forty-eight years old and had built everything he had from nothing.
He grew up a working-class kid in Bristol, the oldest of three, and worked two jobs, nights included, until he slowly got into the gold business. He bought and sold, opened a shop, then two, then three. He was up at five every morning, at the gym before work, always moving, always planning. He used to say you can sleep when you’re dead.
That one turned out to be painfully ironic. I met him in 2010 when I started doing odd jobs for him at his shop in Bristol. He was one of the funniest, most vibrant men I’d ever met. Customers came back for years just because of him.
He had a villa in Estepona, a five-minute walk from the beach, and that was his escape. We’d go cycling, watch the kite surfers, have barbecues. He’d finally found time to enjoy what he’d earned, and he deserved every bit of it. He’d never been given anything.
He earned every penny off his own back. Then he met Micah Kukakova. She walked into his shop looking for a job in 2010. Twenty-four years old, a swimwear model from a village in Slovakia.
At first she seemed lovely, fun, energetic. It was obvious she liked Andy, and soon they started dating. They looked genuinely happy together. But the cracks showed quickly.
She wanted to be with him twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. When he had to go abroad for business and she couldn’t come, she wasn’t happy. When she didn’t get her way, there were fireworks. I’d see her in the shop, raging inside, trying not to show it, her head practically ready to pop off with anger.
She threw things at him. She acted like a spoiled child. She’d argue in front of people, and it was embarrassing. I told Andy once: “If you’re splitting up, you need to watch your back.
She is not right. ”
I will never forget saying that to him. When he finally finished things, he couldn’t even do it harshly. He still paid for her to live somewhere.
He boxed up all her stuff and sent it back to Slovakia, trying to make it as easy as possible for her. Because she was a nutcase. Six months later, Andy had moved on. He was dating Maria Korotaeva, a twenty-year-old Russian student.
Stunning, but with brains in her head, from a wealthy family, not after his money. It was like a breath of fresh air. For everyone else, life had moved on. But not for Micah.
Her jealousy turned into obsession. For months, she bombarded him with lovesick texts and photos. She sent a compilation of pictures of her “undying love” for him. Creepy stuff.
Andy kind of laughed it off, but I think it was really niggling at him. She was a bunny boiler, plain and simple. A week before he died, I texted him: “Andy, you still coming in? ” He’d promised to visit my club in London.
That’s when he sent me the voice note. “Sorry, I’m off to Marbella. ”
Marbella. Not Estepona.
I didn’t think anything of it at the time. On the 5th of April 2014, Andy flew from the UK to Malaga with Maria for a romantic weekend at his villa in Estepona. Their Hummer was delivered to them at the airport. They stopped at a shisha bar for a drink on the way, celebrating the start of their holiday.
Then they drove the thirty minutes to the villa, arriving just before midnight. From the outside, everything looked normal. But Micah had been there for days. She’d broken in and settled in.
The maintenance people had noticed clothes and a pool cushion that hadn’t been there before, but they didn’t think twice. They assumed it was whoever Andy was with. It was normal. The fact that she waited for two days for her ex-partner to come home wasn’t just premeditated.
It was two days of sitting in her rage, thinking about how he’d rejected her, how he’d moved on. By the time he walked through that door, her agitation level was huge. She was seeking retribution. When Andy and Maria entered the villa, the first thing they saw was a bag on the floor of the hallway.
Maria was surprised and went upstairs to check. She saw Micah standing at the top of the stairs in her pajamas. Shocked and disoriented, Maria ran out of the villa, leaving Andy to face her. About six or seven minutes passed.
Then Andy came outside and told Maria to call the police. She couldn’t. Her phone battery was dead. She had to stay outside and charge it.
Andy went back inside. Then she heard the shots. One. Then two more.
Maria didn’t know what she was hearing. She thought it was suitcases falling. She thought maybe there’d been a confrontation, that Andy had told her to get out, that bags were being thrown around. Then Micah came out of the house, fully dressed, very shaken.
She told Maria to get out of the car. She put the bag from the hallway in the Hummer. Maria asked where Andy was. “He’s in the bathroom,” Micah said.
“He said she could take the car. ”
Then Micah drove away in Andy’s Hummer and disappeared. Maria tried to get into the villa. It was locked.
She shouted for Andy. There was no response. So she called Andy’s sister, Rachel, and told her what had happened. Rachel didn’t understand at first.
“Hold on a minute. So you’re telling me she’s come out with the car keys and she’s left with the car, and you think Andy would let her do that? ”
The local police and firemen arrived. They found an open window.
Inside, they found Andy on the floor in a huge pool of blood. He’d been shot three times. One bullet in the left shoulder, two in the head. The gun had been placed in his left hand.
Rachel’s phone call came next. “He’s been shot. He’s dead. ”
She went into autopilot.
She got a taxi to the airport. “You need to hurry up,” she told the driver. “My brother’s just been murdered. ” She sat between a girl and a guy on the plane, feeling like she was going completely mental.
It was the longest two and a half hours of her life. While Andy lay dead, Micah was on the run. An international warrant was issued for her arrest. The police found the Hummer abandoned near a beach in Marbella, locked.
They assumed she’d try to leave the country by the quickest route, but they controlled the flights and got nothing. Then, twenty-four hours after the warrant was issued, she walked into a police station in Slovakia, over three thousand kilometers from the scene of the crime. Her parents’ house. She knew the news was everywhere.
She handed herself in because, as Rachel said, she didn’t trust the Spanish police. She trusted the Slovakian police more with her lies. Her story? Self-defense.
She said Andy got the gun—a . 38—and fired the first shot at her. She said he’d abused her, that she was terrified of him, that he’d threatened her family. She said she had “insurmountable fear.
” She said the gun went off by itself. She turned up at the Slovakian police station with wounds the police suspected she’d inflicted on herself. But the story had holes everywhere. If someone abuses you, you don’t travel to their house in another country and break in.
A normal person after such an event doesn’t get dressed, brush their hair, and put the gun in the victim’s hand. DNA tests proved there’d been no physical contact between them. Maria said that when Micah came out of the house, there was no trace of a fight. Ballistics experts testified that the trigger didn’t allow for accidental shots.
It was impossible for the gun to fire by itself, let alone three times. And the final shot? Andy’s head was thirty centimeters from the floor. He was already falling.
She fired the last bullet into his head to make sure he was dead. Then she placed the gun in his left hand, stole his watch, and took everything else she could carry. Rachel’s rage never faded. “There’s no self-defense in shooting somebody when they’re already on the floor, putting a gun to their head.
She’s a woman hellbent on self-preservation. I think she actually believes her own lies. If she can use an argument that suggests she’s innocent, then she wins. ”
Six weeks after the murder, Micah was extradited to Spain to await trial.
She asked for bail repeatedly, but the judge refused. The evidence pointed more and more towards her guilt. The trial dragged on. Rachel sat in court and looked at Micah.
Micah looked back at her. “I cannot believe you. ”
Micah spent the trial covering her face and crying. But Rachel saw through it.
“One minute she’d be laughing and smiling. The next minute she’d be putting a tissue up to her nose. It was theater. ”
The prosecution pushed for murder—fifteen to twenty years.
The defense pushed for manslaughter—ten to fifteen. They fought about who owned the gun. It was never proven. But the prosecution argued that whether she brought it from Slovakia or found it in the house, she knew where it was.
And in that brief interval when Andy went outside to tell Maria to call the police, she went and got it. If you’re defending yourself, you leave. You don’t go looking for a gun. After five days of courtroom drama, the prosecution’s case was strong.
The jury deliberated for less than a day. Guilty. Guilty. Guilty.
Unanimous. The jury had no trouble deciding it was murder. When the verdict was read, Micah turned into a wailing, screaming mess. Rachel wanted to say, “What have you got to cry about?
You did it. What did you expect? ”
“She’s not sad because she murdered her ex-lover,” Rachel said. “She’s sad because she didn’t get away with it.
She doesn’t feel sympathy, empathy, or compassion for him. She feels fear and self-pity for herself. ”
The prosecution asked for twenty years. The defense asked for absolution and four.
The judge handed down fifteen years and six months. Then she appealed, and the theft of the Hummer charge was removed. She also got credit for handing herself in. Her sentence was reduced to thirteen years and nine months.
Thirteen years and nine months for killing a man who was forty-eight years old. Rachel says it’s not enough. “It’s a shame it doesn’t happen in America, where you take a life and your life gets taken. That’s what would make me feel that’s proper justice.
She can still live her life. But where is Andy’s life gone? Where is Ellie’s dad? ”
Andy’s daughter, Ellie, was nineteen when her father was murdered.
She says she’ll never have her dad to walk her down the aisle. The family’s ordeal is not over. Micah has launched another appeal. The case remains open.
And because the body is considered evidence, the family cannot bring Andy home to the UK. He’s still buried in a Spanish cemetery, miles away from home, with a makeshift headstone. Rachel knows that forgiveness is supposed to be the good thing to do. She knows it from her own soul and spirit.
“I could never forgive her,” she says. “I don’t know how anybody could forgive that. ”
