Matthew Ashley Foster-Smith was taken into custody in Ecuador on Saturday over the killing of Natalia Villalba, a 36-year-old content creator whose body was later found in Bogota. He was arrested at the airport in Quito as he was preparing to fly back to the UK.
The case links Colombia and Ecuador through an Interpol red notice and a police operation that Bogota Mayor Carlso Fernando Galan described as a joint effort by Colombian and British police. Galan said: "This painful case will not go unpunished," after the arrest.
Natalia Villalba in Bogota
Villalba was staying at an apartment in a trendy part of Bogota when she was killed on June 18. Her mother last heard from her that day, and cleaning staff entered her room three days later when her reservation ended. They found her body in a suitcase under a still-running shower.
That sequence matters because it fixes the timeline: the killing, the concealment, and the discovery all happened before Foster-Smith was stopped in Ecuador. Authorities also said he was reportedly caught on CCTV cameras in the same building taking bedsheets to a laundry room around the same time.
Foster-Smith's account
Before his arrest, Foster-Smith gave a different account of where he was when Villalba died. He said: "I was watching England versus Croatia [in the World Cup] on a big screen in an Irish bar, so it wasn’t me." He also said: "After the match I went into the shopping center, I mooched about, bought an ice cream and came back later for the later games."
He said he had received death threats from local gangsters over a debt. Colombian prosecutors allege that Foster-Smith murdered Villalba and tried to hide the evidence before fleeing the scene. The arrest in Quito placed him back inside the investigation before any cross-border transfer or prosecution step was described.
Prior Dorset convictions
Foster-Smith had just gotten out of prison earlier in 2024 after serving more than two years behind bars for stalking in Dorset. He also served an 18-month stint in jail in 2020 for stalking an ex-lover in Dorset and putting revenge porn online.
The record gives police a suspect whose history already includes stalking convictions, while the new case centers on Villalba's death in Bogota and the evidence tied to the apartment building. What evidence specifically links Foster-Smith to the killing is the next question left by the arrest.
