THE two men accused of murdering a Llangollen couple could stand trial within days, it is believed.
Linda and Tony O'Malley were brutally killed in 2002 after flying out to Spain's Costa Blanca to buy their dream holiday home.
The couple are thought to have been kidnapped and forced to empty their bank accounts before they were killed and their bodies dumped in a shallow grave.
It was thought the case could take years to get to court because of a backlog in the Spanish legal system.
But the investigation is now thought to be so advanced that a date could soon be set for the suspected killers, both South Americans, to stand trial. Newspaper reports say a judge investigating the case is about to order Jorge Real Sierra, 55, and Juan Antonio Velazquez Gonzalez, 39, to be tried.
A source said: 'She will pass her findings to the state prosecutor's office and order the two men to stand trial at Alicante criminal court for first degree murder, kidnapping, stealing money under threat and possibly even torture.'
The O'Malleys, who moved from Merseyside to Llangollen, left their home for Manchester airport on August 30. 2002, to catch a flight to Malaga to look for holiday homes.
Their family never saw them alive again.
Linda, 55, and Anthony, 42, should have spent two weeks looking at a string of properties in and around Benidorm for which they had set aside £21,000 for a deposit.
Instead, police believe they were held hostage in the basement of a villa and taken out numerous times to gradually withdraw all their money over two weeks.
Mrs O'Malley was then strangled and her husband was suffocated.
Sierra and Gonzalez were arrested by police in March, 2003, after they were stopped driving a car the O'Malleys had rented for their trip more than six months earlier.
