How Colin Armstrong escaped from Ecuador kidnapping ordeal

When this wealthy 79-year-old British expat and his model girlfriend were abducted for ransom in Ecuador, suspicion fell on her. But the truth was even stranger.

British businessman Colin Armstrong, and his girlfriend Katherin Santos in Samborondon, Ecuador. Picture: Karen Toro

With his vintage wardrobe and old-school charm, Colin Armstrong, an opera-loving businessman who for years served as Britain’s honorary consul in Ecuador, might have stepped out of a 1960s Bond film. The moustache is slim and closely trimmed above the lip. His ­diction is ­impeccably crisp.

His genteel civility is at odds these days with Ecuador’s brutal landscape. In the early hours of December 16, 2023, his life was violently upended when kidnappers disguised as policemen broke into his weekend home, a 1600ha ranch an hour outside the city of Guayaquil. “There’s nothing scarier than waking up with armed men in your bedroom,” says Armstrong, 79.

He had spent much of the previous day on the ranch riding Leopoldo, a grey quarter horse – his favourite. He and his 30-year-old Colombian girlfriend, Katherine Paola Santos, had hosted a dinner party for friends, retiring to bed at 1am. Snoopy, the beagle, who slept on the bed, raised the alarm with his barking.

“I could see several figures in the dark,” Armstrong says. “They grabbed us, so I tried to hit one of them, but what strength do I have?” The intruders put plastic ties around his wrists – “They hurt like hell,” he says.

He was naked so they wrapped him in a sheet before dragging him and Santos, in her underwear, downstairs. They demanded the keys to Armstrong’s BMW, shoved the couple inside and drove away, smashing through a locked gate. It was the start of a terrifying four-day ordeal, a story with an exotic setting and a colourful cast of characters – complete with a gravel-voiced gang leader – that could be straight out of some narco thriller.

The kidnapping put the former consul, who retired from the post in 2016, and Kate, as he calls his girlfriend, under an intense media spotlight. Their relationship – and their five-decade age gap – had already raised eyebrows in his social circle. Now social media began to buzz with unfounded rumours that she was somehow involved in the abduction. She has denied it and Ecuadorian investigators found no evidence to suggest a link between her and the 15 armed men who kidnapped them.

“God knows why they needed so many,” Armstrong says, in his first interview since the kidnapping. “It’s not as if I had guards or defences at the ranch; anybody could have walked in.”

Millionaire Colin Armstrong at his ranch outside Guayaquil, from where he was kidnapped, in 2020. Pictrue: Supplied

The banana-producing country of Ecuador was once considered a haven of peace in a ­volatile region, attracting tourists who wanted to see the Andes and to retrace Darwin’s route through the Galapagos islands. But now it has become a killing field for a plethora of armed gangs fighting for control of lucrative cocaine trafficking routes into Europe, some of which have forged links with powerful cartels abroad. With the state struggling to maintain even an illusion of control, the gangs also engage in ­extortion and kidnapping. Armstrong, with his conspicuous wealth, was an obvious target.

He grew up on a grand estate in Yorkshire that’s been in his family for generations, but ­decided not to take over the family business – “I didn’t want to be a racehorse trainer,” he says. Instead he got a job with the chemical giant ICI, which sent him to South America 50 years ago. He never looked back. He was seconded by ICI to a company called Agripac, which, years later, he ended up buying. It’s now one of the biggest companies in Ecuador, selling agricultural supplies such as fertiliser and animal feed from its headquarters in Guayaquil, a sweltering city on a broad, coffee-coloured river that bears clumps of water hyacinths in its current.

“People had warned me many times not to follow the same route to work each day, or to the ranch at weekends – and to use an armoured vehicle with an escort,” Armstrong tells me in his huge, book-lined office in Guayaquil. “But I always laughed off the threat of kidnap. Then it happened.”

He fell for Kate, a pole-dancing fitness ­fanatic, in 2013. “It was love at first sight,” he says, describing how she came to his office to audition for a role in the company’s calendar, requiring a different pose for each month, sometimes as a “cowgirl”. Kate had grown up poor in Colombia, and arrived in Ecuador aged 15 with a 40-year-old dentist for whom she worked as an assistant, until branching into modelling. “The best thing about her was that, unlike other models who auditioned for the job, she always smiled,” Armstrong says. “And she didn’t complain when told she’d have to be photographed on a horse.” They began an ­affair, which caused a rift with ­ his ­Ecuadorian wife of 50 years, Cecilia, and their three children. ­Divorce has never occurred to him, though. “I still love my wife,” he says.

Eccentric and self-effacing, he readily admits to dyeing his hair: “I’m trying to recapture my youth,” he says with a grin – the same response he gives when asked about the age difference with Kate.

The kidnapping has only deepened the rift within the family, who have refused to discuss it in public. Talking about it is difficult for Armstrong too. At one point his voice cracks. “Sorry, it’s all still a bit raw,” he says, placing a hand over his eyes, before continuing his narrative.

The gunmen drove for hours through the countryside, switching cars several times to avoid being tracked. Eventually they came to a remote farm. The couple were shoved into a room with several mattresses on the floor and furniture blocking the window. “They cut the tags off my wrists,” Armstrong says. “My arms were black and twice their size, quite horrid.” The kidnappers asked if they had microchips in their bodies. “People have them inserted so they can be tracked in case of kidnap,” Armstrong explains. “We said no but we were ­terrified they’d produce a razor to find out.”

Another worry was that the kidnappers might slice off fingers or ears to send to his family as a grim inducement to pay a ransom. “Just a week before, there’d been a kidnap case in which they took three of the victim’s fingers. I couldn’t stop thinking of all the unpleasant things they might do to me.” One of his captors told him they were the ­Tiguerones, or Big ­Tigers. It was alarming news: the gang has a reputation for violent killings.

I am offered a fascinating insight into the world of Ecuador’s gangs when I’m introduced in a hotel to a man in an orange baseball cap and white shorts, his leg nervously bouncing up and down. A member of one of the main gangs of Guayaquil, the Choneros, he is leading a dangerous double life, working as an informant for the police. “Kidnapping is just a sideline,” he explains. Control of drug trafficking routes through the big ports is the main game. “This city today is like a magnet for [crime] organisations from all over the world. It’s getting very violent; there are Albanians, the Russian mafia, Italians too. It’s no country for amateurs.”

Ecuador’s unravelling has its roots in turmoil beyond its borders. In 2016, neighbouring ­Colombia’s peace accord with the communist FARC guerrillas ended a decades-long conflict but also fractured into a criminal ecosystem; former rebels splintered into groups that ­pushed cocaine production deeper into border areas and across the frontier into Ecuador. The slow collapse of Mexico’s once-dominant Sinaloa cartel, meanwhile, left a power vacuum in the region’s drug trade. Into that space surged a patchwork of small, volatile Ecuadorian groups.

Some are acting as local enforcers and partners for the powerful criminal organisations from abroad, which are attracted to Ecuador for its lax financial oversight, dollarised economy and ports. The gang member in the hotel tells me he has even heard news of a Chinese crime group trying to seize a slice of the market.

In the early 2020s the violence slowly escalated. Then came the jolts that ­captured the world’s attention. In August 2023 presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio, a fierce critic of the cartels, was assassinated while out ­campaigning. Prisons became battlegrounds in which gangs fought for dominance with shocking brutality; dismemberments, beheadings and massacres in jails were filmed and shared online. In January 2024 President ­Daniel Noboa declared a state of emergency, deploying the army on the streets. The murder rate fell abruptly, ­although it shot up again in the first three months of this year. Ecuador now has the highest murder rate in Latin America, with nearly twice as many killings as Mexico.

Armstrong (right) on December 20, 2023 after he was freed by his abductors. Picture: Supplied

General Pablo Dávila, Guayaquil’s police chief, sits in a camouflage jacket looking over the city’s latest crime statistics. “Fatales, Águilas, Mafia 18, Latin Kings, Freddy Kruegers, Chone Killers,” he says, reading out a list of gangs he says are responsible for “the big jump in killing this year”. The Fatales, he notes, are particularly nasty; they decapitate their victims then rip out their hearts. Heads are sent to ­girlfriends or wives. Hearts are deposited on the doorsteps of the parents. TikTok has become a stage for their brutality.

“I fear we’ll end up like Haiti,” says Lieutenant Colonel Roberto Santamaria, another police official, referring to the Caribbean country where gangs are in control of entire regions.

Armstrong had been going out with Kate for three years when, in 2016, he stepped down as honorary consul. “It was quietly suggested to me it might be time to move on,” he says. The ambassador in Quito, the capital, picked Armstrong’s son Nick to replace him.

Armstrong Snr had fulfilled the role for 35 years. Along the way he met a few British royals – Charles, Camilla, Andrew and Anne. The ­hottest social ticket in Guayaquil was the ­annual party hosted by Armstrong at his Rodeo Grande ranch to mark the Queen’s birthday, for as many as 500 guests. “They were lovely events. We’d have a piper,” he says, his eyes misting over. Nowadays, he complains, the UK Foreign Office is “a shadow of what it used to be”. The ambassador lives in a flat in Quito, rather than the “huge residence” of yesteryear. “In Quito they had to do the Queen’s birthday in a hotel,” he adds. Not only that – on a visit to Britain once, he dropped in on his favourite ­former Ecuador envoy. “I found him washing his own car,” he says with a hint of disapproval.

I bring him back to the kidnapping.

It seemed to Armstrong that his abductors had not planned to take his girlfriend prisoner; she’d insisted on going with him, saying: “He’s an old man, I need to look after him or he’ll die.” He adds: “She’s a bit like my nurse.” The scuffle at the ranch caused a cut on the “brittle skin” of his arm. Kate told the men he needed antiseptic cream on it to stop it becoming infected.

The next day the kidnappers brought Kate a military-style jacket with lots of pockets and told her to put it on. They said it was stuffed with explosives. The flashing red light was a detonator. Her job was to deliver a phone to Armstrong’s son Nick, who should answer it when they called him. “They said, ‘If you go anywhere near a police station we will know, and we’ll detonate the vest,’” Armstrong says. They drove her to the edge of Guayaquil, then gave her $20 to get a taxi to Nick’s house.

The explosive jacket seems to have been a fake. After reaching Nick’s gated compound to hand over the phone, police explosives experts were summoned. “One came up to me holding out a pair of scissors and told me to cut one of the wires,” she says. “He then ran away.” When she cut the wire, the red light stopped flashing. After a police interrogation she went home to her flat, where she was reunited with her mother. “I was really scared and sad – I didn’t know what was going to happen when I was taken away, leaving you there,” she says to Armstrong when we meet at the couple’s house. “I couldn’t do anything except think of you, praying you were still alive. That gave me hope to carry on. I took a lot of sleeping pills to try to relax.”

In the gang’s safe-house, Armstrong was handed a phone. His captors ordered him to tell Nick, on the other end, to pay $5 million in cash. We’ve got to pay, he told his son. “And Nick replied, ‘Yes, Dad, I’ll do it. Don’t worry, I’ll get you out,’” Armstrong recalls.

Nick, who has a senior position at Agripac, had learnt about his father being snatched within minutes of it happening. One of the ­dinner guests had stayed the night at the ranch and witnessed the kidnapping – he was hit on the head when he tried to intervene. He called Nick as the abductors drove off. Nick alerted the ­British embassy in Quito, which notified David Cameron, the foreign secretary at the time, who told Rishi Sunak, then prime minister. Sunak phoned President Noboa, 37, and urged him to do everything he could.

Armstrong, meanwhile, had been given a pair of filthy old shorts to wear: “Otherwise I would have been in the altogether.” Farm workers coerced by the gang would occasionally bring him pieces of coconut to eat. “One said, ‘We’ve nothing against you but we daren’t let you go.’” Even so, he considered running. But even if he managed to outrun the guards he wouldn’t get far, he reasoned, without shoes and only in shorts.

The kidnappers brought in the phone again. “This time it was a rather unfortunate call,” Armstrong says. A rough-voiced leader of the Tiguerones gang told him bluntly: “I’ve given the order to have you killed.”

Armstrong panicked. “I said, ‘Why? What have I done?’” The gangster replied that nine members of his men had been arrested in Guayaquil and that the “son of a bitch” president was ­vowing to destroy his network. It turned out that despite the gang’s efforts to avoid being tracked, one of its members had carried off Armstrong’s phone – which allowed police to follow him to a hideout where he and eight others were arrested. “That seems quite amateurish in retrospect,” Armstrong says. (Two of those arrested have since been ­murdered in prison, presumably by rival gangs. Another died of natural causes. Three were sentenced to 17 years in jail, and three were ­released for lack of evidence.)

Armstrong was suddenly and inexplicably “full of bravado”, he recalls. “What do you gain from killing me?” he told the gangster down the phone. “Instead of getting any money, the charge against you would be murder.”

Immediately he regretted it. His hands started shaking. “I thought, ‘What have I done? How stupid, because he’s a big boy in the ­Tiguerones – how many murders has he ­already got to his name? One more will not make a bit of difference.’ Then I started to worry. Because every time I heard the chain rattling on the door, I thought, ‘Well, this is it. Asicario [assassin] has come with his gun or knife or whatever they’ll use.”

In The Honorary Consul, Graham Greene’s 1973 novel, the ageing British consul in a small town in Argentina is kidnapped by revolutionaries who mistake him for the American ­ambassador. Freed at the end of the story, he marries his girlfriend, a 20-year-old local he met in a brothel. Happily, Armstrong too was released in the end.

Having understood that Ecuador was descending into lawlessness, he had taken out kidnap and ransom (K&R) insurance. This was de rigueur in the 1990s and 2000s for wealthy Colombians and Mexicans, and is now ­considered essential in Ecuador; no Guayaquil magnate is without it.

Kate Santos on a calendar shoot in 2018, with Armstrong. The horse he is pictured riding was later stolen for its meat. Picture: Supplied

Two hostage negotiation experts from an internationally known security company helped Nick to negotiate the ransom down to a tiny fraction of the $5 million the gang had initially demanded. It appears that the involvement of President Noboa helped: police upgraded the investigation from kidnap to terrorism, allowing Nick to tell the Tiguerones that Agripac’s bank accounts had been frozen and that he could not pay them anything. “The amount came down tremendously and was settled for five figures, not seven,” Armstrong says, declining to specify the amount.

The kidnappers, realising they were not going to get close to what they wanted from Nick, began to pin their hopes on a payout ­directly from Armstrong. At one point they asked him how much cash he kept in his safe. He explained that he had debts and creditors but not much actual money. He added that he could arrange to get cash from sales at his ­Agripac shops around the country, which amounted to about $100,000 a day. But in order to do that they would have to let him go.

“They said, ‘OK, if you give us $500,000 a week over a month, we’ll reduce the amount from $5 million to $2 million.”

Perhaps believing the old adage about an Englishman and his word, they asked him ­several times, “Do you promise?” Armstrong said he did. “So they are rather innocent, these people,” he grins. Then he got a call from the gravel-voiced boss, who said: “You’ve made a promise to pay us $2 million. So I’ll let you out.”

The following evening two gunmen bundled Armstrong into the back of a car and dumped him by a roadside near a brothel, with a last ­reminder to keep his promise. A police car picked him up two hours later after the gang gave them the location. He was taken to see a doctor. “Apart from my arms I was in pretty good shape,” he says.

His wife and daughters were at the front door of the Guayaquil family home to meet him at 4am on December 20, four days after he was seized. Nick, who had barely slept for three days, had gone to bed after hearing his father was free. “We all cried and hugged each other… I badly needed a glass of wine,” Armstrong says. “We opened a bottle and I told them my story.”

The extended family were together for Christmas, too, in England: there, Armstrong faced bitter recriminations over his relationship with Kate. He was told to make a choice. If he did not leave her, he should move out of the family home in Guayaquil. He chose Kate.

The couple went on a trip of a lifetime that ­included wine-tasting in South Africa, visiting mountain gorillas in Rwanda, a journey to the South Pole, a helicopter ride up Everest and a geisha ceremony in Japan. They now live in a new, safer home within a gated community on the outskirts of Guayaquil with 24-hour ­security. When I visit, Snoopy the beagle is waiting by the door. Armstrong calls for ­champagne in quaintly accented Spanish as Kate, a tall figure in white trousers and crop top, descends a sweeping marble staircase like a diva from one of his favourite operas.

Sitting on a tan sofa in front of a giant TV, she ­describes the hurt she felt over being ­labelled a conspirator in the kidnapping. ­“People were cruel,” she says. “I felt very sad that they could make jokes and lie about us at such a terrible time.”

Armstrong, meanwhile, has chronicled the abduction in Kidnap, which is now being sold in the gift shop at the family estate in Yorkshire. Life in Ecuador, though, will never be the same.

When Armstrong discovered Nick had ­already paid a ransom, he decided there was no need to pay the gang anything more. Facial recognition technology has been installed on the doors of his office in Guayaquil. He goes everywhere in an armour-plated 4x4 accompanied by bodyguards, as do his nearest and dearest.

“Kate quite likes it,” he chuckles. “When she goes shopping, they carry her bags.”

He has had to sell his beloved ranch, though. “They told me it was no longer safe to visit. So I could no longer ride Leopoldo, my horse, who has since died. The new owner has sold the 1,000 cattle and cut down my beautiful flowering trees.” He sighs. “The Ecuador where I have lived and worked for 53 years has vanished. It’s a paradise lost.”