Former Batangas Rep. Edgar Mendoza and his two companions were served with coffee laced with sleeping tablets before they were killed and burned by a group hired by two convicts presently detained at the New Bilibid Prison (NBP), police bared on Thursday.
Gen. Archie Gamboa, chief of the Philippine National Police PNP), said probers solved the slay case following the arrest of five of the six persons involved in the execution of the former solon.
The charred bodies of Mendoza, a lawyer, and his driver Nicanor Mendoza and bodyguard Ruel Ruiz were found inside the former congressman’s burned car on a bridge in Barangay San Francisco, Tiaong, Quezon on Jan. 9.
Police said the arrested persons were part of the six-man group hired by NBP prisoners Sherwin Sanchez and Arthur Fajardo to kill Mendoza.
The main suspect, murder convict Sanchez, opted to have Mendoza skilled instead of paying millions of money to the lawyer for various legal services, according to Brig. Gen. Joel Napoleon Coronel, director of the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group (CIDG).
“The two other companions of Attorney Mendoza were collaterals,” said Coronel in a press briefing at Camp Crame.
Coronel said Mendoza served as a legal counsel for Sanchez when he was charged with murder of which he was convicted in 2015. Mendoza also handled various legal matters for Sanchez from financial transactions to real properties.
At the time of his death on January 8, Coronel said that Mendoza was supposed to collect the millions of legal fees Sanchez owed him. It was then that he was killed.
Based on the CIDG investigation, Sanchez sought the assistance of his fellow convict Arthur Fajardo for the manpower to kill Mendoza in order to spare himself from paying millions.
Sanchez was reportedly getting impatient for the alleged unfulfilled promise of Mendoza to have him released from jail.
Fajardo and Sanchez, according to Coronel, appeared to have developed friendship inside the NBP since 2015.
Fajardo, a convicted leader of the notorious Fajardo kidnap-for-ransom group, agreed and tapped his wife Jael to mobilize people to carry out the killing.
THE EXECUTION
The plan was to lure Mendoza to go to the house of the Fajardos in a subdivision in Calamba City by telling the lawyer that it was where he would be paid.
Before he went missing, the family of Mendoza told the police that he was supposed to meet a client in Calamba City – which became the lead for the police to piece together the story.
Jael, the wife of Fajardo, tapped two of her house helpers to carry out the plan. They were Kristine Fernandez and Madonna Palermo.
Police said the plan was to serve the three victims with coffee concocted with sleeping tablets. The coffee was served by Palermo.
When the three victims fell asleep as a result of the sleeping tablets, it was then that they were all hit with blunt objects on the head by Rodel Mercado, reportedly a cousin of Sanchez.
“When the victims were being transported to Tiaong, Quezon where their bodies were burned, they were already dead,” said Coronel.
On the way to Tiaong, Mercado reportedly still stabbed the three victims.
Upon reaching a remote area near a bridge in Tiaong, it was then that the bodies were burned at the backseat of the car.
THE ARRESTS
Coronel said they were able to piece together the story of the death of Mendoza through a text message with his family. He said that the good lead started when they were able to track down the house of the Fajardos as the place where Mendoza went before his charred body was found.
In the inquiry at the guardhouse of the subdivision, it was confirmed that Mendoza’s driver left his driver’s license which is required before entry to gated subdivisions.
One of the house helpers, according to Coronel, began spilling the beans when police started the questioning.
Fernandez and Palermo were arrested for their participation in the crime, and it was then that they reportedly squealed the names of Rodel Mercado, Carlo Acuna, and Erickson Balbastro.
Acuna and Balbastro reportedly participated in the transportation of the cadavers to Tiaong. They were both arrested.
Mercado, on the other hand, remains at large.
As for Jael Fajardo, Coronel said that she surrendered to the police with the help of a police official assigned at the CALABARZON (Cavite, Laguna, Batangas, Rizal, Quezon) regional police.
“By our own parameters on crime solution and crime clearance, this case is considered solved and is now elevated to the prosecution arm of the justice system,” said Gamboa.
A case of three counts of murder were filed against the suspects, including Sherwin Sanchez and Arthur Fajardo. (Aaron Receunco)
