A police lieutenant colonel was arrested after he admitted to killing and dismembering his fellow cop he allegedly caught having an intimate relationship with his wife in Camp Bagong Diwa in Taguig City.
The suspect, Police Lt. Col. Roderick Pascua, 45, assigned to the Eastern Police District, has undergone inquest proceedings for the brutal murder of Police Executive Master Sgt. (PEMS) Emmanuel Ballos de Asis, 55, assigned to Puerto Princesa Police Station.
Taguig police chief Police Col. Joey Goforth said Pascua confessed to killing De Asis on Nov. 28 in the presence of his wife, 44, also a PEMS detailed at the National Capital Region Police Office.
The killing happened inside the couple’s rented apartment in Camp Bagong Diwa.
In his extrajudicial confession, Lt. Col. Pascua said he shot De Asis “after discovering the two engaged in intimate relations,” according to the police report.
After shooting De Asis, Pascua instructed his wife to get a hacksaw, which he later used in cutting De Asis’ body into pieces.
Pascua then packed the remains in rice sacks, and transported and buried them in his ancestral home in Barangay Pucsusan, Baguio City.
Following Pascua’s confession, police operatives exhumed the remains of De Asis on Thursday, Dec. 5, and brought them to the Cosmopolitan Funeral Services in Baguio City.
Police said they started investigating the case after the victim’s son, a police captain, reported his father as missing.
Thorough review of the victim’s cellphone tracking app and CCTV footage led to the identification and confession of the suspect, police said.
Pascua is currently in the custody of the Taguig Police Station.
The incident has sparked outrage and grief in De Asis’ family, particularly within the influential Freemasonry Fraternity, of which the victim was a member. (Jonathan Hicap, JJ Landingin)
