Category: crime

surreal justice

UPDATE:  stats for revisiting hubert webb spiked like mad, through the ceiling, the day he was acquitted.   which is good. people are googling and reading up on the case.   read, too, katrina’s piece on pinky and press ethics.   i love pinky webb.   what a class act.   (krissy leaky, take note.)

***

i cheered 10 years ago when hubert webb et al were found guilty of the vizconde massacre by the paranaque regional trial court.   i cheered yesterday when hubert webb et al were acquitted by the supreme court.

i hate to admit it but yes all through the 90s it was easy to be swept up in the trial by publicity that projected hubert and the gang as rich boys getting away with murder and that clamored for their heads a la jaime jose et al who raped maggie de la riva in 1967 and were electrocuted in 1972.

but there was a lot i didn’t know then that i learned over the years, thanks mostly to winnie monsod who kept track of the case and never faltered in her belief that hubert was innocent.   i also didn’t learn until recently that alfaro was an nbi asset.   and the loss of the semen sample from carmela was just too suspicious…

so it’s back to square one , with just six months to go before it’s too late.   i suggest that a million bucks be offered for information re the true killers.   surely someone out there knows something s/he’s not telling.

revisiting hubert webb

after catching most of cheche lazaro’s Dalawang Mukha ng Hustisya the other night, napaisip naman ako.   impossible not to be touched by the webb family’s stories and how they’ve never let up on loving, caring for, and visiting hubert in jail and believing in, swearing to, his innocence.   what if he IS innocent?

of course nakakadurog din naman ng puso ang nangyari sa vizconde mother and daughters.   impossible not to sympathize with the aggrieved husband and father and to understand why he agonizes over the webbs’ continuing appeal for reconsideration — if hubert et al are innocent, then who violated and massacred his loved ones, and why are they walking free?

so i was googling the case all day yesterday to refresh my memory and here are some worthy links:

pinoyexchange.com  forum december 30 1999 to january 8, 2000 :
The Vizconde Verdict

The Manila Times’ 2005 Special Report :
Questions linger in Vizconde case, Part I
Huberts main defense: ‘I was in California’ Part II

solita “winnie” monsod’s 2007 Inquirer column :
Hope for Hubert Webb

Sunday Inquirer Magazine’s 2008 feature :
The Vizconde Case

The Manila Times april 2010 report :
High Court reopens Vizconde massacre case

ramon tulfo’s april 2010 Inquirer column:
I Swear on Hubert Webb’s innocence

ramon tulfo’s may 2010 Bandera column :
Bakit ako atat na atat sa Vizconde Massacre?

winnie monsod’s june 2010 Inquirer column :
The case of the missing semen sample

cesar m. de los reyes’s letter to the editor, response to winnie :
Deprived of chance to prove innocence

alex magno’s july 2010 philippine star column :
DNA

pinoyexchange.com forum in reaction to cheche’s docu : The Vizconde Massacre: Do you believe that Hubert Webb is guilty?

also i found two links with information new to me.   the first from a pdf doc. “A Son, a Father and a Terrible Night” by Tamara de Guzman (google “When I first followed this crime, I believed Hubert Webb was guilty…”) where Freddie Webb is quoted as saying:

Partly because of my being in politics, my son got caught in the middle,” he finally said. “There were Indian nationals who were developing drugs in Las Piñas City, They were caught by the NBI (National Bureau of Investigation) and were locked up. I accidentally discovered a plan to free them and I exposed it. The investigation led back to their financier who has connections high up in the government. They got back at me through Hubert.

which was never reported by mainstream media (if memory serves), but was confirmed seconded by a commenter on ellen tordesilla’s blog:

Mike – February 12, 2010 1:27 am

With regards to Hubert Webb, I don’t think he is guilty of the crime (Vizconde massacre). Napaginitan si Senator Webb ng NBI coz pinakialaman niya yung kaso ng mga Indian drug traders who were in the custody of the NBI then and pinatakas. I think there were 12 of them Indian nationals. It was then Rep. Webb who asked for the investigation of the incident.

the second link is more recent.   a feb 2010 gmanews.tv report of senators probed for unethical/questionable conduct has this interesting detail:

In 1996, during the 10th Congress, Senator Freddie Webb was investigated for alleged abuse of authority and probable violation of laws in the employment of his son Hubert Webb in the Senate Electoral Tribunal.

This was after Webb claimed that his son, a suspect in the celebrated Vizconde massacre, was in the United States from March 9, 1991 to October 28, 1992 when his daily time record showed that he went to work, from 9 am to 6 pm.

The younger Webb was found guilty of the murder.

so.   senator webb was not found guilty.  i suppose it was punishment enough that his son was found guilty in the vizconde case?   the  senator must have soooo regretted falsifying time records (okay, if in fact he did), lalo na if these time records were known to the prosecution and the judge who rejected all evidence that hubert was out of the country.

just the same.   i find it strange that the court found alfaro, biong, his mistress, and the two webb housemaids more credible than the u.s. state department, immigration, the fbi, etc.   kasi daw the latter’s documents could have easily been faked.   really?   all of them?  wasn’t it much much easier to bribe the so-called witnesses into concocting that wild story of drugs, sex, and crime?

what i remember most about the 2000 verdict was that it was more sensational than surprising.   thanks to two carlos caparas films — The Vizconde Massacre: God Help Us! in 1993 starring kris aquino as carmela, and The Untold Story: Vizconde Massacre Two – May The Lord Be With Us in 1994 starring vina morales — the public was just oh-so-primed to see hubert hang.

teehankee panky — lessons from maureen

wikipedia‘s version of what happened the night when 16-year old maureen hultman with friends roland john chapman and jussi leino were accosted and shot in cold blood by claudio teehankee jr. is accurate enough.

Court records show that Roland John Chapman, Maureen Hultman, and another friend, Jussi Leino, were coming home from a party at around three o’clock in the morning of July 13, 1991. Leino was walking Hultman home along Mahogany street in Dasmariñas Village, Makati City when Teehankee came up behind them in his car. He stopped the two and demanded that they show some identification. Leino took out his wallet and showed Teehankee his Asian Development Bank ID. Teehankee grabbed the wallet. Chapman, who was waiting in a car for Leino, stepped in and asked Teehankee: “Why are you bothering us?” Teehankee drew out his gun and shot Chapman in the chest, killing him instantly. After a few minutes, Teehankee shot Leino, hitting him in the jaw. Then he shot Hultman on the temple before driving away. Leino survived and Hultman died two months later in hospital due to brain hemorrhages caused by the bullet fragments. Teehankee was arrested several days later on the testimony of several witnesses. The witnesses were Domingo Florence and Agripino Cadenas, private security guards, and Vincent Mangubat, a driver, all three being employs of residents of the village.”

but if memory serves, there’s much more to the story that bears telling, that’s worth sharing specially with the young. if maureen had lived to tell the tale, i dare think that she would have warned every teenager from making the same mistakes she made that awful awful night. such as, going out without permission, as in making takas, defying parental rule, thinking that parents exaggerate how unsafe it can get, refusing to believe that there are evil forces out there, evil as in dark and mad and criminal.

then again who would have thought nga naman that she was in any danger. she was in the company of two male friends seeing her safely home, except that they never made it. a few houses (a block or two?) before hers she got off to walk the rest of the way, the more quietly to sneak back in, or the easier to explain?  or maybe maureen and jussi just thought a walk would be pleasant, why not, they were in dasmarinas village, well-secured enclave of the rich and powerful, nice tree-lined street, perfect for quiet paseos, oye oye.

as it turned out the rich village was not safe from its own. evil was literally lurking in the shadows, cruising around with a gun, looking for victims. bobbin teehankee must have fancied himself a cop, maybe a vigilante, who knows what was going on in his twisted mind. he must have seen maureen and jussi get out of the car and walk on. he must have concluded that the two were up to no good. or maybe it was a racist thing, maybe he had/has a thing against whites. or maybe it was their youth? their beauty? their hormones? who knows what was going on in his twisted mind. who knows what he thought he was ridding the world of. or maybe he was just bored with practice-shooting, he wanted to fire at real people for a change, just like in the movies. who knows what was going on in his crazy twisted mind.

and now he’s free again. too soon. says philippine star‘s jose c. sison:

Claudio Teehankee Jr. He was sentenced to one count of reclusion perpetua and two counts of reclusion temporal. Reclusion perpetua entails imprisonment of 20 years and one day to 40 years while reclusion temporal is from 12 years and one day to 20 years….

Following the pronouncement of the DOJ, the executive clemency extended to Teehankee Jr. was clearly more of a commutation of his sentence. He was not pardoned. He was freed on October 2, 2008 because he was considered to “have already served his full term” by virtue of the order of the President dated September 9, 2008 commuting his sentence. According to DOJ Secretary Gonzalez, Teehankee Jr. had already served more than 21 years because his detention in the Makati jail during the trial of his case prior to his transfer to the National Penitentiary was included in the computation of the time he has served….

But the controversy lingers because of some unanswered questions. Considering that there are three sentences meted against Teehankee Jr. for the three offenses he has committed, which of these sentences was commuted? Under the law, these penaltiesare to be served successively in the order of their severity although their maximum period cannot exceed 40 years (Article 70 Revised Penal Code). Hence, it can be inferred that only the severest penalty which is reclusion perpetua that has a maximum period of 30 years has been commuted to 21 years, unless it is expressly stated that all three sentences have been commuted. Unfortunately Gonzalez is vague on this issue.”

another 20 years in jail to pay for the murder of chapman and and the attempt on leino sounds just about right to me. at least by the time it’s done, he’d be too old to cruise and play deadly cop.

as for the joker senator‘s comment that gma’s teehankee-panky is no different from the erap pardon — no way. erap’s case was political – his freedom poses no threat of violence to any life. teehankee’s case was criminal — he killed not once, but twice, almost thrice, in the space of a few minutes.  society needs to be assured not only that he has been punished enough but that he has been cured of whatever dis-ease ails him.  also it would be great if he were prohibited from carrying a gun for any reason ever after. otherwise, is the community safe from this man who is at large again?