Couple charged for killing business partner

THE Office of the Cebu City Prosecutor has indicted an Australian and his Filipina wife for setting on fire an American inside his car last March 17.

Prosecutor Noel Cellona found evidence to charge Craeg Keith Ratcliff with consummated murder for killing 60-year-old American Timothy Avery Wilson.

Ratcliff’s wife, Maria Aisa, was indicted as an accessory to the murder.

The police earlier said that there is a “strong or convincing motive” that Wilson was killed by the couple because of their debt amounting to $700,000 (or about P32 million).

“The death now of the victim made it hard for the Wilson family to collect the huge amount of conjugal (community) indebtedness of the respondents,” said Cellona in his decision.

It was in July this year when Senior Insp. Elisandro Quijano, chief of the police’s Crime Against Person Unit, filed a complaint against the Ratcliff couple before the office of the city prosecutor.

Wilson’s charred body was discovered by firefighters after dousing the flames that engulfed a sports utility vehicle in Sitio Lower Busay, Barangay Busay.

Debt

The vehicle, a Toyota RAV4 model, was owned by Ratcliff.

Ratcliff allegedly owed Wilson US $700,000.

The two were reportedly partners in a mining business. Wilson lived in Barangay Tajao in Pinamungajan, Cebu

The police secured a lending agreement signed by the Ratcliffs, which states that the loan was supposed to be payable in 12 months from Aug.31, 2014 to Aug.31, 2015.

The two witnesses, who are jeepney drivers, executed their affidavit, stating that Ratcliff paid them P2,000 to tow Wilson’s vehicle towards a hotel in Busay.

A witness also saw Ratcliff buying gasoline from a gasoline station across the hotel where the suspect stayed. Replying to the charges, Ratcliff denied the accusations against him, saying that nobody actually saw that he killed Wilson or that he burned the car.

Cellona, however, said that Ratcliff planned to kill Wilson when he took the latter from his hotel supposedly to talk about his debt.

She added that Ratcliff’s wife acted as an accessory to the crime for fetching her husband at the scene where the vehicle was burned.