When the dead tell no tales
Chief Gerald Bantag of the Bureau of Corrections got the axe after an alleged middleman in Percy Lapid’s killing died while serving sentence at the New Bilibid Prison.
On orders of President Ferdinand Marcos, Jr. himself, Bantag was suspended from office “to preclude the possibility of exerting undue influence or pressure on the witnesses against you or tampering of documentary evidence on file with your office.”
The quoted order was signed by Secretary Jesus Crispin Remulla of the Department of Justice.
One Crisanto Villamor, Jr. died a few hours after the self-confessed gunman in Lapid’s killing was presented to the media.
Reports say that gunman Joel Escarial’s extrajudicial confession identified Villamor as the middleman who brokered his services in the contract killing of Percy Lapid.
Escarial enumerated the personalities who participated in the planning and execution of the directive to kill Lapid.
Villamor died like he was scheduled to die should the gunman come out to rat on him.
Villamor’s body was embalmed shortly after it was brought to the funeral parlor. This has made any subsequent autopsy, toxicology, or histopathology largely unreliable.
Autopsy on an unembalmed body must be made as soon as possible after death. Is it possible that Villamor was made to ingest poison? Embalming can mislead most toxicology studies. Can a report based on an embalmed body withstand judicial scrutiny?
Forensic pathologist Dr. Raquel Fortun has decried the lack of any death investigation system in this country. Hers is a solitary voice amidst thousands of “tokhang” deaths facing a massive wall that blocks any meaningful investigation and prosecution in the domestic court system.
Fortun’s position reinforces the claim that the Philippines is unable, unwilling, or even incapable to investigate those deaths. This justifies the “intrusion” of the International Criminal Court.
Such a system would have required refrigeration of Villamor’s body pending the conduct of an autopsy. Decomposition or the introduction of chemicals through embalming can drastically alter the story that a dead body can tell.
Secretary Remulla’s preventive suspension order implies that Bantag is now under administrative investigation, at least for command responsibility over Villamor’s suspicious death.
But this can go beyond a mere administrative investigation. It appears that Bantag had also been the subject of Percy Lapid’s pointed commentaries.
In one of his broadcasts, Lapid suggested that a “Cinderella Man” be subjected to a lifestyle check for having acquired unexplained wealth while in public office. The online buzz is that Bantag is “Cinderella Man.”
Strange things had indeed been happening at the BuCor.
Just last August, Remulla ordered the National Bureau of Investigation to probe the deaths of “highvalue” drug convicts who were reported to have died of COVID-19 in 2020 while serving sentence in Bilibid.
Remulla alluded to “a witness who can attest that these inmates did not die of COVID.”
Some of these convicts were ordered transferred to the NBI in 2014 when Leila de Lima was Secretary of Justice after surprise raids of their cells yielded drugs and expensive jewelry.
These convicts were cremated right after their suspicious deaths, ruling out the conduct of autopsy or toxicology that can allow their bodies to say that they were murdered.
The State’s failure to exact accountability for brazen offenses translates to impunity that emboldens the criminally inclined.
The trend is difficult to reverse until our criminal justice system welcomes forensic science as an invaluable tool to solve crimes. It is time we outgrew absolute reliance on unreliable testimonial evidence.