Friday, October 10, 2014

'INNOCENT.' Bella Ruby Santos is thankful that the charges against her have been dismissed but sad because the killers of six-year-old Ellah Joy Pique remains scot-free. (SUN.STAR PHOTO)


BELLA Ruby Santos, the woman accused in the kidnap-slay of six-year-old Ellah Joy Pique in 2011, is now free.
Regional Trial Court Judge Ester Veloso of Branch 6 ordered the dismissal of the case against Santos, saying that the prosecution failed to establish the identity of the criminal.
Veloso’s order stemmed from the demurrer to evidence that Santos’s lawyer Rameses Villagonzalo filed in May this year.
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In that pleading, Villagonzalo said the case “is based on a lie, a frame-up.”
Disappointed
“We cried. We are so disappointed,” said Renante Pique, Ellah Joy’s father, upon learning of the dismissal.
Santos’s British boyfriend and co-accused in the case, Ian Charles Griffiths, is still charged with the killing of Ellah Joy because the court has not acquired jurisdiction on him.
Santos said she thanks the Lord that the charges against her have been dismissed. Santos, who maintains she is innocent, also said she is sad that Ellah Joy’s killers remain scot-free.
Villagonzalo said Griffiths has been informed about the dismissal of the case; the latter said he glad about the court’s decision.
Santos’s lawyers said they will study the possibility of filing charges against law enforcement agencies that tagged her as the suspect in the crime.
For online porn?
Santos and Griffiths were accused of conspiring to abduct and murder Ellah Joy for their supposed online pornographic business.
Citing testimonies of their witnesses, police said Pique was allegedly grabbed by a big male foreigner and his Filipina companion outside her school in Minglanilla last Feb. 8, 2011. Her body was found dumped the following day at the bottom of a cliff in Barili, Cebu.
Santos was arrested inside a mall in Manila on Oct. 7, 2011, while Griffiths is in London, England.
In April last year, the court allowed Santos to post a P500,000-bail because the prosecution failed to present any evidence to show “what happened to (Ellah Joy) after she boarded the vehicle, where she was brought, or who was with her all that time.”
In the demurrer, Villagonzalo also pointed out that the 55 DNA samples taken from Santos’s house in the City of Naga and from her car yielded negative results of Ellah Joy’s DNA.
“It is conclusive that (Ellah Joy) had never been at the house and in Santos’s Pajero at any given time,” it read.





Cebu judge frees woman in 2011 kidnap-slay case | Sun.Star