Dropping the ball
As more information comes in, it has becoming increasingly—and disturbingly—clear that the Cebu provincial police dropped the ball on the Ellah Joy Pique kidnap-murder case.
The alibi of the two prime suspects was confirmed by agents of the National Bureau of Investigation who were called in at the last inning.
The findings confound those who want to pin the crime on the Norwegian engineer and his Cebuana nurse-girlfriend, whose love story is taking a nightmarish turn.
The real kicker came in video footage of closed-circuit TV cameras in the Waterfront Lahug Hotel that show Sven Erik Berger and Karen Castro Esdrelon checking in at 4:40 p.m. NBI agents reviewed the tape twice.
How can this makes sense?
The little girl was abducted 15 kilometers away in Minglanilla town by a car-riding couple about 4 p.m.
The time and distance make execution of a heinous kidnapping by this couple a superhuman act.
We earlier pointed out the mystery of what happened to early police descriptions of their target as a “blond” Caucasian man with tattoos and a taste for young prostitutes.
That theory—and a chase through Moalboal town’s beach resorts in the west coast led by tips from a pimp-informant— entered the land of amnesia when airport personnel alerted police that two Hong Kong-bound passengers looked like the artists’ sketches of the perpetrators.
There are disturbing reports as well about how the “police lineup” was conducted, first at the airport where a child and adult informant were shown the detained couple, and again at the police headquarters, where children-witnesses were subjected to repetitive and leading questions.
While direct confirmation of an eye-witness is a gold strike, it doesn’t bolster confidence to see the police relying solely on the account of three schoolkids. They are not natural liars, but they are susceptible to the stress of a criminal investigation and the suggestions of grownups, who so eagerly want to find a culprit.
(We aren’t even talking yet about the taint of bounty money.)
What happened to the black SUV used in the abduction and the partial numbers spotted in the license plate?
Where’s the forensics report on the white bedsheet that wrapped Ellah Joy and the telephone cable cord that tied her body bag?
These omissions—and commissions—point to haste and hurry.
In the police lexicon, a case filed in the prosecutor’s office, is a case “closed”, no matter how sloppy the evidence.
But that’s not the kind of justice the public is looking for.
Even as we grieve and raise indignation over the brutal death of Minglanilla’s “angel”, we do want the truth, not a slap-dash approximation of police sleuthing.