Cop behind QC beheadings?

The case of three beheaded teenage boys took a new twist yesterday after illegal drugs got into the picture.

This developed as operatives of the Central Police District (CPD) arrested three suspects for the gruesome killings of three boys whose headless bodies were found dumped in a grassy vacant lot in a village in Sta. Monica, Novaliches, Quezon City last Monday night.

Superintendent Phimore Balmaceda, CPD spokesman, told reporters that the suspects are being interrogated about their alleged involvement in the crime.

Balmaceda noted that witnesses positively pinpointed the three suspects as the persons who abducted the three boys from a computer shop at the corner of Tandang Sora and Commonwealth avenues in Quezon City on April 10.

He, however, refused to reveal the names of the suspects and how they were arrested, pending further investigation.

But sources told The STAR that witnesses went to the National Bureau of Investigation and divulged the information about the suspects. NBI agents and CPD policemen arrested the suspects during a joint operation in an undisclosed place.

Talk circulating at CPD headquarters in Camp Karingal suggested that a policeman could be behind the gruesome killings of the boys.

It was gathered that the policeman allegedly had the three killed to get back at one of the boys who failed to remit drug money.

Investigators refused to say who among the three failed to remit drug money, though they hinted that 16-year-old Kenny Azana could have been an unfortunate companion of the "courier."

However, when The STAR interviewed Chief Inspector Rodolfo Jaraza, chief of the CPD-Criminal Investigation Division (CID), he admitted to have heard the "talk" among his men.

"Narinig ko rin yan (I’ve also heard about that)," Jaraza noted. "But we have yet to consider the illegal drugs angle. Though, if that lead persists, we have to work on it."

This developed as the second headless body was finally claimed from the Prudential Funeral Parlor by relatives. The victim was identified as Rolando Pupanes Jr., 18, by relatives from 21 Purok 5, Tabon Malaria, Caloocan City.

Pupanes’s relatives were able to identify the boy’s body through his tattoo "Jhun Booba" on the right side of his chest. Pupanes’s body was described earlier by the police as 18 years old, dark complexion and about 5’3" tall.

Jaraza said they were closely coordinating with the relatives of Pupanes to determine the last time the boy was seen alive and who were the people that could have abducted and killed him.

Now that relatives have claimed Pupanes’s body, only the third victim described as 12 to 15 years old and of slim build remained unidentified. All their heads remain missing.

Azana’s parents identified the boy on Tuesday morning, 10 hours after the three headless bodies were found.