Suspect in Caloocan girls’ murder falls

MANILA, Philippines - A man accused of murdering his next-door neighbors, a 15-year-old girl and her nine-year-old cousin, in Caloocan City admitted to the crime when he was arrested Thursday night in Albay, police said yesterday.

Gilbert Fulloso, 25, the alleged suitor of second year high school student Diana Rose Liza, “first denied involvement in the crime, but when told of witnesses and evidence linking him to the twin murders, he admitted killing” Liza and Joanna Marie Coronado, a fourth grader, Chief Inspector Rodrigo Soriano told The STAR.

Soriano said Fulloso, whose house in Barangay 12, Dagat-Dagatan is next to that of the victims, claimed he passed by the girls’ house before dawn Sunday and saw the door was open.

Fulloso said he went inside to tell the girls somebody could enter their house but they shouted in fear. He said he panicked, ran to the kitchen and stabbed the girls to silence them. He denied trying to rape the girls.

The victims’ mutilated bodies were found by Coronado’s younger brother at around 6:30 a.m. Liza lived in the house with her aunt but her cousin usually kept her company when her aunt was not around.

Liza was stabbed at least 59 times and her neck was nearly severed from her body. Coronado suffered at least 23 stab wounds. Soriano said medical exam results showed the girls were not raped, though Liza’s pants had been pulled past her knees.

A bloodied knife used in the killings was recovered at the crime scene. Soriano said the door’s padlock had been destroyed and the killer fled without taking anything from the house.

Senior Superintendent Rimas Calixto, Caloocan City police chief, said drops of blood leading to Fulloso’s house, bloodstains in his bathroom and other pieces of evidence “plus the fact that he fled his home bolstered our assumption of his involvement in the twin murder.”

Calixto said that on Nov. 25, at 3 p.m., Fulloso boarded a bus in Quezon City for Albay. He arrived at around 7 a.m. the following day at his aunt’s house in Barangay Cotnogan, Polangui.

He transferred to his grandfather’s house in Villa Patrona in Libon on Nov. 27 but went back the same day to Barangay Cotnogan.

On Nov. 28, he went to Barangay San Pedro in Iriga City and on Nov. 29 he transferred to Barangay Matacon in Polangui, where Soriano and his team, in coordination with local police officers, arrested him at around 8 p.m.

Calixto said yesterday that Interior and Local Government Secretary Manuel Roxas II visited the girls’ wake Thursday afternoon in Dagat-Dagatan. He said that Roxas promised financial assistance for the burial of the victims and urged the police to bring their killer to justice.