The four men were ordered to submit themselves to fingerprint examination to determine whether they had a hand in the killing of Jasmin Bailon, 22, and her elder sister, Agnes, 26.
Superintendent Jose Dayco, Antipolo City police chief, withheld the identities of the four friends of prime suspect Jovy Guray.
Dayco said he will order their arrest once their fingerprints matched those lifted inside the Bailon residence.
"We have no other recourse but to release them once they are cleared," he added. The four promised to cooperate fully in the investigation.
Police are strongly pursuing the revenge angle because Guray allegedly made known his intention to get even with Agnes who pursued the robbery case that landed him behind bars.
Guray snatched Agnes’ cell phone last December and she had him arrested after seeing him in their neighborhood. Guray is out on bail.
Dayco ruled out robbery as a motive in the sisters’ slaying, noting that except for Jasmin’s cell phone, not a single expensive item was found missing inside the Bailons’ house at Lot 5, Block 4 in Sitio Dalig Uno, Barangay Dalig.
Jasmin’s boyfriend, Arnold Jaurigue, 27, said he tried to call up his girlfriend to inquire why she was not answering his text messages, but the cell phone holder pushed a wrong button.
"Sa katatawag ko, siguro nagkamali ng pindot ang may hawak ng cell phone at narinig ko ang boses ng babae at may batang umiiyak sa background. Pero mabilis lang yon (Due to my incessant calls, the cell phone holder probably pushed the wrong button, but I heard a woman’s voice and a child was crying in the background. But it was for a brief moment)," Jaurigue told investigators.
It was Jaurigue who discovered the victims’ bodies at about 8:30 a.m. Friday. He said he rushed back to his girlfriend’s residence after their sister Marlou "texted" him from Masbate that her trip to Manila was postponed.
Jasmin, a ticketing clerk of the Cebu Pacific Airlines, was stabbed 12 times, while Agnes, a medical technology graduate at the Centro Escolar University (CEU), had 16 stab wounds.
Jasmin was naked from the waist down while an electrical cord was looped around the neck of Agnes.
Two witnesses — a high school student and a 60-year-old man — claimed they saw Guray, along with some companions, in the neighborhood hours before the Bailons’ bodies were discovered.
Dayco has dispatched three teams of crack police operatives to track down and arrest Guray.