Camp Crame sources said gang members were overheard boasting during a drinking session after 58-year-old businessman Arturo Picones was abducted last May 3 that they had earned P450,000 for a few days’ work.
The Police Anti-Crime Emergency Response (PACER), the anti-kidnapping unit of the Philippine National Police (PNP), has taken over the case and all the information gathered by other police units has been forwarded to it.
The PACER, however, has kept mum on the Picones kidnap-slaying.
Senior Superintendent Leocadio Santiago, Rizal police director, said they have sought the help of municipal officials of Angono to convince Picones’ family to cooperate in the police investigation.
"The victim was well-known in Angono town and had no known enemies," Santiago told The STAR. "We are trying to talk with the family so we can start our investigation to get his killers."
Picones’ body was recovered in a bamboo plantation in Angono town last May 27. He was buried at the municipal cemetery that same day, but was exhumed the next day for identification by his family.
Chief Superintendent Ernesto Belen, director of the PNP Crime Laboratory, said an autopsy showed that Picones could have been tortured to death, as evidenced by his nose and skull fractures.
Belen said Picones could have been dead for one to two weeks before his body was found stuffed in a plastic sack.
Three armed men seized Picones in front of his Dine-a-Sour restaurant along the Manila East Road in Barangay Pag-asa, Binangonan town at about 2:30 a.m. last May 3.
Witnesses said he was dragged into his Honda Accord and at gunpoint, told to drive on.
Santiago said the car was recovered at the floodway in the boundary of Angono and Taytay towns two to three days after Picones was kidnapped. The car is now back with the Picones family.
According to sources, it was in the same area where members of the Waray-Ilonggo gang were overheard boasting about their P450,000 job.