Decade-long fight for Ruby Rose ends in suspects’ acquittal

MANILA, Philippines — There is no justice for the death of Ruby Rose Barrameda a decade after her body was found cemented in a steel drum thrown into the waters in Navotas.

The last two remaining suspects, Navotas fishing magnate Lope Jimenez and Ereneo Fernandez, were acquitted by Malabon Regional Trial Court Branch 170 Judge Zaldy Docena after he granted their motions to quash the information and cancel their warrants of arrest in his order dated Dec. 11.  

They were both at large when they sought to cancel their warrants of arrest in the motion dated Aug. 14.

Lope Jimenez owns the Buena Suerte Jimenez Fishing and Trading Corp., where the alleged crime took place more than a decade ago.

The unfinished testimony of state witness Manuel Montero, who escaped from Camp Bagong Diwa in 2013, contributed greatly to the dismissal of the parricide and murder cases since these were filed in court in August 2009.

Montero had tagged Manuel Jimenez III and his father Manuel Jimenez Jr. as the masterminds in the killing of Ruby Rose, supposedly for causing shame to the family in the custody fight over Barrameda and Jimenez III’s children, court records showed.

She was allegedly kidnapped and strangled to death upon the Jimenezes’ orders in the family’s fishing compound in Malabon, before their henchmen dumped her body off the shore in Navotas on March 14, 2007.  It was Montero who in June 2009 pinpointed the location where Ruby Rose’s body was dumped.

The court in 2015 expunged from the records Montero’s testimony because it did not finish direct and cross-examination. Montero did not show up in court from March to May 2015 to complete his testimony.

Montero had also recanted his testimony in a handwritten statement filed before the court on May 12, 2013, weeks after he escaped from witness protection in Camp Bagong Diwa on March 20, 2013.

Before he recanted his testimony, Montero had accused Fernandez, Norberto Ponce and Lennard “Spyke” Descalso of strangling Ruby Rose to death and cementing her upon the orders of the Jimenezes. He accused Lope Jimenez, Jimenez Jr.’s brother, of giving them P50,000 for the killing.

The STAR reached out to Ruby Rose’s sister Rochelle but has not yet received a response.