EDITORIAL - Whodunit?

Maybe they raped each other and then killed themselves. That was a common observation after the Supreme Court acquitted the other day all the men serving life terms for brutally murdering Estrellita Vizconde and her children Carmela, 18, and Jennifer, 7 on June 30, 1991. Estrellita, 47, bore 13 stab wounds; Jennifer had 19.

Carmela, who suffered 17 stab wounds, was also raped. DNA tests could have established the identity of her assailant, but no one knows what has happened to the rapist’s specimen taken as evidence from her body. The National Bureau of Investigation said it turned over the specimen to the Parañaque Regional Trial Court in 1996; RTC staff told the Supreme Court that it didn’t have the evidence.

Several other pieces of physical evidence that could have established individual guilt were also destroyed by the investigator at the crime scene, Gerardo Biong of the Parañaque police. Biong at least paid for the destruction of evidence, spending more than a decade behind bars. He served his sentence and was freed last Nov. 29.

But the evidence Biong destroyed, whether willfully or because of sheer incompetence, was irretrievable. The Supreme Court also doubted the credibility of the prosecution’s star witness, NBI agent Jessica Alfaro, citing inconsistencies during her court testimony. The SC, voting 7-4 with four abstentions, noted that the guilt of the convicted men had not been established beyond reasonable doubt, and reversed the ruling of the Parañaque judge who originally ruled on the case, Amelita Tolentino. The judge had been promoted to the Court of Appeals when the CA affirmed the conviction of Hubert Webb, Michael Gatchalian, Hospicio Fernandez, Peter Estrada, Antonio Lejano and Miguel Rodriguez.

The SC emphasized that acquittal did not necessarily mean innocence. The Department of Justice said yesterday it might seek a reinvestigation of the case. How this is possible, with no new physical evidence or new and credible witness, is unclear. This case is just one of many where convictions have been reversed by a higher court because of sloppy police investigation. Whether innocent people have been wrongly punished, or the guilty released, a grieving Lauro Vizconde and the nation may never know.