MANILA, Philippines—Alejandro Yanquiling. Pardon my acting like a dog with a bone, but when lawyer Estelito Mendoza called the Court of Appeals’ attention to the shoddiness of the police investigation in the case of the Rico Delgado murder, the name Alex Yanquiling, the chief of the Western Police District’s Homicide Division who headed the investigation, came to mind. Like a homing pigeon, he zeroed in on Luis Q. Gonzalez as the killer, and threw in as well Antonio Buenaflor (whose only relation to the case, as far as I can see, is that he was a former driver of the late Ms Vicky Quirino Gonzalez Delgado).

Could Mendoza have been exaggerating with regard to the quality of the police work? Well, if you read the police documents—scene of the crime reports, photo logbooks, death certificate—you may conclude that Mendoza was a master of understatement.

The death certificate (D.C.) indicates the place of death of Federico Jaime Chuidian Delgado as: “D.O.S. (Dead on the Spot) along Taft Avenue Cor. Estrada, Malate.” Could this have just been a ‘lapsus mentis’ or a ‘lapsus pluma/calami’ on the part of the writer? No, because the same document also lists the address of Delgado as Mayflower (an apartment) corner Estrada and Leon Guinto. He knew the difference between street and apartment.

Other reports from the street, other police reports place the scene of the crime variously at the entrance of Delgado’s fourth-floor apartment, inside the bedroom on the fourth floor, as well as on the fifth floor (Delgado’s apartment apparently had two floors).

As to the time of death, the D.C. lists it as 5:30 a.m. on March 11, 2007, while the other reports place it at various times between 10:10 p.m. and midnight of the 10th.

In sum, depending on which official document one reads, Delgado was killed on the street (Taft Avenue) or at either the fourth or fifth floors of his apartment; and either at the front room, or in his bedroom, or just outside his bedroom, at various times between 10:10 p.m. and midnight of the 10th, and 5:30 a.m. of the next day. (The autopsy report is silent as to the time of death.)

Also, if one were to believe the reports, Senior Police Officer-3 Rex Manalansing was already taking pictures of the crime scene between 12:10 and 12:15 in the morning of March 11, which means that, if “eyewitness” Anna Pesico’s story is true, the police were there while she was still “tied up,” since she was only able to “untie” herself and “escape” at 3:25 a.m. of March 11.

There is a sketch of where Pesico was made to lie down, complete with location of towels (supposedly used to cover her), necktie and straw (which she claims were used to tie her up). Given her position in that sketch, she could not have seen what was going on in the next room, where presumably a TV set was giving out light enough for her to see the assailant clearly, who had fortuitously taken off his mask. Nothing in the reports gives the location of that TV set. In fact, it is difficult to even locate where the victim was found because there is no sketch of the entire apartment.

As I mentioned last week, Mendoza noted that Yanquiling and his team did not deem it necessary to investigate the security guard and his logbook or Pesico (if only because she was among the last to see him alive); or to take statements from Franco Delgado, the victim’s brother whose name was written in blood on the wall (whose blood, no one knows, because Yanquiling didn’t bother to find out), or from Rico’s “partner” Tim Bennet, who claimed to have had dinner with Rico that night. Nor was the apartment or even just the safe, dusted for fingerprints. In other words, as far as Yanquiling et al. were concerned, the unverified story of Pesico was enough. Actually, in the case of Antonio Buenaflor, both eyewitness and circumstantial evidence were absent—but he was included anyway. The homicide expert didn’t even bother to check Gonzalez’s alibi—Gonzalez was the culprit, period.

So what kind of record does Yanquiling have as head of the homicide division of the Western Police District?

There was a newspaper report datelined March 7, 2007, that Yanquiling was hailed by then Manila Mayor Lito Atienza (the following, however, is not a quote from Atienza, but what the report said) for “his excellent drive against crimes in the city by solving many murder cases in Manila and the arrest of many suspected killers in the city.”

Go back some 10 years, and there is a Supreme Court decision—penned by Jose Melo, now chairman of the Commission on Elections, with then-Chief Justice Narvasa and then-Associate Justices Davide, Francisco and Panganiban concurring—overturning the conviction of a foreign national for murder and castigating Yanquiling’s propensity for “single-handedly pursuing one suspect and limiting his investigation to that one possibility, excluding various other probabilities…. It is not enough to solve a crime. The truth is more important and justice must be rendered.”

Fast forward to the recent past: Yanquiling was suspended while he was being investigated for his role in the theft of valuables from a murdered Comelec official. In another case, Mayor Fred Lim was quoted in a newspaper report as saying that Yanquiling’s statements were “uncalled for.” When I called up the good mayor to ask him more about Yanquiling, he refused to comment—but said that he had ordered Yanquiling removed from his position as chief of homicide, late last year.

Let the facts speak for themselves.