Before broadcast journalist Percival Mabasa, there was former Batangas congressman and lawyer Edgar Mendoza.
In what appears to be a real-life event similar to the storyline of Erik Matti’s popular film On the Job, the involvement of “someone from the Bilibid” in the killing of broadcast journalist Percival Mabasa, as claimed by the alleged gunman after his surrender, was something familiar as far as the police are concerned.
But unlike in the movie wherein the inmates themselves are the ones sent to do the hit, both the cases of Mabasa and Mendoza apparently involved outsourcing of assassins by those in the New Bilibid Prisons.
In January 2020, the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group (CIDG), then headed by retired police general Joel Napoleon Coronel, was instructed to solve the case of three charred bodies found inside a vehicle that was set on fire in Tiaong, Quezon.
The cadavers turned out later to be that of former Batangas 2nd District congressman Edgar Mendoza, his driver Nicanor Mendoza and bodyguard Ruel Ruiz.
At the course of the investigation, police said that Mendoza was ordered killed by his client who was then getting impatient inside the NBP as he was expecting that his lawyer would find ways to release him after being convicted of murder in 2015.
Police said Mendoza’s client opted to have him killed rather than pay millions he owed as legal service fees for various legal transactions that also include financial and real properties.
Based on the CIDG investigation, the client had developed a friendship with a leader of a kidnapping syndicate who helped him in taking out Mendoza. Police said the plan was hatched inside the NBP and was carried out by the people tapped by the convicted kidnapping syndicate leader.
P550,000 for Percy Lapid
In the case of Mabasa, also known as Percy Lapid, gunman Joel Estorial said that the order to kill him came from someone from the Bilibid.
Estorial, who surrendered to the police on Monday, Oct. 17, said he was forced to surrender after his face was made public through an enhanced photo extracted from CCTV footage obtained by the police.
He said six of them were tapped to carry out the plan to kill Mabasa and they were paid P550,000. He said he received P140,000.
Once upon a time in Masbate
In 2009, then Philippine National Police (PNP) chief Jesus Verzosa went to Masbate to remind local police forces to look into intelligence reports about how inmates at the Masbate Provincial Jail were being used for assassination jobs.
Those killed allegedly by inmates include local political personalities and local officials.
Allegedly in cahoots with the jail guards, the inmates are sent out hours after the hit and they are taken back inside immediately after the job is done.