When Roy Mabasa was given the chance to talk with the alleged gunman of his brother Percy Lapid on Tuesday, Oct. 18, his instinct as a journalist told him to grill Joel Escorial to determine if he was indeed the shooter and not just a fall guy.
And after a lengthy discussion and question and answer, Mabasa then believed that Escorial was telling the truth.
"On the basis of what he (Escorial) said, I believe in this suspect. I believe the statements he made because the specific details he discussed are really important," said Mabasa.
"I am not 100 percent sure because he may have embellished his story for his own good but I will hold on to everything that he told us," he added.
Mabasa, a former reporter of the Manila Bulletin, earlier raised concerns on the possibility that Escorial is a fall guy. The same speculations were raised by some netizens on social media.
He then asked the police to allow him to walk to Escorial to personally ask him about some questions that would serve as a test to determine if he was lying or not--a request that was granted by the police.
And when he and the lawyers of his brother were allowed to talk with Escorial, Mabasa said that Escorial's knowledge on the planning and the execution of the assassination of his brother were all consistent.
He, however, said that he would leave everything during the legal proceedings for the truth to come out.
What is important now, according to Mabasa, was that they secured the cooperation of Escorial to solve his brother's killing.
Doubts
One of the questions that had been bothering Mabasa after learning of the surrender was related to his observation on the CCTV footage to where the image of Estorial was captured.
He said the features of Escorial appeared to be different from the person tagged by the police as the gunman based on the CCTV footage who he said was sporting long hair.
But during a walkthrough on Tuesday night, Mabasa said he learned that Escorial had a hair cut before his surrender.
Interior Secretary Benhur Abalos insisted in a press briefing on Tuesday that Escorial was not a fall guy since the gun he surrendered matched with the slugs recovered from the assassination site during the ballistics examination.
He added that the red jacket seen in the CCTV footage was also recovered but was already torn into pieces.
Another issue of concern, according to Mabasa, was the claim of Escorial that he surrendered because his conscience was bothering him and due to his personal safety after his image was already made public through the wanted poster with P6.5 million reward.
Mabasa asid that during their meeting, Escorial told him that the tipping point of his decision to surrender was when the middleman who contracted him to do a hit on Percy Lapid told him that he and his other companions had to go to a safehouse.
"When he was told by the middleman that he needed to be placed in a safehouse, that was the time he decided to ask a friend to facilitate his surrender. Because for him, the safehouse means that he would be killed," said Mabasa.
The middleman
So far, it is not yet clear who ordered the hit on Percy Lapid.
Mabasa said that Escorial does not know who really wanted Lapid dead since the gunman's only contact was the middleman from the New Bilibid Prisons. It was Estorial's contact who paid him and five others P550,000 for the job. Estorial got P140,000 deposited in his bank account.
"He (Escorial) said that they were only contracted by the middleman and it stopped there," said Mabasa.
"That is why we asked the police to secure the middleman because if anything happened to the middleman, then that would be the end of this case," he added.
Police Col. Restituto Arcangel, head of the Special Investigation Task Group Percy Lapid, said Escorial has already given the police the name of the middleman and the name was also included in his affidavit.
Appeal
Abalos also urged the three other identified suspects in the killing of Mabasa to surrender before the brains of the killing of Percy Lapid get into them first-- the same advice he gave to the gunman who turned out to be Escorial who surrendered on Monday.
"The gunman already surrendered. So I am asking them to surrender," said Abalos.
Escorial named brothers Edmon and Israel Dimaculangan from Las Piñas City as his cohorts. He also named the third suspect who drove the motorcycle who was also seen in the CCTV footage, a certain Orlando or Orly from Batangas.
Lauded
Abalos also lauded the PNP for its hard work that resulted in the surrender of Escorial.
"In just 15 days, we have already achieved a major breakthrough in the Percy Lapid case. Salamat sa PNP sa pagtutok sa kasong ito at sa mabilis na imbestigasyon kaya napuwersa ang main suspect na sumuko (Thanks to the PNP for their intense focus on this case and expeditious investigation that forced the main suspect to surrender),’’ said Abalos.
Mabasa, for his part, expressed gratitude to the police for their efforts to solve the case.
"I would like to give the PNP the credit for what they have been doing in this case," said Mabasa.