MANILA, Philippines—The grant of executive clemency to the mastermind of the 1990 double murder of a “lovely and promising couple” has provoked shock and anger among still grieving family members.

“This is very painful and it is being raked up again. This is so terrible … We’re very, very angry and I’m glad I got to talk to you so that I could let this out,” engineer Robert Castaños, an uncle of Ana Lourdes “Beebom” Castaños, told the Philippine Daily Inquirer Thursday on the phone.

According to Castaños, his family was not informed beforehand about the pardon of Rodolfo Manalili, the convicted mastermind of the abduction-murder of Beebom and her boyfriend, Ernesto “Cochise” Bernabe II.

Castaños said he still had to live with the memory of Beebom and Cochise’s bodies: “I cannot forget what I saw when they were unearthed. Cochise was still bound and crouching. His mouth was open. It was like he was screaming, tortured, and buried alive.”

Castaños assailed President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and her advisers for the grant of executive clemency, and said he could only surmise that it was because Manalili was a provincemate of Ms Arroyo:

“He comes from Pampanga, and that is the only reason I can think of why he is being freed. Probably somebody lobbied for this. That’s the reason.”

According to Castaños, Manalili had the couple killed because Beebom had recognized the latter’s voice when she and Cochise were presented to him.

Dead and gone

Castanos said his brother Antonio Castaños, Beebom’s father, died two years ago.

But before his death, he, along with other family members of victims of heinous crimes, religiously checked every year if his daughter’s killers were still in prison, Castaños said, adding:

“Maybe if he were still alive, this would not have happened. This is so painful... I can do nothing for my brother and my niece.”

Castaños said Beebom’s mother and younger brother had since flown to the United States in fear for their own safety.

“They’re now living a quiet life there. This is going to be a shock,” he said.

As for himself, he said, “I’ve tried to bury these memories deeply, very deeply, but now they’re all coming back.”

Cold-blooded

In affirming the Quezon City trial court’s guilty verdict on Manalili and his co-accused, the Supreme Court, through Associate Justice Santiago Kapunan, lamented that it could not impose the death penalty on the convicts for two counts of kidnapping with murder because the crimes were committed before the re-imposition of capital punishment in the country.

And in affirming the death penalty on rapist Leo Echagaray in 1997, the Supreme Court said it was aghast to be witness to the succession of “barbaric crimes” including the Cochise-Beebom case.

“The cold-blooded double murder of Cochise Bernabe and Beebom Castaños, the lovely and promising couple from the University of the Philippines, is eternally lodged in the recesses of our minds and still makes our stomach turn in utter disgust,” the high court said.

“You know,” Castaños told the Inquirer, “my niece’s killers were boasting to [the National Bureau of Investigation] that they raped her before they killed her. It was surreal.”

He said wistfully that Beebom and Cochise, who was nicknamed after an American Indian chief, had a “bright future.”

“My niece was going to become a journalist like you, but her life was cut short,” he said.

Gravity of the crime

In Castanos’ reckoning, “administrative rules” should not be the only basis for the release of convicts.

“[They should not be freed] just because they’ve served their minimum sentence...” he said. “The government should also consider the gravity of the crime. This shows how our justice system fails. How can they be freed just like that?”

The Volunteers Against Crime and Corruption (VACC) was surprised to learn from the Inquirer that Manalili’s sentence had been commuted.

“This is a double-murder case, which means there are two life sentences that must be served. We really have to look into this commutation to see if Manalili is qualified,” VACC founding chair Dante Jimenez said in a phone interview.

Jimenez said the VACC would closely look into the matter especially because the Bernabe and Castaños families were among the six that formed its predecessor, the Crusade Against Violence.

“We hope that the Department of Justice and the Board of Pardons and Parole will be transparent on this [issue],” he said.

Disturbing

Jimenez took note of Malacañang’s consecutive pardons of convicts in high-profile cases, like former Zamboanga del Norte Rep. Romeo Jalosjos and the soldiers in the Aquino-Galman double murder.

“I think it’s very disturbing because there are a lot of questions on the computation [of their sentences]. We succeeded in sending Jalosjos back to jail because the computation was wrong... So we have to be vigilant,” he said.

Jimenez said he would coordinate with the Bernabe and Castaños families so they could immediately clarify Manalili’s case at the Board of Pardons and Parole.