Smutty tabloid inspires rape and murder of girl

MANILA, Philippines—Two pedicab drivers raped and strangled a 7-year-old girl who  knew and was friendly with them, then one of them told police after their arrest he did so because he was aroused by a graphic account of a child’s rape in a smutty tabloid.

Sigue-Sigue Sputnik gang members Cecilio Bacolo Jr, 19, of Balic-Balic, Sampaloc, and Roderick Soliveres, 28, of 7th Street in Paco, were arrested early Saturday, more than 12 hours after they enticed, molested and killed Ernieca Abando, a Grade 1 pupil at the F. Ma. Guerrero Elementary School on Fabie Street in Sampaloc.

Senior Police Officer 1 Charles John Duran  of the Manila Police District  homicide section told the Inquirer that when the girl’s body was found at around 11 p.m. Friday inside a room on the fourth floor of a house on Pat Antonio Street in Sta. Mesa, the girl was naked from the waist down with a red nylon cord around her neck.

“We found a tabloid left behind by the suspects with the headline, ‘Young girl raped.’ They stuck the tabloid inside a bag near the girl, apparently wanting to frame up the owner of the room for the crime,” Duran said.

Bacolo and Soliveres were arrested early Saturday after a tenant in the same house where the girl was raped told the authorities she had seen the two men with the girl between 8 and 9 a.m.  Friday and saw them leaving afterwards without the child.

“They were positively identified by a witness as the same persons who took the child with them to the room where her body was later found,” the investigator said.

Interviewed by the Inquirer inside the holding cell of the MPD homicide section, Soliveres admitted raping and killing the girl, adding, “I already said ‘sorry’ to her mother.”

He admitted lusting after the girl the first time he laid eyes on her. “I had seen her several times and grew fond of her. I read the tabloid and got the idea from it,” he said, adding that he left behind the tabloid because he had finished reading it and he had already acted out his urge.

Bacolo, who rented bedspace at the girl’s house, admitted having been asked by Soliveres to bring the child along with them.

He said he had known Soliveres for about a month.

“He kept on visiting me at the house and there was a time that he asked me to call the girl because he was going to give her a sandwich. When I did, she accepted the sandwich and he (Soliveres) had this very pleased smile and he told me that he liked the girl,” he told the Inquirer.

On Friday morning, Bacolo said, he was drinking with some of his buddies when Soliveres approached him and told him to call the girl and to ask her to go with them to a friend’s house, which he unquestioningly did.

“We brought her to a room that I sometimes slept in. He went inside with the girl and after a few minutes, he went downstairs. I peeked inside the room and saw the girl lying on the bed gagged wearing nothing below the waist with an opened tabloid beside her,” Bacolo told the Inquirer. He admitted raping the girl, saying he was drunk.

When Soliveres returned to the room, he shoved the younger man out the room and ordered him to watch the door. After several minutes, Soliveres came out and asked for a rope. “I gave him a nylon cord, thinking that he was going to use it to seal shut the window and leave. I only found out later that he used the rope to kill the girl,” Bacolo said.

The duo then left to return to the victim’s house.

The case investigator pointed out that when the relatives of the girl started to search for her, they sought Bacolo’s help but grew suspicious when Soliveres, hearing their agitation over the girl’s disappearance, simply smiled.

“The relatives found his smiling at their panic over the missing girl  odd,” he said.

When the man renting the room in the other house returned at around 11 p.m. Friday, he discovered the girl’s body and called the police.

Police were preparing Saturday to file charges of rape with homicide against Bacolo and Soliveres.