Missing Bilibid inmate’s decapitated remains found — DOJ
MANILA, Philippines — The beheaded remains of a missing New Bilibid Prisons inmate have been found, the Department of Justice said on Thursday.
DOJ Secretary Jesus Crispin Remulla said search teams found the headless body of inmate as Michael Angelo Cataroja, who was reported missing on July 15.
“Nahanap ang PDL pero decapitated na. The search went on doon sa septic tank. Yung ulo ang hinahanap sa septic tank, pero ang [katawan] nya ay nahanap na ‘yan sa Sputnik compound,” said Remulla in an interview with CNN Philippines’ The Source.
(The PDL was found but he was already decapitated. The search went on in the septic tank. The head was searched for in the septic tank, but his body was found in the Sputnik compound.)
“Marami raw utang yan. Tiyaka parang feeble-minded… medyo may diperensya na sa pag-iisip,” Remulla said, when asked for the possible motive behind the beheading.
(He supposedly had a lot of debt. And he seemed to have a mental illness.)
Remulla said other remains were also discovered in the septic tank.
“Iba pa ang buto na [nakita] są septic tank at mukhang marami pang mahahanap doon kung talagang huhukayin lahat yan. Iba talaga ang sitwasyon sa Bilibid. You have 29,000 people cramped in that 10-hectare area and you’re talking about a very [different] kind of social setup,” Remulla added.
(The bones that were found in the septic tank is a different story, and it looks like a lot more will be found there if we really dig it up. The situation in Bilibid is really different.)
This prompted Remulla to reiterate his calls to regionalize the country’s prison system.
“As I have always been saying, kinakailangan nating mai-regionalize ang ating prison system. (We need to regionalize the prison system) Para itong (It’s like) No Man’s Land. You can [be] buried inside this 29,000-person population in a 10-hectare compound which has many many histories to yield,” he said.
