Residents of Barangay (village) 251, Zone 23 in Tondo were bewildered as news spread of the grisly discovery at noon Wednesday: Their jeweler neighbor Nelson Cruzat, his wife Cecil, and their 8-year-old son “CM” were found dead inside their bedroom.
The way the bodies were found, on the second floor of the family’s apartment at the corner of Alameda and San Nicolas Streets provided clues to what happened: The boy lay peacefully on his side in bed with a hole in the head and a hammer near his feet. His mother lay beside him, head wrapped in a blood-soaked blanket, hair strands on her fingers. And his father was slumped on the side of the bed, a bullet hole in the head and a 9-mm gun near one hand.
Manila Police District deputy chief Senior Inspector Ismael de la Cruz surmised Cruzat had taken a hammer, struck his sleeping son dead, wrapped Cecil’s head in a blanket to stifle any sounds, then struck her dead, too, before shooting himself.
The family was living with Cecil’s mother, who found the bodies. Since early morning, she had been knocking on the bedroom door to send the boy to school. At around noon, she finally sought help from neighbors to break the door down.
She told the neighbors she heard an explosion before dawn but assumed it was just a firecracker. She admitted the family was having financial problems.
“We are shocked. We can’t imagine why this happened. This is just tragic,” said Brgy. 251 chairperson Renato del Mundo, shaking his head. “Nelson was a good man. No blotter records. Never a troublemaker,” he said.
The chairman added Cruzat was a “jolly” person, even drinking with him and other neighbors on occasion.
But Del Mundo noted that a neighbor had greeted Cruzat as he walking home on Tuesday evening but got no response. Cruzat was “looking troubled,” Del Mundo reported the neighbor as saying.
MPD Tondo Station 2 commander Supt. Ernesto Tendero confirmed there was “no forced entry” and that “everything in the room seemed in place.” He shared the Homicide section’s theory that the case was a double-murder and suicide.
Tendero said they were still looking into Cruzat’s motive for killing his family and himself.