Ellah Joy case still haunts Karen, Sven

They were long cleared by the Cebu court and police authorities but the stain of the kidnap-homicide charges continue to linger on Norwegian national Sven Berger and his Cebuana fiancee Karen Esdrelon.

Assisted by lawyer Glen Villariza, the couple decided to request the Cebu Provincial Prosecutors’ Office to declare them innocent of the charges in relation to the kidnap-murder of six-year-old Ellah Joy Pique.

In their pleading filed last Friday, Berger and Esdrelon said though the complaint of kidnapping with homicide against them were dismissed, they weren’t completely vindicated.

Instead of saying there was “insufficiency of evidence,” the couple said the prosecutors should cite their innocence as reason in dismissing the complaint.

“With all due respect, the word and phrase ‘dismiss due to insufficiency of evidence’ still carries with it a negative connotation which is very humiliating,” Villariza said.

Berger and Esdrelon will appear in a hearing at the prosecutors’ office on July 22.

Ellah Joy’s father Renante will be notified of the scheduled proceeding. The couple claimed they have been exposed to a “terrible, shameful, and disturbing” reports posted on the Internet.

Their lawyer said online searches of their names link them to “child murder and kidnapper.” Esdrelon’s name was connected with the Ellah Joy case.

Berger and Esdrelon were earlier accused of kidnapping and killing Ellah Joy last Feb. 8.

They were about to leave for Hong Kong when the police came and arrested them at the Mactan Cebu International Airport.

Then Cebu Provincial Police Director Director Senior Supt. Erson Digal filed charges against the couple before the prosecutors’ office.

The couple denied the allegations and managed to prove their alibis through video footage obtained from the  closed-circuit television (CCTV) of Waterfront Hotel in Cebu City.

The footage showed that the couple checked in at 4:50 p.m. on Feb. 8, the same date that Ellah Joy was taken by car-riding perpetrators outside the Calajo-an Elementary School in Minglanilla town.

The handling prosecutors considered the videotape “relevant and material” in the case.

The key evidence was verified by the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI-7), which was requested by Gov. Gwendolyn Garcia to check the couple’s claims.

The NBI report was not refuted by the police in the preliminary investigation. Police mainly relied on the eyewitness testimonies of three children, classmates of Ellah Joy, who positively identified Berger and Esdrelon as the culprits.

After the complaint against Berger and Esdrelon were dropped, police got to identify the second set of suspects.

Bella Ruby Santos and her British partner Ian Charles Griffiths are presently the subjects of arrest warrants issued by the court after they were indicted by the prosecutors’ office in relation to the Ellah Joy case. Reporter Ador Vincent Mayol