A man arrested in a drug bust on Saturday night turned out to be wanted for a more heinous crime—the killing of a businesswoman who was found with a slit throat in the master bedroom of her house in La Loma, Quezon City on March 20.
Senior Superintendent Richard Albano, Quezon City Police District (QCPD) director, said that Von Bernardo, the prime suspect in the death of 59-year-old Ma. Salud Gatmaitan, was initially arrested in a drug entrapment operation on Tomas Morato Avenue, Quezon City, by members of the Kamuning police station.
But it was only after the operatives sent a report to the QCPD headquarters in Camp Karingal that investigators realized that Bernardo, also known as Jay, was the man wanted for killing Gatmaitan and sending her 84-year-old mother and their teenage housemaid to the hospital for head and facial wounds.
Bernardo is the son-in-law of Cenen Urbano, 72, who was arrested last week after the police confirmed that he owned the van which was spotted in front of the victim’s house just minutes before the killing.
Urbano, however, was released after a Quezon City prosecutor ordered the conduct of a preliminary investigation to determine if there was probable cause against him.
Also arrested in Saturday’s drug bust was Bernardo’s companion, Ariel Cristobal. Investigators said they were still trying to determine whether he was involved in the killing.
According to the QCPD director, Bernardo—even before the March 20 incident—had been in the QCPD antiillegal drugs unit’s watch list as a suspected drug offender.
Albano said that Bernardo may have been high on illegal drugs when he slit the throat of the businesswoman. “He [Bernardo] had a gun at the time but he used a pair of scissors to slit her throat,” he told the Inquirer.
He explained that Bernardo apparently held a grudge against Gatmaitan for allegedly almost driving his wife to commit suicide over a debt she could not pay.
“His wife owed the victim a large sum of money and could not pay back her loan. It is one of the possible angles our investigators are looking into,” Albano said.
Gatmaitan was killed after two men in a Mitsubishi Adventure entered her house on March 20. Neighbors said they heard a woman screaming, “Stop it, Jay” before the men ran out of the house and escaped in the van.
Apart from violation of the nationwide gun ban and of the antidrugs law, Bernardo will be charged with murder as well as two counts of attempted murder.