Police tag Pilapil’s companion suspect

MANILA, Philippines—The weeklong police inquiry into the stabbing attack on beauty-queen-turned-actress Pilar Pilapil has taken a strange twist.

Chief Supt. Samuel Pagdilao Jr., director of the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group (CIDG), Monday said efforts to find and rescue Rosel Jacosalem Peñas, Pilapil’s missing female companion, had become a police manhunt. He said Peñas could have staged her own abduction in an attempt to collect P10 million from Pilapil’s in-laws.

NEW TWIST Chief Supt. Samuel Pagdilao Jr. shows a photocopied passport image of Rosel Peñas, who is now considered a suspect in the attack on actress Pilar Pilapil. LYN RILLON

Peñas, 28, is married to Nelson Peñas, the younger brother of Pilapil’s husband, Bernie Peñas. She has disappeared along with the vehicle she was driving at the time of the attack on Pilapil on April 14.

“We are considering Miss Rosel Peñas no longer a victim but a suspect in this case,” Pagdilao told reporters at a news briefing in Camp Crame.

Senior Supt. Joel Napoleon Coronel, head of Special Investigation Task Group Pilar, said “inconsistencies” in Peñas’ travel and employment records had prompted police to suspect that she had a hand in what Pagdilao described as “a complex crime of robbery with physical injuries.”

“All information made by Rosel to Pilar Pilapil are false and non-existent. [Pilapil] was victimized by [individuals] who may have acted in conspiracy with Peñas,” Coronel said.

Pagdilao said CIDG tracker teams had fanned out to certain places in Negros Oriental province and Cebu City where Peñas had previously stayed with her family.

But he said police investigators had yet to ascertain the motive in the crime.

Ransom demand

Pagdilao said Nelson Peñas received a text message from an unidentified person on the night of April 17, or three days after Peñas and Pilapil were seized by two knife-wielding men while they were aboard a vehicle in the vicinity of the Marikina Riverbanks Center in Marikina City.

The sender of the text message “gave the impression” that Peñas had been abducted, and demanded P10 million in ransom, Pagdilao said.

Pilar in disbelief

“The message sender threatened that something bad would happen to her if the family will not produce the money,” he said.

Pagdilao said that when she was informed of the results of the CIDG investigation, Pilapil was initially doubtful because she was convinced that like her, Peñas was also a victim.

“In the beginning, she was in disbelief. But she [is now inclined] to believe us because of the evidence we presented to her, including the falsity of Penas’ [statements] to her,” Pagdilao said.

Lie after lie

Coronel said the vehicle that Peñas was driving on the night of the attack—a beige 2007 model Kia Carens with license plate number CIZ 888—did not belong to Unilever Philippines, as she had told Pilapil.

Land Transportation Office records showed that the vehicle is owned by one Romeo dela Cuesta of Zabarte, Caloocan City, Coronel said.

He said that according to Peñas’ relatives, the vehicle had been in her possession since November 2010.

Pagdilao said a number of witnesses saw Peñas driving the same vehicle near her last known address in Sampaloc, Manila, a day after the attack on Pilapil.

“If she was allegedly abducted by the men who stabbed Pilar Pilapil, why was she driving the vehicle the morning after the crime?” he said.

Coronel said Peñas also lied when she told Pilapil that she was a former employee of Unilever and that they were to meet with Australian executives of the British-Dutch multinational company on the night of the attack.

Meeting place closed

In fact, Pagdilao said, the restaurant at the Marikina Riverbanks Center where they were to meet with the Unilever officials was still closed.

“The supposed meeting place was still undergoing renovation. Practically, the place never existed at the time she told Pilapil that they would meet with Unilever executives,” he said.

No departure record

Coronel said Peñas’ claim to Pilapil that she had just returned from Australia was likewise spurious because Bureau of Immigration (BI) records showed otherwise.

According to Antonette Mangrobang, BI spokesperson and head of its airport operations division, Peñas has no record of any departure from any international airport in the country from 1993 up to the present time.

“As far as our records show, she has no record of departure … unless she used the backdoor,” Mangrobang told reporters Monday in a phone interview.

But Mangrobang said the bureau would not put Peñas on its watch list until ordered by the Department of Justice.

Husbands supportive

Coronel said Nelson Peñas, who works for a local interisland shipping company, also believed that his wife was working with Unilever.

“Nelson said that because of the nature of his work, he seldom saw his wife,” Coronel said. “He believed Rosel when she told him that she was working at Unilever.”

Both Bernie and Nelson Peñas are “supportive” of the CIDG investigation, and are hoping that Rosel Peñas will surface soon, according to Coronel.

Pagdilao added: “Despite what happened, Pilapil and the Peñas family are very worried about Rosel.”

Asked if other family members had plotted with Peñas to harm Pilapil, Coronel said there was “no reason to believe that possibility right now.”

Complex crime

Asked further why Peñas would make up a story about her identity, he said: “That’s still a subject of our investigation.”

Coronel said Pilapil lost some P20,000 in cash and valuables to the men who had stabbed her and then left her for dead in a grassy lot in Antipolo City.

He said an “airtight case” of robbery with serious physical injuries was being prepared against Peñas.

Asked if the CIDG would consider filing a case of frustrated murder instead, Coronel replied: “We are also considering that. But that would take away the robbery angle because this is a complex crime.”

“Anyway, those offenses have a similar penalty under the law,” he said. With a report from Jocelyn R. Uy