LEYBLE
They knew the places where he and his family had been going for the past two months, even the church where they hear Mass and their favorite area to go jogging.
Antipolo City Mayor Casimiro “Jun” Ynares III was referring to the alleged contract killers who were targeting him and his father, and whose activities were revealed to him recently by the widow of one of the supposed hitmen.
The woman, Dorina Laroco, filed a murder complaint on Thursday in which she claimed that her husband Rolando was killed last month after backing out of a murder plot against Ynares and the mayor’s father Casimiro Jr., former governor of Rizal province.
Laroco was blaming the death on a group led by former Antipolo mayor Nilo Leyble, whom she tagged as the plot’s mastermind. She also accused incumbent Vice Mayor Ronaldo “Puto” Leyva and six others of being part of the plan.
But in implicating Leyble and company, Laroco cited no other basis but what Rolando had purportedly told her about “the project.” In the complaint, she also quoted his phone conversations with another plotter hours before he was shot “14 times” in an ambush in Antipolo on Aug. 26. The police have yet to come up with suspects in the killing.
Leyble breaks silence
Leyble on Saturday finally broke his silence on the widow’s allegations. The former mayor also hit back at Ynares, who foiled his reelection bid in May. The results are currently under protest.
YNARES
“I had nothing to do with that. I have no participation whatsoever,” Leyble told the INQUIRER, denying any knowledge of the slain Rolando or his wife.
He dismissed Laroco’s complaint as lies that he could answer in court and part of the “political harassment ”by the Ynareses. “It’s just politics.”
Leyble said the people of Antipolo had always known him to be “a man of peace,” and that the incumbent mayor was “just scared because he’s not accepted by the people.”
In an interview Friday, Ynares said he first heard about the alleged plot from long-time ally Manila Mayor Joseph Estrada on Sept. 6. Laroco, a resident of Manila’s Pandacan area, first told a city councilor about it during Rolando’s wake, until her story eventually reached Estrada.
“We met at Mayor Erap’s office on Sept. 10, where she recounted her husband’s participation in the plot. She knew about it because he kept her in the loop, because he was worried he could just ‘disappear’ once the plot is set into motion,” Ynares told the Inquirer.
“When I first heard about this, I didn’t take it seriously. We’ve been in politics for quite some time and nothing like that has happened so far. But when I heard her story, I just had to believe it because all the things she said made sense. There were no loose ends.”
The mayor said Laroco showed her text messages on Rolando’s cell phone to support her narrative. She also recalled being present in a meeting wherein she saw the other people involved in the plot, he added.
“She told me details about my life which are not publicly known, like my family’s schedules, where we’ve been and what we’ve been doing for the past two, three months,” he said.
Sightings confirmed
“They were really private. They knew where and what time my father goes jogging around our subdivision, the church where we go for Mass. They apparently saw me and my family once at SM Masinag (in Antipolo)—and I can confirm these details. I have asked the mall’s management to save the security camera footage of that particular time,” Ynares said.
According to Laroco, her husband was only forced to take “the job” because she needed money for an eye operation, he said.
He and Laroco never met again after Sept. 10, but Ynares said Mayor Estrada had since been keeping watch over the widow and her family.
Ynares said he had ordered additional policemen to guard City Hall, particularly his office. “I’ve ordered the Antipolo police to get to the bottom of (Rolando’s case). They said they have yet to establish why he was killed because his wife didn’t want to talk, but they should not stop there.”
“And just yesterday, when I met with city and provincial police officers, they said they did hear about the plot two to three months ago but decided not to tell (me and my father) about it because it was still raw or unverified,” he said.
“Maybe one of the reasons behind this (alleged plot) is the corruption cases we have filed in the Office of the Ombudsman against the previous administration for questionable transactions, public biddings and use of public funds,” he said.