The mother of five-year-old kidnap victim Eunice Chuang, together with a group of families which had fallen prey to kidnap for ransom gangs, have urged government officials to get their act together in managing the New Bilibid Prison (NBP) after recent raids on the national penitentiary revealed that big-time prisoners continued to live the good life behind bars.
Emily Chuang made the statement after a Manila Regional Trial Court judge found the two accused in the case—Monico Santos and Francis Canoza—guilty of kidnapping with double homicide 14 years after they abducted and killed Eunice and her nanny, Jovita Montecino, in 2000.
The convicted men, who have been locked up at the Manila City Jail while the case against them was being heard, have been ordered committed to the NBP. Santos was sentenced to life imprisonment while Canoza faces a prison term of 10 to 15 years.
“They did not look sad when the verdict was being read and even after that,” Emily Chuang said. “Maybe they already have a backer inside the NBP. Maybe they know that they will be better off there than in the Manila City Jail.”
She was referring to the National Bureau of Investigation’s discovery of amenities such as a jacuzzi, a recording studio, gym equipment, stacks of money, checks, illegal drugs and other prohibited items inside the cells of several high-profile inmates in the NBP’s maximum security compound.
“I hope the prison guards and prison officials [go after them] and refuse to offer VIP treatment to criminals,” she said.
Teresita Ang-See, founding chair of the Movement for Restoration of Peace and Order (MRPO), agreed with Emily Chuang, saying it was frustrating for kidnap victims or their surviving kin to hear about these things.
“The suspects have been caught, prosecutors have filed charges, the court found them guilty, but we encounter this VIP treatment at the last pillar of the justice system which is saddening as they seem to be living a happy life in prison,” Ang-See said.
She also noted that the MRPO, which is composed of families that fell prey to kidnap gangs, was against the practice of granting executive clemency as it leads to a vicious cycle of crime.
“Many kidnap for ransom convicts are again applying for executive clemency because it’s Christmas. But we [are against this] because once they are set free, their fellow kidnap for ransom masterminds inside prison will now have a conduit, an [accomplice on the] outside,” Ang See said.
“We know it is the Christian way of treating our brothers but they have to serve their sentence,” she added.
On Oct. 17, 2000, Eunice Chuang and her nanny Montecino went missing after they were last seen riding in Santos’ taxi cab on their way home from school. When the girl’s family reported the incident to the police, Santos claimed that a man flagged had down his taxi and took the victims away.
However, when he invited the police to check his house in Bulacan the day after the victims went missing, they found the bodies of Eunice Chuang and Montecino hidden in the ceiling. Investigation showed that the two had died of suffocation.
Later during the investigation, it emerged that Canoza had helped Santos carry out the crime with Eunice Chuang’s grandmother testifying that she saw Canoza boarding Santos’ taxi on the day the victims disappeared.
The two were arrested, with Santos admitting that he kidnapped the child and her nanny so that he could demand a ransom of P300,000 which he said he needed for home repairs.
Canoza’s mother insisted that her son had been wrongfully accused and was only assumed to have participated in the crime because of his affiliation with his cousin.
But in her decision which was handed down on Monday, acting Presiding Judge Mona Lisa Tiongson-Tabora said that the two men were basically “caught red-handed” committing the crime based on circumstantial evidence alone.
Aside from imprisonment, the convicts were each ordered to pay P500,000 for moral damages and P75,000 in civil indemnity to the families of Eunice Chuang and Montecino.