Slay of PLDT exec’s wife baffles authorities

SAN PEDRO CITY, Laguna, Philippines – The Laguna police found more questions than answers in the disappearance and death of Gloria Gonzales, the wife of an executive of telecommunication giant Philippine Long Distance Telecommunication Company (PLDT).

Gonzales, 47, who was reported missing since June 25, was found dead Sunday in the backseat of her car parked in Barangay San Vicente, Biñan City, covered in a blanket and her mouth gagged with a duct tape, the police said.

“(Gonzales) was on the rear seat so it could mean that she was not the one who drove the vehicle,” said Superintendent Noel Aliño, Biñan City’s police chief.

Aliño also believed that the crime was committed elsewhere and the body was dumped in Biñan City, at the boundary of Laguna and Cavite provinces.

It was in Barangay Acacia of Silang, Cavite, that the last mobile signal transmission from Gonzales’ phone was traced by her family hours after she went missing. This information was relayed to the police by Gonzales’ husband, John R. Gonzales, the vice president and head for corporate relations management of PLDT, on June 26 when he went to the police station in Silang to ask for help in finding his missing wife.

The police, however, did not know how the family was able to trace the phone signal, said Aliño.

Mrs. Gonzales was last seen leaving their house in Parañaque City, on June 25, on board a Toyota Innova with plate number UOS 146.

“The family this (Sunday) morning told us that she had to attend to some business transaction in Cavite (when she left on June 25). That’s all we know so far,” Aliño said.

Senior Inspector Alexy Senido, the police chief of Silang, said in a separate phone interview that Mrs. Gonzales had a business of her own selling jewelry.

Senido however said there were no reports of the victim being sighted in the area on the day she went missing.

He said the victim’s family, had also sought help from the police national headquarters, the Highway Patrol Group, and the National Bureau of Investigation hours after she went missing.

Police earlier said it was a resident, identified as Chester Gerodias, who reported to authorities on Sunday about the vehicle abandoned outside his residence along Batista Street. Gerodias was drawn to the vehicle because of the foul odor coming from inside the vehicle, as well as a strange, stinking liquid — believed to be body fluids–dripping from the inside of the car.

Aliño, however, refused to say if there were any visible wounds on the victim’s body. The result of the autopsy on Mrs. Gonzales’ body was not yet available.
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