Whom should we believe?

I was  amused by former Sen. Aquilino “Nene” Pimentel Jr.’s retort to my July 4 column in which I once again took up the cudgels for the accused in the death of Navy Ensign Phillip Pestaño aboard the BRP Bacolod City in 1995.

Pestaño’s death was ruled a suicide by the National Bureau of Investigation, the Western (now Manila) Police District (WPD), the Philippine National Police’s Criminal Investigation and Detection Group (CIDG), and private forensics expert Dr. Raquel Fortun.

And yet, Pestaño’s family, particularly the patriarch, Felipe or Don Pepe, insists that the young Navy officer was murdered by his comrades on the ship.

Nene Pimentel, who acts as the Pestaño family counsel, said in his letter to the Inquirer that the findings of the NBI, WPD, CIDG and Fortun were refuted by “US forensic evidence.”

According to him, the “US forensic evidence was testified to personally by a forensics expert, Wayne Hill, who had more experience—and qualification, if I might add—on such issues than our good doctor.”

The “good doctor” Pimentel was referring to is Fortun who was personally hired by the Pestaño family after they refused to accept the findings of government investigative agencies.

On the other hand, the “US forensics expert” Pimentel mentioned must be Rev. Wayne Hill Sr., whose testimony before the Senate committee on human rights formed the basis for the senator-members’ findings that the young Pestaño was murdered.

Who is Wayne Hill Sr.? He described himself in his LinkedIn account as a pastor, actor, stand-up comedian, producer and police practices consultant/forensic scientist.

On the other hand, Fortun is the country’s foremost forensics expert and an associate professor at the Department of Pathology in the University of the Philippines’ College of Medicine.

Comparing Hill to Fortun is like comparing an unlettered man to a highly educated woman.

Wayne based his “findings” on photographs of the supposed crime scene. Fortun, on the other hand, went to the scene of the incident—the ship cabin where Pestaño was found dead—and scrutinized every angle and dent caused by the bullet that exited the victim’s head.

Her findings were corroborated by Dr. Yoshitsugu Tatsuno, a professor of the Department of Legal Medicine at the Kobe University School of Medicine in Japan, as well as Dr. Richard C. Haruff, associate medical investigator in the United States.

Now, whose findings should be given credence?