QCPD: Pastor murder ‘brains’ now in hiding

THE ALLEGED mastermind of the June 2014 murder of racing champion Ferdinand “Enzo” Pastor is now considered “in hiding” after the police failed to find him at his last known home address and workplace in Metro Manila, where they tried to serve an arrest warrant issued last week by the Quezon City Regional Trial Court (RTC).

This was according to the Quezon City Police District (QCPD) homicide section chief, Senior Insp. Elmer Monsalve, who said that the house of businessman Domingo “Sandy” de Guzman at BF Homes Parañaque was already vacated when a QCPD police team went there on Tuesday.

The police also checked De Guzman’s car shop in Muntinlupa City but were told by the staff that they hadn’t seen him lately, Monsalve added.

Earlier, QCPD Criminal Investigation and Detection Unit head Chief Insp. Rodelio Marcelo urged De Guzman to just surrender instead of waiting for the police to capture him.

Judge Luisito Cortez of QC RTC Branch 85 has issued the warrant against De Guzman and also a hold departure order against his co-accused, the victim’s widow Dalia Guerrero Pastor. Now believed to have fled the country, she is also the subject of an arrest warrant issued March 26.

The QCPD last year tagged Dalia and De Guzman, her alleged lover, as the plotters behind the ambush that killed Pastor at a Quezon City intersection on the night of June 12, 2014. They allegedly hired a policeman, Edgar Angel, to kill the racer for P100,000.

When arrested, Angel executed an extrajudicial confession pointing to De Guzman as the mastermind who wanted Pastor killed because Dalia had been suffering domestic abuse.

Despite his eventual retraction and claim that he was just tortured by the police into implicating the two other accused, the Department of Justice went on to press charges against Angel in court. Jaymee T. Gamil