She also sported new tattoos on both legs and the back of the neck.
The disguise didn’t work.
Santos’ capture yesterday in SM Megamall in Mandaluyong, Metro Manila, ended nearly three months of eluding an arrest warrant in Cebu for the kidnap-murder case of 6-year-old Ellah Joy Pique.
Special investigator Arnel Pura of the National Bureau of Investigation in Central Visayas (NBI-7) said he apprehended the woman shopping with a female friend in a magazine store at about 4:30 p.m.
He said he wasn’t sure at first it was Santos because of her new “boy’s cut.”
Santos first gave her name as “Lara Ebba Gonzales” from Davao City.
“She was surprised. Her hands were trembling,” the NBI agent told Cebu Daily News.
The fugitive was detained last night at the NBI Headquarters in Manila and will be brought back to Cebu on Monday to be presented in court for arraignment and trial.
Santos and her British boyfriend Ian Charles Griffiths face charges of kidnapping and homicide for the Feb. 8 abduction of Ellah Joy, a schoolgirl who was last seen accepting a stranger’s offer to hitch a ride in a dark Pajero while she was walking home with classmates in Minglanilla town.
The little girl’s body was found the next day wrapped in a blanket and dumped off a cliff in another town of Barili, southwest Cebu.
Griffiths, who left the country a day after the abduction, is back in London.
In a phone interview, Santos who has repeatedly denied any hand in the schoolgirl’s death, yesterday said she was ready to face the charges against her.
“Okay ra ko. Wala ko naguol. Wala ko’y fears for myself. Ang ako lang fears are for my family.” (I’m all right. I’m not worried. I have no fears for myself, just for my family.)
Santos said she was grateful she landed in the hands of the NBI-7 and not the police, whom she earlier accused of oppressing her.
“I’ve just been staying in Manila. I was shopping because I had nothing to fear. I’m ready to face the case against me,” she said in Cebuano.
She denied a report that she had a “spy” in the the PNP Criminal Investigation and Detection Group in Central Visayas (CIDG-7) to alert her about police movements.
“Nagtanga lang jud na sila. Wala sila kadakop (They were stupid. They weren’t able to catch me),” she said.
The NBI-7 said it acted on a tip from a source in Cebu who revealed Santos’ whereabouts. (See separate story.)
In Cebu, the father of Ellah Joy, who was the source of the report that a CIDG agent was exposed as being on the payroll of Santos for P20,000 a month, expressed joy over the arrest.
“Sangko sa langit ang akong kalipay. At least nadakpan na (My joy reaches the heavens. At least she’s been arrested),” Renante Pique told Cebu Daily News.
He said he hopes the woman’s partner will also be tracked down.
“Dapat madakpang sab apil si Griffiths (Griffiths should be arrested as well).”
Defense lawyers have repeatedly said the police got the wrong perpetrators of the crime and tried to get charges dismissed by the prosecutor’s office.
However, the severity of the crime makes it non-bailable if the judge determines that evidence against the accused is strong and there is a risk the accused will flee while the trial is ongoing.
Santos seemed to enjoy the media limelight, where she bragged in interviews that she wasn’t afraid to face any charges.
But once an arrest warrant was issued by the court on July 12 she disappeared, confounding Cebu police and a special Task Force Ellah Joy.
Asked last night where she’s been, Santos said she just stayed in Manila and had never left the country.
“New life, new people,” she said in a live interview of GMA-7 “Balitang Bisdak” last night.
The former bar girl from Pampanga showed some of the fighting spirit she had projected before, laughing at times and saying she went into hiding because she didn’t want to make it easy for the police to get her.
“Ako gani tawn ni (It’s really me),” said Santos in GMA-7 .
“Tell Mama not to worry. I’m okay,” said the former fugitive in Cebuano, taking advantage of the interview with TV anchor Bobby Nalzaro to request that her family in Naga City, south Cebu, be notified that she was in custody. (“Okay ra kaayo ko, Ma.”)
She said she didn’t want to make it easy for the police.
“Dili nako sila tagaan ug kalipay bitaw kung kinsa ang tinood nagpatay or ang mga pulis. Dili nako tagaan ug kalipay nga magpapriso ko. Not in an easy way, tagaan nako sila ug hard time.”
Nalzaro asked why she disappeared after saying before that she wasn’t afraid of a court trial.
Santos replied, “Nahuman naman ko ug kahadlok, Sir Bob … Wala naman ko nahadlok bisag karon pa. It doesn’t mean nga nilakaw ko nga nahadlok ko. Wala ko nahadlok. Pero sa akoa nang giingon dili nako tagaan ug kalipay ang mga pulis.
(I’m finished with being scared, Sir Bob. I’m not afraid until now. When I disappeared it doesn’t mean I was afraid. But I told myself that I would not make the police happy.)