More body parts found; killer shows no remorse

THE POLICE have recovered more body parts of the woman who was killed and mutilated by her Taiwanese husband inside their house in Makati City earlier this week.

Case investigator PO3 Ronaldo Villaranda of the Makati police said that based on the confession of the suspect  Kuo Yuan-chang, they retrieved on Thursday afternoon the arms and legs of his Filipino wife, Rowena Kuo, which he had dumped inside the septic tank of their house on Taylo Street in Barangay Pio del Pilar.

“With the help of a siphoning company, we were able to recover [the body parts] of the fatality,” Villaranda added, noting that they have yet to find Rowena’s internal organs.

 Work of a surgeon

The Taiwanese, a surgeon who married the victim 18 years ago and had four children with her, had chopped up her body. He wrapped her head and torso in a blanket which he then hid in the stockroom on the third floor. The severed body parts were found by his 20-year-old stepdaughter on Tuesday afternoon, a day after Rowena went missing.

According to the stepdaughter, Joanne Jane Tiongco—the victim’s daughter from a previous marriage—she went up to the stockroom on a hunch after she saw her mother standing in the room in a dream.

Also recovered from the stockroom were nine bloodstained butcher’s knives and a pair of scissors.

“We believe that those were the murder weapons used by the Taiwanese,” Villaranda said.

Relatives of the victim went to the Makati City police headquarters on Thursday morning to confront the suspect. Detention guards described the 15-minute encounter as “full of emotions, anger and resentment” on the part of the victim’s sisters.

The suspect, on the other hand, did not appear to show any sign of remorse, they noted. Reporters were not allowed inside the detention area. After seeing the suspect, the victim’s relatives asked the police to speed up the filing of a case against him.

Police investigators earlier said that jealousy drove the Taiwanese to kill his wife. Their children had said that their parents usually fought which would end with the suspect hurting the victim.

Villaranda, meanwhile, told the Inquirer that they would need to recover all of the victim’s body parts first before they could file a charge of parricide against the suspect.

Rowena went missing on the morning of Feb. 22 after her husband told their children that she left the house without telling him.