Ex-maid of slain film critics pleads not guilty

The former house helper of slain film critics Alexis Tioseco and Nika Bohinc on Thursday pleaded not guilty to charges of robbery with homicide.

The arraignment of Criselda Dayag at Quezon City Regional Trial Court Branch 100 came more than six years after the couple were shot dead in their home on Times Street, Barangay West Triangle.

Dayag, who left the house together with the three male assailants after the Sept. 1, 2009, robbery, was arrested last week in Angeles City, Pampanga province.

Christopher Tioseco, brother of the victim, looked daggers at Dayag while in court. He declined to talk to the media.

Dayag pleaded not guilty before Judge Editha Mina-Aguba and was assisted by defense counsel Constanza Brillantes from the Public Attorney’s Office.

In an interview with the Inquirer, Dayag admitted that she let the assailants into the house of Tioseco, a Filipino-Canadian, and his Slovenian partner Bohinc. This was after a man who introduced himself as “Larry” convinced her to open the door so he could confront the head housemaid, Magdalena Patpat.

Patpat had supposedly maltreated Larry’s sister, a former househelp in the same house, and withheld the latter’s salary.

“I was surprised that he came with two other men. I don’t know them,” Dayag said.

Patpat was hogtied and gagged while the intruders ransacked the house. The couple arrived while the robbery was in progress and were shot dead.

Dayag maintained that she was only forced to go with the assailants as they fled because “they threatened to kill my family.”

But the Quezon City Police District, in announcing her arrest last week, said Dayag had been involved in past robberies.

It was her modus operandi to apply for work as a maid and give her accomplices access to her employer’s house after two to three weeks, according to Insp. Elmer Monsalve, chief of the QCPD’s Criminal Investigation and Detection Unit.

Tioseco was a professor at the University of Asia and the Pacific. He was best remembered for advocating independent filmmaking and for decrying the dumbing down of Filipino films to ensure profitability.