Taiwanese charged with transgender’s slay

Ashley Ann Reilly and Jayson Santos Lee (identified as Che-Yu Tsai in his passport).

The police have charged with murder a Taiwanese national accused of killing his transgender live-in partner on Saturday in their condominium unit in Pasay City and then dumping her body in Cavite.

Jayson Santos Lee (identified as Che-Yu Tsai in his passport), 25, underwent inquest proceedings in the city prosecutor’s office on Monday.

Case investigator SPO4 Allan Valdez said the body of Robert William Reilly (also known as Ashley Ann Reilly), 23, was found inside a black suitcase on Coastal Road, Cavitex Expressway in Bacoor, Cavite, on Saturday morning. She had a stab wound in the neck and bruises on her face.

The police, however, believed that she was killed inside the couple’s unit at the Tower D Shell Residences Condominium on Edsa corner Sunrise Drive in Pasay City.

Closed-circuit television (CCTV) camera footage showed that the couple were arguing before they entered their unit at 11:40 p.m. on Friday. More than an hour after, Lee went out and then returned with a big suitcase.

At 2:22 a.m., he left the unit again, carrying boxes and the suitcase to his car. “A security officer even helped him load the bag into his Toyota Grandia,” Valdez said, adding that the security officer already suspected something was wrong because the suitcase was too heavy.

This prompted them to check the couple’s unit which Lee had left open. A check showed blood splatters on the curtains and window.

Valdez said the suspect could have stabbed Reilly with a kitchen knife in the neck, punching her repeatedly after she fell to the floor.

“The victim was still able to walk from the inside of the unit to the terrace where she could have died because that was where we discovered a pool of blood,” the policeman said.

The suspect was arrested after he returned to the condo unit at 1 p.m. on Saturday. Valdez said that Lee told them that he had been in the country for 41 days while he and Reilly had been together for about a month.

He also admitted stabbing Reilly and took the police to the area where he had dumped her body. According to him, he got annoyed because the victim had been repeatedly asking him for money.