PNP: Nurse, boyfriend ‘masterminded’ slaying of OFW in Batangas

SAN PEDRO CITY – The Calabarzon police on Tuesday announced the arrest of a nurse and her boyfriend over the killing of an overseas Filipino worker (OFW) in the victim’s house in Lipa City, Batangas province.

Danilo Henson, 57, was shot dead outside his residence in Barangay Pinagkawitan on May 19, the same day he and his partner, Janet Capalad, a hospital nurse in Saudi Arabia, returned to the Philippines.

In fact, Henson, an aircraft maintenance personnel in Riyadh, was outside the house watching their van as relatives unloaded their packages, when the lone gunman approached and shot him, according to Supt. Rhoderick Tonga, Lipa City police chief.

The police the next day implicated Capalad and Roel Guico, also an OFW and a friend of the couple in Saudi Arabia, to the murder.

In a phone interview Tuesday, Tonga said the police started to doubt Capalad when her statement did not match that of Guico during the interrogation.

“In cases as such, we consider everyone, including the spouse, a suspect,” Tonga said.

Guico, a company driver in Riyadh, arrived in the Philippines a week ahead of the couple and even fetched them at the Manila airport, the police said.

Tonga said investigators first discovered a series of messages from the suspects’ cellphones that revealed an illicit affair going on for the last two years. A tricycle driver also testified seeing Guico on May 17 talking to a man, the same person who he saw shoot Henson on May 19.

“When we confronted them, Roel (Guico) admitted to the affair while (Capalad) claimed it was only Guico who planned (the murder),” said Tonga.

Nevertheless, Tonga said both were arrested and charged with murder in court.