Crime gang behind grisly murders, illegal drugs in Rizal, Metro Manila busted

The crime scene was “too gory,” policemen decided not to capture it on video.

Supt. Marlon Gnilo, police chief of Cainta town in Rizal province, said policemen found a group of more than 20 men mixing fresh concrete next to a cooler containing a body when they responded to a call from a concerned citizen about gunshots in Barangay San Andres on Tuesday noon.

Gnilo said policemen decided against documenting the crime scene on video because they found it revolting.

“They (suspects) broke the man’s bones so the body could fit into the cooler. It was like a pillow stuffed into a box,” he said.

On Thursday, the Cainta police filed murder and illegal drug charges against 13 members of the so-called “Highway Boys,” who were arrested in a police operation in San Andres.

The group, police said, was engaged in the illegal drug trade and was also tagged in the series of gruesome murders in parts of Rizal and Metro Manila.

Four of its members, identified as James Lord Felix Paraiso, 35; Leo Garbino, 31; Lorfredo Cabales 32; and Ramil Boncales, 39, were killed in a shootout with policemen.

Thirteen of their companions, whose ages ranged from 17 to 56, were arrested.

Police were still tracking down at least nine gang members.

On Wednesday, police recovered a body of a man placed in a plastic drum, half filled with concrete, near the area where the operation was held. The drum was fished out in a section of Pasig River in Cainta.

Police have yet to identify the body they found in the cooler but said the one found inside the drum bore tattoos, one of which reads “Eugene 13.”

“I’ve been getting reports and text messages that there could be more bodies [thrown] into the river. I cannot give you a figure but reports said one of them was even a woman,” Gnilo told the Inquirer.

He said they requested the local government for the use of a backhoe and a barge, suspecting more bodies were dumped in the river.

“[The suspects] were what we (police) call ‘all-around.’ They were involved in robbery and holdup, but of late, illegal drug pushing,” Gnilo said.

He said the gang members, most of them from the provinces, were staying in an area along Westbank Road in Cainta.

Gnilo said the group started off early 2000 as pickpockets plying the streets and victimizing passengers of public vehicles, hence, investigators coined the term “Highway Boys.”

The group later got involved in robbery and in the illegal drug trade in Pasig City and Taytay town in Rizal.

Gnilo said they recovered sachets of suspected “shabu” (methamphetamine hydrochloride) from the suspects’ hideout.