Rape-slay victim’s ‘face’ forces QC man to confess

Even with his eyes closed, Aries Pascua kept seeing the face of the woman he had raped and killed.

Pascua, 31, said so in a confession he made before the Quezon City police, who filed charges against him on Thursday over the death of Sharon Morales, his brother’s former live-in partner.

The 36-year-old Morales was found dead on Sept. 29 inside her bedroom at the apartment she was renting on Maya Street, Barangay Commonwealth.

This was after Pascua’s mother Esperanza, who was staying in another unit upstairs, picked up the smell of decomposing flesh and alerted authorities.

Although the autopsy stated heart attack as the cause of Morales’ death, investigators didn’t declare the case closed as they noted that the body was found under the victim’s wooden bed and concealed by three bags of clothes.

Pascua, who was staying in the same compound, disappeared right after the killing.

But on Monday, Pascua, who was employed as a cook,  returned from Calauag, Quezon province, to reveal what he did to Morales.

Confession

In a sworn statement, Pascua, said he entered Morales’ unit around midnight of Sept. 27 and found her drunk.

He sneaked into her room to look for money but Morales caught him.

To prevent her from making a scene and reporting him to authorities, Pascua choked Morales until she passed out.

He also admitted raping her while she was unconscious. When she started to stir and cough, he stepped on her neck and punched her repeatedly in the face to make sure she was dead.

After hiding  her body under the bed, he ran off with the victim’s cell phone.

Posing as Morales, he used the phone to send “misleading” text messages to Esperanza, saying Morales had already moved out of the apartment with a lover.

Pascua then sold the stolen phone.

In his statement, Pascua said he turned himself in out of guilt and because he kept seeing the face of Morales “every time I closed my eyes.”

The Quezon City Police District has charged him with robbery with rape and homicide.

The victim, a supermarket supervisor,  had a 5-year-old son with Pascua’s brother. The couple had been separated for years.