POLICE are set to charge Gregorio “Boyet” Rosabal Santos Jr. with murder at the City Prosecutor’s Office Monday, even as family and friends say their final goodbyes to Stacey Villar, the 14-year-old girl strangled in her sleep on August 13 at a posh subdivision in Cagayan de Oro City.
Police Chief Inspector Ariel Philip Pontillas, homicide chief of the Cagayan de Oro Police Office (Cocpo), said they will file murder charges against Santos whose supposed admission to the crime was widely quoted when he turned himself in Saturday morning.
Pontillas said Santos also told investigators that he acted on his own.
Pontillas said there is enough evidence to put Santos at the scene of the crime Thursday night even as he admitted that police investigators have yet to find the murdered girl’s missing mobile phone.
He said a witness saw Santos entering the girl’s rented house and village guards saw Santos entering Morning Mist Village as well, a fact corroborated by recordings of the village’s security cameras.
The camera recordings would show that Santos was inside the village around 12:54 a.m. Thursday and left the subdivision at 1:37 a.m.
Pontillas said Santos was allegedly after Stacey’s mother, Merideth Mah, Santos’s on-and-off girlfriend. Santos’s supposedly had been fighting with Merideth and only chanced upon Stacey Thursday evening.
Stacey had been alone in the house.
But Santos kept his silence regarding his role in the murder on Sunday, while waiting for investigators at the Carmen Police Station.
Santos, who spent the night in detention at the Cocpo headquarters, had been brought to the Carmen Police Station for questioning.
“Di lang sa ko mo-istorya (I have nothing to say),” Santos repeatedly said Sunday while fidgeting in his seat and constantly turning an unopened packet of biscuit in his cuffed hands.
Santos said he has gotten the services of lawyer Noel Vedad and said his lawyer has directed him to keep his silence.
Chief Inspector Joepet Paglinawan, Carmen Police Station commander, said Santos has been flip flopping on his statements regarding his whereabouts on the night of Stacey’s murder.
Paglinawan said contrary to Santos’s statements at the time of his surrender Saturday morning, Santos has been telling investigators contradicting accounts.
“Sometimes he would deny he was at the scene but sometimes he would have slip ups,” Paglinawan said.
In one of those slip ups, Paglinawan said Santos told investigators that he was able to enter the house because the door was not locked.
Paglinawan said Santos told them Stacey was already asleep when he entered the house.
But aside from these occasional slip ups, Paglinawan said Santos has not categorically confessed to the crime.
Meanwhile, family and friends gathered at Stacey’s wake Sunday, a day before the 14-year-old’s Monday burial at the Divine Shepherd Memorial Gardens in Barangay Bulua, Cagayan de Oro City.
Football friends and school mates from the Abbas Orchard School gathered at the wake to exchange stories and share fond memories of Stacey whom they remember as a sweet and happy child.
A family friend who requested anonymity said they welcome the filing of murder charges against Stacey’s suspected murderer.
“We hope he rots in jail for what he did to such a helpless child,” the family friend said.
The family friend said the constant media attention has taken a toll on Stacey's mother, Merideth Mah.
“She wants some space to grieve,” he said.
“She feels the media have been feasting on the tragedy for their own purposes,” he said.
Nicole D. Litonjua, a niece of Stacey's late father, Anselmo "Jun" Villar Jr., however expressed her hope that the media and the police “continue their pursuit of truth with regard to this investigation.”
But Litonjua in an email clarified their family's relationship with businessman and former senator Manny Villar.
“We are not in any way related to the family of Manny Villar. The grandmother Mrs. Sol Mah, whom I've never met has been misinformed,” Litonjua said.