Tuesday, July 01, 2008 Seares: Fighting over the body By Pachico A. Seares News Sense
TWO days into the arduous task of identifying 49 bodies of victims from the ill-fated mv Princess of the Stars, a clash of claims over the cadaver of a woman was already testing if the system worked.
A Punta Princesa, Cebu City family said the woman was Jovelyn Requilme, 16. One Noel Quirante, however, said she was his sister Julie Mendoza, 43.
It would be easy to set a teenage girl apart from a woman in her 40s in a different setting. Alive, there would be no guessing even in a dimly lit bar. Dead, in the way most people die, there would be no problem of identification.
But here the bodies were ravaged by elements that removed features of age or shape.
A mark above the left eyebrow, cited by the Requilme survivors, wouldn’t be enough. Quirante had yet to tell how he recognized his sister.
There was actually no fighting over the body. Unless both claimants were sure, physical violence over a cadaver fished out of the sea wasn’t likely.
Money and love
The person for whose body two claims were made didn’t leave millions in cash or properties. That would have set off a fight in and off court.
Money and/or love can send fists flying and lawyers frothing in the mouth.
Children of a military officer who left a lot of assets and “loved” by competing heirs quarrelled over the right to bury him—and get his money.
In a story that didn’t qualify as news but landed in the “more-than-rumor” column, three women claimed they were wives of the same man.
It wasn’t known if the documented wife wanted to throw her husband’s body back into the Romblon deep. Maybe your wife would.
