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Monday, March 07, 2005
Cebuana comes home in a coffin
CEBU CITY -- A Filipina bride arrived home in a box Sunday, while her Dutch husband stayed home in Holland to face a first-degree murder charge filed by the police.
The family of Veneranda Paña Tenwinkel, 33, wailed when they saw her coffin being unloaded at the cargo area of the Mactan-Cebu International Airport and vowed to do everything to obtain justice.
Alma, 59, Veneranda's mother, said the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) has agreed to their request for an autopsy so they will find out how Veneranda died.
Tenwinkel was first reported missing by her husband Edwin, 46, on Jan. 19, 2001. She was found dead, but well-preserved, last month in the room of Edwin's twin brother Erick. She was found exactly four years after being reported missing.
No details were available, though, on why Edwin was held as the principal suspect, because his government is keeping the investigation confidential.
An official from the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) said the Philippine Government has to keep its hands off the case, considering that Veneranda had become a Dutch national.
"There's nothing we can do. We will just monitor updates of the court hearing," said Lovelia Laping, special assistant of Undersecretary Jose Brilliantes.
She said Veneranda was about to be buried in Holland when the Philippine Embassy filed a petition in court--upon the request of her family in Badian, Cebu--that they be allowed to assume custody of her remains.
The petition was granted and the Philippines spent P800,000 to bring Veneranda's body back home. She was flown on a Malaysian Airlines flight and arrived in Mactan at 3:10 p.m. Sunday.
Members of militant group Migrante were with Veneranda's relatives at the airport.
Laping said that because the Philippines cannot intervene in the case, whatever the NBI reports after its autopsy is only for the consumption of Veneranda's family.
Veneranda was the second of seven siblings. She was previously married to another Dutch national, with whom she had a son, but that union ended.
In 1997, she met Edwin, a doctor. Their three-year-old son is now with Edwin's parents.
Before Veneranda was reported missing, she made a phone call from the Netherlands to her older sister Estella Chua, 34, in Badian on Dec. 28, 1998.
"She said she was homesick and wanted to come home, because she was exhausted from taking care of her husband and son," Chua said. She never mentioned any maltreatment, however.
In January 2001, Chua received a phone call from Edwin, who informed her that Veneranda was missing.
The family's fears grew when Edwin's stories kept changing whenever they tried to get updates from him on the effort to locate Veneranda.
He once told Chua that Veneranda was recuperating from post-natal depression, but that he couldn't tell them which hospital she was being treated.
In another conversation, Edwin told Chua that Veneranda was back in the Philippines, living with another man in Barangay Lahug, Cebu City.
"Sa telepono ako na gyod siyang giprangkahan nga gaduda mi niya nga iyang gipatay iyang asawa kay bisan unsa na man lang iyang alibi (I told him about my family's suspicion that he had killed his wife, because he kept coming up with different alibis)," Chua said.
Between 2001 and 2004, Edwin made several visits to the Philippines, reportedly to find another woman to marry, she added.
"We learned he found a girlfriend in Leyte," she said.
After the autopsy, her family will bring Veneranda back to their hometown, Badian, for burial. (AIV)
(March 7, 2005 issue)
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