I am an avid viewer of NCIS, the popular series on CBS about naval crime investigators. Although Gibbs and company are sticklers for the integrity of crime scenes, I have yet to see them haul away husbands or relatives from dying victims’ deathbed for jeopardizing or contaminating the crime scene. They do suspect ill motive for wiping bloods dry or removing the body and conduct their investigation using other means, but they do respect the relatives’ right to worry about the victim and to grieve.
Such was not the case with the police investigation on the shooting to death of Trinidad Arteche Etong, wife of ABS-CBN news anchor and radio commentator Ted Failon. The police took Failon from the hospital, where he had taken his bloodied wife, and brought him to the police station for interrogation for eight hours. Failon couldn’t even be there for his wife’s last moments. Still confused, agitated and in agony over the tragedy, Failon had to be fingerprinted and answer investigator’s questions instead of being at the hospital to attend to his dying wife.
It was worse with the victim’s siblings. Still in pain over what happened to their sister and crying at her bedside, four policemen forcibly took them away from the sister’s bedside and into a waiting police van, screaming and crying while network television cameras recorded the cruel episode. The police said they had to take them to the police station to be charged with obstruction of justice.
Earlier, the police had also hauled the housemaids for cleaning the bathroom where Trinidad had been shot – whether by her own hand or by another person – and the driver for cleaning the Pajero used to take the victim to the hospital, which police said made it difficult for investigators to determine the circumstances of the death or the crime. They, too, were charged with obstruction of justice.
While it was understandable for the police to be pissed off with the cleaning of the crime scene, it was also understandable why the housemaids and the drivers would do so. After all, they do not understand anything about the integrity of crime scenes nor did they suspect any crime, believing as they did that the victim had shot herself over financial problems. Besides, they told investigators that their instinct was to clean the bathroom and the Pajero so as to spare the victim’s 12-year-old daughter of the trauma of seeing their mother’s blood.
The chief investigator of the Quezon City police said he suspected that Failon could have shot his wife during an altercation over financial matters inside the Pajero. If this were so, surely the right front window of the Pajero would have been smashed because the bullet exited the victim’s right temple, and the slug probably was somewhere along the road. But Failon surrendered the gun used, the empty shell and the slug immediately to the police. And the Pajero did not bear any sign of bullet smashing against the window nor any place inside.
Although everybody in the Failon household, including the two sisters and a brother of the victim, insisted that Failon’s wife had shot herself because she felt guilty in having squandered the couple’s savings in an investment gone sour, the police seemed determined to pin the death on Failon. A note written by the victim, which the police said was not a suicide note because it did not say she was killing herself, said she was sorry for the financial mess and that she could not face Failon for the mistake. Although it was not written prior to the shooting, it clearly established a motive for the victim to commit suicide.
While the dispute over financial problems can be construed as a legitimate motive for murder – although Failon said she told his wife not to worry and that he could earn back whatever she lost – the Quezon City police also have a clear motive for getting back at Failon. The news commentator had repeatedly criticized the police for unsolved robberies and carnapping, and was in fact lambasting the police when he had to leave his ongoing radio program to rush home after a crying Trinidad had called her by phone. On reaching home, he said he found his wife in a pool of blood inside the bathroom, whose locked door he and a housemaid had to force open.
Neither can the police fault Failon for not calling the police first before bringing his wife to the hospital. In that moment of pain and anxiety, would you not think of trying to save your wife and rushing her to the hospital first before anything else?
If the police had shown the same enthusiasm and urgency for media murders committed in broad daylight and in the presence of witnesses, perhaps international human rights groups would not be reprimanding the Arroyo administration for these unsolved murders.
Another interesting aspect of this whole tragedy is the unusual interest of Justice Secretary Raul Gonzales. When the head of the Public Attorney’s Office went to the police station to notarize Failon’s statement, Gonzales ostracized her for undue interest in the case. PAO chief Persida Rueda Acosta said ABS-CBN had called her because the police needed somebody to notarize Failon’s statement, who was being held by the police because of the un-notarized statement.
The next day, Gonzales revealed to media that he received a text message from an alleged informant, stating that the victim’s body was moved from the bedroom to the bathroom by Failon with the help of an associate known as “Delfin Lee.” Why Gonzales had to reveal this unverified information to the media, and not just forwarded it to the police for investigation was suspect. Was he, like the police, trying to pin the crime on Failon? Was he putting Failon on trial by publicity?
When the Arteche and Failon family announced that Trinidad’s body would be cremated on Wednesday, Gonzales told media the police should stop the cremation because the incident was still under investigation. I wonder why Gonzales could not just allow the police to do the investigation and why he was interfering in the investigation through the media.
Was he, like the police, a victim of Failon’s fearless commentaries on TV and the radio? Did he also find it an opportunity to get back at Failon and the mighty ABS-CBN? And perhaps serve warning to unfriendly media members that what is happening to Failon and his family can also happen to them?
I am not saying Failon is not guilty. That is not for me to say. That is for the police to determine. But the police must show impartiality, decency and respect for a family’s grief in its investigation. Not haste, not cruelty, not arrogance.