Ocampo family in a quandary: Which report on death to believe

CEBU CITY - Was it really suicide as the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) and the expert of the Senate committee on justice and human rights say, or was it a homicide as the medico-legal team of the Integrated Bar of the Philippines' Cebu City chapter hint at?

Relatives of the late Judge Martin Ocampo are now in a quandary as to which report to believe - that of forensic pathologist Raquel Fortun, who represents the Senate committee or that of UP anthropology professor Jerome Bailen and his team, who represent the IBP.

Corazon Habana, Ocampo's sister, said she still has to confer with her son, Carlos, about the matter.

She admitted, however, that Bailen's report no longer came as a surprise to the family.

Whichever report the Habanas would give credence to, Ocampo's younger son, Marceliano III, has already publicly manifested that he has accepted Fortun's report and his father's suicide.

Nevertheless, while the Senate committee on public order and illegal drugs will get a copy of the report of the medico-legal team, the Senate committee on justice and human rights will not.

IBP chapter director Gloria Lastimosa-Dalawampu, who chaired the IBP fact-finding committee, said she will submit a copy of the report to Sen. Robert Barbers, but not to Sen. Renato Cayetano.

"I feel that Sen. Cayetano does not need a copy of the report," she said.

Cayetano described the move as "regrettable because the decision would only create more disharmony and uncertainty as far as the reautopsy of the remains of Judge Ocampo is concerned."

He added: "It is an insult to me. Why should she give the chairman of one committee a copy of the report and not give it to the chairman of the other?"

Cayetano said the Senate inquiry into the circumstances behind Ocampo's death was a joint undertaking by the committees on justice and human rights and public order and illegal drugs which he and Barbers head, respectively.

Dalawampu said she sees no point in furnishing Cayetano's panel with a copy of Bailen's report because the former does not need it.

She said she came up with the decision after learning that Cayetano gave credence to the conclusion of Fortun, the country's sole forensic pathologist, that Ocampo committed suicide.

The decision was prompted further by Cayetano's statement that his committee was only giving weight to Fortun's report.

Cayetano, however, said that during the second Senate hearing in Cebu when Fortun presented her report, he also invited the IBP to submit a copy of their experts' report for consideration.

"I have given the IBP until the end of the month to furnish us with a copy of the report, then we will start drafting the committee report," he said.

Nevertheless, he said Barbers will surely furnish him a copy of the IBP report.

Fortun, after a reautopsy on the body and interviews with hotel personnel who were at the scene when Ocampo was discovered lifeless inside Room 502 of the Waterfront Airport Hotel last Oct. 7, concluded that Ocampo committed suicide.

Although the report prepared by Bailen's team did not give a conclusion whether the death was a suicide or homicide, the points it raised contradicted the fact that Ocampo inflicted the injuries on himself.

The report also pointed out that the gunshot wounds would point to a homicide, rather than a suicide.

It also raised the puzzling detail of the location and circumstances in which the slug was found, an item which they referred to as "the mystery of the lost and found slug."

Bailen's team quoted the final NBI report that Lapu-Lapu City police probers did not find the bullet the first time it searched the room because the bullet looked like "unscattered cigarette ash."

They also cited the confidential report of Nimuel Diagmel, senior security supervisor to Alfred Reyes, Waterfront executive assistant manager, noting that the slug that was recovered was found on the "top (edge) of the table previously covered by blood-soaked towel." Diagmel explained that this report he made to Reyes was just one of the theories which could possibly explain the location of the bullet.

He said he admitted in the same report that he cannot ascertain beyond reasonable doubt whether Ocampo's death inside the hotel room was a suicide or murder.

He said his confidential report was just a chronology of events and not an investigation report.

Diagmel also turned the tables on Bailen's team who, he claimed, did an "inaccurate" reenactment of Ocampo's death, barely two hours before presenting their report Monday.

Diagmel said Bailen and his team went to see Room 502 Monday afternoon to do a reenactment, but with a report already done, which described the NBI's reenactment as inaccurate because it was supposedly based on a wrong trajectory of the bullet.

He said the IBP team's reenactment was not as accurate as the NBI's because the person who acted as Ocampo, and the chair he sat on was shorter. The team, he added, only estimated the height of the bullet hole in the lampshade.

NBI regional director Ramon Jose Duyongco described Bailen's report as a "mere scrap of paper with no factual basis."

For his part, NBI director Federico Opinion said: "His (Bailen's) arguments are too shallow. He failed to consider our other findings that led us to a conclusion that it was a suicide."