Pinoy worker in Saipan pleads guilty to murder

SAIPAN, Northern Marianas — A 38-year-old Filipino construction worker pleaded guilty this week to the bloody murder of his Filipina girlfriend, a case that outraged this small Pacific island community.

Jealousy prompted Larry Aguilar to attack Leonor Miranda, a 38-year-old mother of three, in front of her six-year-old daughter with an air rifle and a machete in their home nearly five months ago.

Clad in a jail-issue orange jumpsuit and escorted by a police officer, a tearful Aguilar changed his plea to guilty in the first degree murder charge — a capital offense that carries a maximum penalty of life imprisonment — last Wednesday in exchange for a lighter sentence.

The Attorney General’s Office likewise agreed to recommend the dismissal of the other charges in exchange for the plea bargain.

Aguilar is also charged with second degree murder, aggravated assault and battery, two counts of assault with a dangerous weapon, assault and battery, assault, and two counts of disturbing the peace.

Chief Public Defender Masood Karimipour, who represented Aguilar, signed the plea agreement with Assistant Attorney General Philip Tydingco, who represented the Northern Marianas Commonwealth government.

Commonwealth Superior Court judge Mona V. Manglona set the sentencing for April 7. Under the plea bargain, Aguilar could get between 20 and 50 years’ imprisonment.

Only twenty minutes by air from Guam, Saipan is part of the small Northern Marianas island group in the Pacific some 1,500 kilometers east of the Philippines. It is home to some 35,000 Filipino expatriate workers who comprise half of the local population.

Seeking greener pastures, Miranda left her two children with her parents in her native San Fernando, Pampanga, about 10 years ago for this US territory.

Prior to her death, Miranda was leaving Aguilar for a former boyfriend, who fathered her six-year-old daughter there, according to court records.The ex-boyfriend, a hotel owner there, initially provided child support. When the support stopped, Miranda sought court action.

The businessman said he was willing to provide child support, including for Miranda’s two children in the Philippines, if she separated from Aguilar.

Miranda discussed the matter with Aguilar and had agreed that she would move out.

However, on the evening of July 14, after a drink with neighbors, Aguilar attacked Miranda in a fit of drunken rage inside their apartment in the island’s San Jose district. Miranda had just moved her belongings to another apartment that day.

Miranda’s sister, Maria Fe, 35, who was living in the same apartment building, heard screams and ran out to find her sister bleeding profusely from her left wrist — her hand nearly severed.

A shaken Miranda told her that Aguilar tried to kill her. Her daughter, terrified, was screaming "Help my mom! Help my mom!"

While her boyfriend helped her sister get medical attention, an enraged Maria Fe went to Miranda’s apartment, found Aguilar standing beside the couch and began pummeling him with her fists.

Aguilar, apparently dazed, was surprised to see her and he fled in a pickup truck. Police found him hiding in an abandoned shack in a remote area two days later.

Maria Fe told the court that Aguilar found Miranda and her daughter asleep on the couch in the living room.

After an argument, Aguilar then dragged Miranda by the hair to the bedroom, where he clubbed her with an air rifle, shot her in the head and then attacked her with a machete. Police investigators later found strands of hair from the victim on the floor.

Somehow Miranda managed to run out of the room and reach for a telephone to dial the 911 emergency hotline, investigators said, but Aguilar nearly chopped off her left hand. Police found bloodstains on the telephone and in the bedroom.

The case drew public condemnation because Miranda was brutally attacked in full view of her young daughter.

Narrating her niece’s account, Maria Fe said the child was startled awake by an argument between her mother and Aguilar. She then saw her screaming mother dragged by the hair into the bedroom.

There she saw her clubbed with a rifle and shot in the head. The child then "closed her eyes" when she saw Aguilar strike her mother in the back of her left shoulder with a machete. Maria Fe said her niece was shaking in fear as she narrated the incident.

Police said they received a "call of a disturbance" at around 11:30 p.m. and immediately responded to find the place swarming with onlookers.

Miranda died shortly in the hospital. An autopsy performed by Dr. Aurelio Espinola showed that she bled to death because of her nearly severed hand.