Flashback: Go bolted jail in 1994

MANILA, Philippines - It’s not the first time that Rolito Go has gone missing from jail.

Pasay City Judge Benjamin Pelayo handed down the guilty verdict on Go for the July 2, 1991 murder of Eldon Maguan on Nov. 5, 1994. Go was sentenced to life imprisonment in absentia after he bolted the Rizal provincial jail on Nov. 1, 1994, four days before the promulgation of the case.

Go then became a most wanted fugitive for the next three years.

Shaving off his moustache and growing his hair long, he moved around La Union, Ilocos Sur, Ilocos Norte and Cagayan provinces in Northern Luzon, disguised as a seaman named Ernesto Diaz.

A police team caught him on April 30, 1996 at a piggery farm along the Gapan-Olongapo Road in Pampanga.

An agent of the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) from Northern Luzon claimed several government officials, including a high official of the Presidential Anti-Crime Commission (PACC), had helped hide Go.

Go was convicted of murder after shooting Maguan, a 25-year-old mechanical engineering graduate of De La Salle University, during a traffic altercation at Wilson Street in San Juan.

On the early evening of July 2, 1991, the construction magnate had dined in a nearby bakeshop where, witnesses alleged, the businessman stormed out after a fight with his girlfriend, and threatened to shoot the first person that gets in his way.

Still raging as he boarded his car, Go entered Wilson Street, driving against the one-way traffic. At the corner of Wilson and J. Abad Santos, Maguan’s and Go’s cars nearly slammed into each other.

Witnesses recounted Go alighted from his car, walked over to Maguan who was still at the wheel, and shot the victim.

Shortly after, the police arrived at the scene and retrieved an empty shell and one round of live ammunition for a 9 mm caliber pistol. A security guard at the restaurant was able to jot down Go’s license plate.

After six days, Go surrendered to the San Juan Police accompanied by two lawyers. A complaint for frustrated homicide was filed against him, but it was later upgraded to murder when Maguan died the next day.

The trial began on Sept. 19, 1991 and lasted for two years.

It was only in 1993 when he was brought to the national penitentiary.

While locked up in the maximum security compound of the New Bilibid Prison in Muntinlupa City, Go asked the Supreme Court through a 57-page petition in November 1999 to annul his life sentence, acquit him for murder, or lower his sentence to a homicide conviction.

Claiming injustice, Go claimed he had been denied due process largely because of media and public hysteria.

While virtually admitting he did shoot Maguan, Go claimed it was a case of homicide since the act was not planned. The SC, however, junked his petition.

Go has since then been endorsed for commutation of sentence twice, in October 2000 and December 2005, but both endorsements were turned down.

After Go’s second bid for commutation was filed, the victim’s mother, Rosario Maguan, filed an opposition on the ground that Go had yet to show remorse and had not even paid the more than P3 million awarded to her family by the court as indemnification for the murder of her son.

Go, through his youngest sister Julie Sy, was able to pay the civil indemnity only in August 2008, 17 years after Maguan’s death.

In October 2008, following the Oct. 3 release of pardoned convict Claudio Teehankee Jr., then Justice Secretary Raul Gonzalez said Go was “eligible” for executive clemency and in fact had already submitted a petition for this.

But the Maguan family expressed their “continued unwavering opposition” through a paid print advertisement published in major newspapers.

They said Go had already been disqualified from “any parole, commutation or clemency” when he escaped from prison.