Expert: Media exec committed suicide

Contrary to police findings, the 51-year-old magazine publisher who was found dead in the comfort room of her office in Makati City last September committed suicide.

Forensic pathologist Dr. Raquel Fortun, who conducted a second autopsy of the victim’s body, said Delia Gutierrez’s wounds did not conclusively prove that she was murdered.

In a 10-page forensic case review, a copy of which obtained by The STAR, Fortun concluded that "the death was intentional and self-inflicted and therefore a suicide."

According to her, Gutierrez even showed indications that she may have planned the suicide based on how she purchased three knives the day before she was found dead and laid out her wedding dress and took out documents pertaining to insurance and funeral matters from a vault on the day she supposedly took her own life.

"She therefore had access to the weapon and possession of it even prior to the incident, which makes it highly unlikely that another party was involved," Fortun said.

Fortun noted that the victim’s body was found on the toilet floor and there was no evidence suggesting that another person could have gone inside the comfort room or the victim’s office between 2:10 p.m. — when she was last seen alive — and 2:30-2:33 p.m., when she was found dead.

"Given the small dimensions and other features of this washroom facility, the absence of signs of a struggle at the scene or on the body (there were no defense type injuries) or any indication that Mrs. Gutierrez was incapacitated that she could not have resisted an attack, again it is highly unlikely that she was not alone when the injuries were sustained and that they were inflicted by someone else," she said.

Gutierrez, publisher and chairman of Media G8way Corp. (MGC), was found dead inside the comfort room of her office in Legazpi Village, Barangay San Lorenzo, Makati City last Sept. 6.

Her throat was slashed and her body had multiple stab wounds supposedly inflicted with a kitchen knife found at the crime scene.

Two months later, Makati police filed parricide charges against the husband and MGC editor-in-chief Ibarra Gutierrez. The charges were based on circumstantial evidence pointing to him as the possible killer.

He was identified by witnesses as the last person seen entering and leaving his wife’s office before and after he found her body.

An autopsy by the Southern Police District crime laboratory said the victim’s wounds suggested that she did not commit suicide as believed by Gutierrez’s husband.

The husband questioned the allegations and accused the investigating officer, Police Officer 2 (PO2) Dominador Robles, of bias.

Fortun, after examining the injuries, said all of the victim’s wounds — which include six stab wounds and a lacerated neck — indicated they were self-inflicted.

"None of these wounds is immediately incapacitating (not even the heart or lung injuries) and hence they could have been inflicted by the decedent upon herself one after the other," she explained.

"As for the slashed throat, again this was not necessarily significantly incapacitating or even fatal because breathing was not critically compromised," she said.

Fortun’s report stated that "a conclusion of homicide is thus not supported by the facts of the case presently known and Mrs. Gutierrez most probably committed suicide."

Fortun’s report will be submitted to Assistant City Prosecutor Henry Salazar of the Makati City Prosecutor’s Office today.

Salazar is conducting a preliminary investigation of the charges to determine if whether or not police have sufficient evidence to warrant the filing of a case in court.