OFW commits murder-suicide over husband's womanizing

MANILA, Philippines - An overseas Filipino worker (OFW) allegedly shot her husband while he was sleeping and then committed suicide at past midnight yesterday after learning that her husband had reportedly been keeping a mistress while she was abroad.

Chief Inspector Benjamin Elenzano, head of the Quezon City Police District – Criminal Investigation and Detection Unit (QCPD-CIDU) homicide division, said the couple’s 14-year-old daughter discovered the bodies at around 8 a.m. yesterday.

According to police reports, Maximino Arapiles, 47, a barangay anti-illegal vending operations volunteer, was found dead from a gunshot wound in the back in the second-floor master’s bedroom of their house on Bayanihan street in Barangay Commonwealth.

His wife, Merlinda, 47, who recently returned from Canada, was found on the first floor.

Police said that sometime in September 2008, the couple’s daughter Mylene, 14, learned her father had a mistress, based on a text message she had read.

When she told her older brother, Michael, 18, about her discovery, the son confronted his father during a drinking session.

Elenzano said they fought and Michael was eventually sent to the province, where he had been staying until Merlinda came home and found out what had happened.

Since then, the couple had been fighting over the husband’s alleged mistress and how Merlinda wanted her son to come home.

On the night of the killing, Mylene told probers that she slept late after watching a reality television show. She said her parents were already asleep.

When she woke up, she saw her mother lying in a pool of blood downstairs, with a 12-inch kitchen knife beside her. She ran upstairs to tell her father, but found that her father had been shot.

Elenzano said homicide probers believe that Merlinda, sometime after her daughter went to sleep, took her husband’s .38 caliber revolver and shot him while he was sleeping.

Merlinda, according to the evidence, then went downstairs and slashed her wrist but when she saw the blood, she tried to run back to the bedroom to ask for help, Elenzano said.

However, Merlinda slipped while going up the stairs and hit her head on the floor, which explains why she also sustained a head injury, Elenzano said.

Homicide probers found no evidence of anyone else entering the house.