6 kidnappers sentenced to 40 years imprisonment

MANILA, Philippines - Six members of a kidnap-for-ransom group who allegedly posed as policemen in their criminal activities have been convicted by a Quezon City court for the kidnapping of a businessman back in 2004.

Five of the convicts were identified by victim Vlademir Chuacuco as the ones who abducted him while the sixth was a worker for the businessman who allegedly tipped off the kidnappers.

In the decision promulgated on Tuesday, the Quezon City Regional Trial Court Branch 85 found guilty Mario Patlonag, Antonio Escoton, Ric Lumacang, Jimmy Malinao, Rex Anthony Portado and Francisco Mullon. They were sentenced to 40 years imprisonment and ordered to pay the victim a total of P665,000 in monetary reward and moral damages.

Five of the suspects said they were in another place – with some of them claiming they did not know each other – when the kidnapping happened in October 2004. Mullon, who had worked for Chuacuco, denied complicity in the crime. But according to the court, the prosecution was able to prove the participation of all the accused and that they acted in conspiracy to carry out the kidnapping.

“Alibi is one of the weakest defenses. Easily susceptible of concoction, it is invariably to be viewed with suspicion and may be considered only when established by positive, clear and satisfactory evidence,” said Pairing Judge Luisito Cortez in a 21-page decision.

The victim, who is engaged in wholesale and trucking of bottled beverages and beer products, was abducted late night on Oct. 6, 2004 by a group of armed men in police fatigue uniforms who barged into his office in Sta. Mesa, Manila. Chuacuco said he had seen Mullon, who was then at the store, pursed his lips to point him to the incoming abductors. The kidnappers even took cash from the office worth P125,000 before finally dragging him out, handcuffed, to force him into a waiting van. He was eventually brought to a house in Dasmariñas, Cavite.

At the safehouse, the men negotiated with the victim’s wife through her cellular phone, bringing down the ransom amount from P10 million to P430,000. The victim even said he heard one of the men talking to Mullon over the phone, telling his worker about the difficulty of Chuacuco’s wife in raising the ransom..

Chuacuco’s wife Denise said that during the first phone call made by her husband’s abductors, they claimed to be policemen and that her husband had been brought into a police detachment for interrogation But in the third call made the following morning after the abduction, she was already told to raise the ransom money.

Denise had sought the help of the Police Anti-Crime Emergency Response but she was alone when she handed over the ransom money at a fastfood store on Kamias Road to a man she would later identify as Patlonag. The victim was eventually released and dropped by his abductors on the night of Oct. 8, 2004 along Alabang-Zapote Road.

Operatives of the National Anti-Kidnapping Task Force then arrested suspects Escoton, Lumacang, Malinao, and Portado. A raid at the Dasmariñas hideout followed, resulting to the arrest of Patlonag. At the said house, raiding policemen recovered police uniforms and two-way radios. The next day, the police arrested suspect Mullon.