Witness recants, clears mayor, 5 cops of murder

SANTIAGO CITY, Isabela — A witness who earlier had implicated this city’s mayor, Jose Miranda, and five policemen in the murder of two youths five years ago has recanted her testimony, implicating instead a gang of criminals in the killings.

The witness, Elizabeth Feliciano, also accused Environment and Natural Resources Secretary Heherson Alvarez of bribing her to link Miranda and the policemen to the twin killings.

Alvarez, however, belied Feliciano’s accusation, saying that his political opponents in this province have made a stool pigeon out of the witness.

Attacking her credibility, the DENR secretary said Feliciano was a known drug addict with a record of arrests for illegal drugs.

In her Sept. 3 sworn statement obtained by The STAR, Feliciano said it was Alvarez, then a senator, who gave her P30,000 in 1997 to implicate Miranda in the 1996 killings of Vicente Bauzon and Elizer Tuliao, her live-in partner.

She claimed that Tuliao’s father Virgilio forced her to testify against Miranda and the five policemen, threatening to include her in the case if she refused.

The five policemen — Wilfredo Leano, Ferdinand Marzan, Ruben Agustin, Alexander Micu and Emilio Alvarez — are now serving life terms after they were convicted in 1999.

A sixth policeman, Rodel Maderal, went into hiding but later turned state witness in the case.

Alvarez downplayed Feliciano’s role in the conviction of the five policemen in the double murder case.

"She was an inconsequential witness," he told The STAR in a phone interview yesterday. "Her testimony was not crucial in the conviction of the suspects."

He said it was Maderal’s testimony which pinned down the five policemen. "Unfortunately, some quarters are manipulating the poor woman to concoct malicious stories against my honor," he said.

In her new statement, Feliciano exonerated Miranda and the policemen, blaming the twin murders on a gang of car thieves led by certain Amboy Velasco whom, she claimed, Tuliao had double-crossed.

She alleged that Alvarez even promised to give her shelter at his unit at Twin Towers Condominium in Ermita, Manila if she would link Miranda to the double murder case.

The elder Tuliao had accused Miranda of masterminding the killings to get back at his son for tagging him as the jueteng kingpin in Isabela during a hearing in 1995 of the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee which Alvarez then chaired.

Miranda went into hiding last June 25 after the Regional Trial Court here issued a warrant for his arrest in connection with the double murder case.

He surfaced last month after the same court, but under a different judge, recalled his arrest warrant.