Justice sought for slain wife of ex-US navy man

TARLAC CITY — Give her justice.

This is the cry of relatives of 36-year-old Maritess de Leon-Applegate, wife of a former US navy officer and a member of a prominent family here, who was shot dead inside her sister’s restaurant last March 29.

Applegate will be buried today. Her elder sister Cristina, who owns the Copperchino Café and Restaurant, said her husband, Michael Emmanuel Applegate, a US navy retiree now living in Japan, cannot come home because of "shock and fear."

Superintendent Tito Bayangos, city police chief, said they are now matching the cartographic sketches of the two gunmen with those of known guns-for-hire.

He added though that they have a "circumstantial suspect" who could have plotted the killing but that they need to gather "solid evidence."

Applegate married her husband only last January.

According to Cristina, her sister had an argument with her former boyfriend, Vic Angeles, a local contractor, at about 10 p.m. last March 29 in her restaurant along MacArthur Highway.

Maritess and Angeles had not reportedly formalized their breakup when she got married in Japan.

Two men, believed to be the assassins, then entered the restaurant and each ordered a cup of coffee. Maritess, Cristina and Angeles later moved to one of the restaurant’s private KTV rooms.

Cristina said she was pacifying the two when one of the gunmen barged into the KTV room and shot Maritess four times with a 9-mm. pistol.

Before fleeing, the gunman even took the cellular phones of the two sisters.