A former mayor and a brother of a former congressional candidate were linked by one of two arrested suspects to the gunslaying of Abra Rep. Luis Bersamin in Quezon City last Dec. 16.
Chief Superintendent Eugene Martin, Cordillera police director, said Freddie Dupo, former vice mayor of La Paz, Abra and one of the two arrested suspects, tagged the two in the course of questioning by investigators of Task Force Bersamin.
Dupo told probers of the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group (CIDG) that it was not him who recruited the key players in the Bersamin killing but the former mayor and the brother of the defeated congressional bet.
“Dupo claimed that the former mayor and his companion were the ones who recruited the triggerman, Gerry Turqueza, and the hit men in the second group,” Chief Superintendent Eugene Martin, Cordillera police director, told The STAR.
Martin refused to name the former mayor and his companion, but said the two were former New People’s Army (NPA) rebels.
“In his statement, Dupo claimed that the ex-mayor and his companion were the ones in direct contact with the mastermind in Bersamin’s murder,” he said.
Martin suspects that the two are coddling Turqueza and two others whom Dupo and his cousin, Sunny Taculao, claimed were among those in the first group of hit men recruited for the killing.
He said the ex-mayor and his companion are based in a remote mountain town in Abra where the municipal government, the local police, and the rebels are “co-existing.”
“The latest information we have received is that Turqueza is in hiding with the NPAs in the remote town of Abra,” Martin said.
He said he is coordinating with Army units based in the province to “liberate” the town from the NPA’s influence.
Dupo and Taculao were arrested the other weekend in Baras, Rizal by a police team, which was led to their hideout by a sack of rice and other food supplies sent by their relatives in Sta. Cruz, Ilocos Sur.
Taculao yielded a caliber .45 pistol, three cellular phones and four SIM cards.
Dupo and Taculao are now under the custody of CIDG chief Director Edgardo Doromal, who also heads Task Force Bersamin.
With the confession of Dupo and Taculao and the crime laboratory findings that the caliber .45 pistol seized from them was the murder weapon, Martin believes that the mastermind would be the next to fall.
“We are slowly putting into place the missing parts of the puzzle in the Bersamin slay through the information given to us by Dupo and Taculao,” Martin said.