MANILA, Philippines — After 10 years, a Malabon City court has dismissed the murder and parricide charges in connection with the killing of Ruby Rose Barrameda, whose body was recovered off Navotas in a drum filled with concrete in 2009.
In a decision promulgated on Aug. 15, acting presiding Judge Edwin Larida Jr. of the Malabon Regional Trial Court Branch 170 dismissed the parricide case against Barrameda’s estranged husband, businessman Manuel Jimenez III, for lack of probable cause.
On July 10, the court junked the murder case against the victim’s father-in-law Manuel Jimenez Jr., his brother Lope, Lennard Descalso, Robert Ponce and Manuel Montero, the man who led authorities to the location of Barrameda’s remains.
Montero, who turned state witness, has tagged the elder Jimenez as the one who ordered the killing. He recanted his statement and has since gone missing.
The court said the prosecution failed to establish the defendants’ direct participation in the murder.
In dismissing the parricide case, the court said there was no reason to proceed to trial because the “rocky marriage” between Barrameda and the younger Jimenez did not constitute motive that he masterminded the killing.
The Barrameda family filed a motion for reconsideration on Sept. 23, which sought the judge’s inhibition from the case for dismissing it even though it had been affirmed in several venues before it was remanded back to the trial court.
The victim’s family also sought the help of President Duterte and Justice Secretary Menardo Guevarra to look into the case.
“This is not the end of the story. The case was not dismissed based on merits. In fact, it did not even reach arraignment. So there is no double jeopardy here,” the victim’s lawyer Al Lazaro said.
The murder of Barrameda has been scrutinized by the Department of Justice, Office of the President, Court of Appeals and Supreme Court, all of which upheld the findings of probable cause.
The Malabon judge “turned a blind eye” on the previous resolutions affirming the parricide case against Jimenez, according to the motion.
Barrameda disappeared in March 2007 in the middle of a legal battle over the custody of the couple’s children.
On June 10, 2009, her body was found stuffed in a cement-filled drum dumped in the waters of Navotas. – With Evelyn Macairan