EDITORIAL – Case closed?

More than 15 months after Nida Blanca was found brutally murdered in her car, government prosecutors filed charges in court the other day against the original suspects. Authorities will soon ask the United States to extradite Roger Lawrence "Rod" Strunk, husband of the beloved actress, who stands accused of hiring a killer to get rid of his wife.

The widower, who left the country last year in the absence of an order preventing his departure, has consistently denied paying for the hit. The alleged killer, Philip Medel Jr., signed a confession that he was hired by Strunk to murder Blanca. But Medel later made a dramatic recantation before TV cameras, claiming he was tortured by authorities into owning up to the gruesome crime.

Prosecutors said the recantation did not necessarily mean Medel was innocent. They pointed to several witnesses whose testimonies could pin down Medel as the killer. And if Medel was the hired murderer, then Strunk could be the mastermind.

There are suspects and witnesses. What isn’t too clear, however, is the motive. Prosecutors are relying on the testimony of Blanca’s bookkeeper, who said Strunk resented being excluded by his wife from the title of a property the actress bought in the United States. Is that enough for a man to have his wife murdered? Earlier, there were also insinuations that Strunk had been left out of Blanca’s will, but apparently this was not established.

From the start Strunk was the main suspect in the murder. But the insufficiency of evidence against him allowed him to remain free and even to leave for the United States. Now formal charges have been brought against him and the accused killer. The public can only hope that government prosecutors now have sufficient evidence so that the truth will come out and those responsible will be made to pay for their crime. There will never be closure if the government’s case is supported by slipshod investigative work.