Justice for an innocent: A Yuletide wish

It’s Christmas, the Yuletide, when the poinsettias bloom and the cry of the Christ Child pierces Christendom with its ageless message of peace and goodwill. Nobody is neutral. Nobody is a straggler as the light from Bethlehem surges forth like a perpetual shooting star. Even enemies on the battle front during the two World Wars stuck their bayonets into the ground to salute that immemorial wail from a manger. The soldiers of Herod could not locate the baby wreathed in light they were sworn to kill without mercy.

And so, we remember, we all remember with an epic reverential hush rivalled by no other in the world Jesus Christ created. And always we turn to the stars, particularly the core star of the Epiphany. I have a special wish this Christmas. And this wish is addressed to the honorable justices of the Supreme Court.

I wish that any day now they free an innocent person from bondage. Hubert Webb was still a boy when accused of a terrible crime he never committed, the Vizconde massacre. Seven years after, grizzled by the rigors of prison, beset by asthma and a skin disease that stings like barbed wire, Hubert has grown prematurely old. He has virtually lost all hope that one day he will be vindicated together with his other so-called partners in crime. Deep depression has set in, wringing his spirit into the gaunt and merciless folds of a hangman’s noose. He faintly tugs at Christmas with eyes that drip the loneliness of the damned.

And so this Christmas, as I have sworn to do, I greet the dawn as all roosters do – cockadoodledoo. May this day be blessed, and may Hubert be freed. And may justice finally descend on a case that was called The Crime of the Century. This case has scorched my insides as two others also have, the Aquila Legis fraternity killing of Lenny Villa, the shooting down of Maureen Hultman by Claudio Teehankee Jr. Sad to say, all 12 or 14 Aquilans, though convicted and sentenced to long jail terms, remain scot-free. Teehankee rots deservedly in jail for the rest of his life.

I reiterate what I have said a hundred times in this space. Hubert and his co-accused were and remain innocent of the crime of having knifed to death Carmelita Vizconde, her mother Estrellita and younger sister Jennifer. His co-accused are Antonio Lejano, Michael Gatchalian, Hospicio Fernandez, Peter Estrada and Gerardo Biong.

I am by profession a journalist. I covered this case from the outset, pored through all the relevant documents, covered or followed the trial with the thoroughness of a beagle. In the beginning I believed and trusted the word of Jessica Alfaro and I too wanted Hubert Webb to dangle from the nearest lamppost. Ms. Alfaro was the supposed lone eyewitness to the massacre, whose testimony and whose testimony alone convicted Hubert Webb. I would have believed her up to the very end except that her drama-laden "eyewitness testimony" fell like ten pins under a deluge of events, facts and circumstances.

Slowly I realized Jessica Alfaro was a fake. A mountebank.

She was a robot under the thrall and command of the National Bureau of Investigation. Almost a lifetime of taking drugs and telling lies spurned and blackened her holy water immersion into telling "the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth." But the public did not see this. The public saw only what it wanted to believe. Jessica was a redeemer. Hubert was a crazed criminal. And what was more, he was the spoiled son of then Sen. Freddie Webb "who had all the money, who had all the connections." Yeah, those rich sons of bitches should fry in hell. I believed that too.

I slowly got out of that.

A trained journalist’s eye eventually spotted that Jessica had been relentlessly drilled by the NBI on what to say. How could she, for instance, remember what everybody involved in the crime was wearing many years after? Not just clothes, but times, places, names, infinite details having to do with shoes and sweaters. And searing, conspiratorial sentences. I can’t even remember what I wore four days ago. A drug addict with total recall? And yet the NBI babied Jessica. They treated her like royalty, police sirens shrieking in and police sirens shrieking out as she sashayed into the court of Judge Amelita Tolentino like the Queen of Sheba.

NBI operatives and sources, quoted extensively by media – which had joined the lynch mob – almost daily manufactured lies. Like Hubert Webb seen here and there in Metro Manila, like the accused fleeing into the sanctuary of the Webb residence in Tagaytay there to hide as things got hot. Almost all of the solid evidence however proved that on the night of June 30-July 1, 1991, the night of the hideous massacre, Hubert Webb was in Anaheim, California.

The US State Department, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Immigration and Naturalization Service even our own Department of Foreign Affairs gathered incontrovertible evidence that Hubert could not have massacred the Vizcondes with a carving knife that fateful evening. The scals and signatures of two secretaries of state, Warren Christopher and Madeleine Albright attested to the authenticity of the evidence. In their time, they were the two most prominent members of the US president’s Cabinet. And the documents they signed were worth their weight in gold.

Senator Webb was able to buy them out with his "influence and connections?" C’mon, fellas. This is gobbledegook uttered by Judge Tolentino during the witching hour.

Judge Tolentino vaguely intimated something like that in her ruling. While Hubert was in the US, he smuggled himself out, then smuggled himself back to vent his madness on the beauteous Carmelita Vizconde. He raped her wantonly and finally – sated like a sexually gratified tiger in the night – knifed her to death. This is what the prosecution wants us to believe. And we Filipinos in the mass fell for it." Our NBI and Judge Tolentino airily dismissed all this massive evidence gathered by the US government in response to a "note verbale" transmitted to it by the Philippine embassy in Washington as "piece of paper."

I don’t know if I am violating a confidence. But in the wake of this multi-layered US inquiry, then Foreign Affairs Secretary Domingo Siazon Jr. whispered to me at a diplomatic reception: "That boy (Hubert) is innocent." I had long talks with Robert Heafner, legal officer of the US Embassy. A former FBI operative, he followed Hubert’s trail in America, doggedly and tenaciously. The young Webb was in America all right and there was no way he could uncork the miracle of "bilocation." Meaning he could be in two places at the same time, in the US and at the Vizconde residence in Parañaque that night of June 30, 1991.

How could I close my eyes to the following?

They come like locomotives in the night. Hubert Webb offering a sample of his semen to disprove the rape charge. The prosecution rejected this outright. How explain his authenticated passport backstopping his travel to America and back, dates March 9, 1999 and October 26, 1992? How could Jessica Alfaro fail to identify a "close friend" Tony Lejano in open court? How explain video footages of Hubert gamboling on the snows of Lake Tahoe April 6, 1991, together with his family? How come no fingerprints of the accused were found in the Vizconde residence after the crime? How explain Hubert’s US driver’s license issued June 14, 1991 with his signature and thumbprint? How explain two bank checks authenticated by the FBI issued to Hubert by his employer Environment First Termite Control, encashed June 1999 and July 1991, and duly signed by him? How explain two police driving violations by Hubert in California which he signed appropriately? Why Hubert’s possession of a 1986 Toyota MR2, Serial 658394698, and deed of sale July 5, 1991? And here – we need cymbals – how could Hubert have purchased a mountain bike the night of the Vizconde massacre June 30, 1991, Serial 578059116581 from Orange Cycle, again with his signature? All this makes your spine shiver.

Who was lying then? The prosecution and Judge Amelita Tolentino or Hubert Webb?

This defense of alibi was obstreperously rejected by the Court. Even Foreign Secretary Domingo Siazon who testified on the note verbale and the evidence presented by the US government was fed to the dogs. Secretaries of State Warren Christopher and Madeleine Albright were dismissed as foreign interlopers. Their testimonies could only matter if both appeared in the court of Judge Amelita Tolentino, cowered before her. she was no judge at all. She was a cackling deity at Endor showering Jessica Alfaro with myrrh and lavender as the mob twisted and danced, throwing themselves at the mystic fire, the spiralling smoke taking the eerie shape of Il Diablo in his cups.

They truly deserved each other.

The Supreme Court forgive me for these rather intemperate words. But they do not in any way lessen the logic of the lodestone I bring to their temple this Yuletide. Sirs, I come bearing the blessings of the magi. And would that the same spirit move you as more than 2000 years ago, a carpenter named Joseph and his wife Mary stirred mightily in a manger like a night sky taking fire and brought forth the Christ Child.