FHM model killed in ’Gapo with 3 others

FHM model killed in ’Gapo with 3 others
Philippine Daily Inquirer, 03/14/2008
http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/inquirerheadlines/nation/view_article.php?article_id=124609

Four persons, including a model of the men’s magazine FHM, were found dead early yesterday in an Olongapo City apartment that appeared to have been set on fire.

…each of the four victims was found with a bullet wound in the head, and two of them had burning pillows and paper also beside their heads. The latter two were identified as George Vitug Castor Jr., 27, and Von Mark Bandejas, 22.

Judging from the bullet casings recovered at the scene, the killers used 9mm and .45-cal. guns, said Senior Supt. Abelardo Villacorta, the Olongapo police chief.

Villacorta said the bodies of Castor and Bandejas, with hands bound, were found on the living room floor.

The bodies of Castor’s reported live-in partner, Scarlet Garcia, 23, and of Rachel Estacio, 20, were found in the bathroom.

Garcia was an FHM model popularly known as Scarlet Bouffard. She was one of the girls featured in its November 2007 issue.

The hair of Castor and Bandejas had been burned, Villacorta said.

He said a punctured canister of butane, a fuel for lighters, was also found on the floor of the apartment located on the second story of a three-story building.

According to witnesses, the fire started at 3:25 a.m. at Apartment No. 52-B and spread to two more units on the third floor.

Responding firemen and policemen arrived at the scene an hour later.

Witnesses said Castor, Garcia, Bandejas and Estacio had been renting the apartment for over a month.

They were seen and heard drinking and singing in their unit a few hours before the fire broke out.

Villacorta said investigators gathered from a witness that at about 2 a.m., a man was seen transferring items from a Toyota Vios to a blue car parked in front of the victims’ apartment.

The Vios, reportedly owned by Castor, has been taken to the police’s crime laboratory services, also in Olongapo. Tonette Orejas, Inquirer Central Luzon

Neighbors try to overcome trauma from murder of FHM model
By Robert Gonzaga, Philippine Daily Inquirer, 04/24/2008
http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/breakingnews/regions/view/20080424-132480/Neighbors-try-to-overcome-trauma-from-murder-of-FHM-model

OLONGAPO CITY, Philippines -- Forty days after the March 13 murder of FHM magazine model Scarlet Garcia and three others, a mass was held at the townhouse where their bodies were found, to "cast away bad spirits."

Afterwards, fireworks went off to drive away "bad spirits" that might haunt what became known as "Scarlet Garcia's townhouse" at Gordon Heights here, owner Luis Ramirez said.

The police arrested two suspects, Ferdinand Carderas and Jay-Ar Perez Mojica, on April 4, in the City of San Fernando where they were also linked to the break-in at the houses of Pampanga board member Raul Macalino and his neighbor and the rape of a 17-year-old girl and a 22-year-old woman in one of the houses.


Murder of FHM model, 3 friends ‘solved,’ says PNP
By Ansbert Joaquin, Tonette Orejas, Philippine Daily Inquirer, 04/14/2008
http://showbizandstyle.inquirer.net/breakingnews/breakingnews/view_article.php?article_id=130332

Chief Superintendent Errol Pan announced the solution of the case after the Olongapo City police on Monday filed a case for murder with arson against two suspects, who were arrested in related incidents of robbery and rape in the City of San Fernando in Pampanga on April 4.

The two suspects were identified by the Pampanga police as Ferdinand Cadenas and JR Mojico. The Olongapo police, however, identified them as Ferdinand Carderas and Jay-Ar Perez Mojica.

They were implicated in the Olongapo murders after the results of ballistic tests done by the PNP crime laboratory in Camp Crame showed that a bullet and a cartridge used in Olongapo were fired from a gun recovered in the San Fernando cases, Superintendent Daisy Babor, chief of the PNP regional crime laboratory, told reporters on Monday.

The specimens which were subjected to cross-matching were a "9 mm slightly deformed jacketed fired bullet marked MAA-4-08" and a "9 X 29 mm fired cartridge case marked MAA-1-08 to MAA-5-08" found at the crime scene in Garcia's apartment and a "9mm Parabellum V. Bernadelli SRA model P018S pistol with serial number 303240 marked RCS4," said Chief Insp. Ronald Yusi, forensic firearms examiner.

Microscopic examination and comparison of the bullet and cartridge "revealed the same individual characteristics with the test bullets and cartridge cases fired from the 9mm Parabellum," said a part of the two-page report by Superintendent Reynaldo de Guzman, forensic firearms examiner and chief of the PNP national firearms identification division.

Senior Superintendent Liza Sabong, chief of the PNP directorial staff, noted De Guzman's report.

"The specimens really matched," Pan said.

Senior Superintendent Keith Singian, Pampanga police director, said the Parabellum gun was recovered from Cadenas during the arrest. Mojico, who initially identified himself as John Ariel Santos, held a .45 cal. gun.