Omissions by ABS-CBN on the Alex Diloy/Jimmy Lopez "eyewitness" angle

From the ABS-CBN timeline of the Dacer/Corbito case.

26-Nov-00 Two farmers, Alex Diloy and Jimmy Lopez, come out as eyewitnesses to the Dacer-Corbito murder case. Both tell reporters that Dacer and his driver were strangled by policemen using electric cords before their corpses were set on fire.

Diloy and Lopez identify four Presidential Anti-Organized Crime Task Force (PAOCTF) members to be among more than 10 individuals who took part in the killing. Lopez is also reportedly a civilian agent of PAOCTF.

Both "eyewitnesses" are arrested by the NBI. Diloy was wearing Dacer’s white shoes when he was presented to the NBI. Lopez admits to helping build a pyre of wood and tires to set the victims on fire. Viña, head of PAOCTF Visayas, signed the permit of the seized .45 caliber pistol Lopez is carrying when seen by the NBI.

The "dacer shoes" were't white anymore nung nahuli yung mga "witnesses" ng NBI. Painted brown na siya. But That shoe angle is interesting. Ginamit ito ni Diloy para patunayan na nandoon raw siya sa "scene of the crime". Na ibinigay raw ito ng mga killers sa kanya. To give his story credibility.

The case of publicist Salvador "Bubby" Dacer is a strange one indeed.

First, the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) announces to the public that the case has been solved, as its officials presented before the media, two eyewitnesses and a bag of charred bones plus dentures that they claimed were Dacer's and his driver Emmanuel Corbito's but which still had to undergo DNA testing for positive verification.

Then one witness showed the media a pair of brown loafers which he claimed belonged to Dacer and which the killers gave him for his own use. He even went to the extent of claiming that the pair of shoes used to be white, but that they were brown today because he had dyed the pair brown.

Based on the eyewitness account, certain cops identified with former Philippine National Police chief Panfilo Lacson, were implicated in the "murder" of Dacer and Corbito.

It was later discovered that the pair of shoes shown by the witness could not have belonged to Dacer or Corbito. And forensics still had not determined whether the charred bones were human bones.

I'm pretty sure these two so-called "witnesses" were already busted in the past for making shit up.

Now comes Ampy Dacer Henson saying his father never wore Topsider type shoes. Diloy shifted to say it belonged to driver Corbito to which Corbito's wife retorted: "no, its too big, it's not my husband's shoes." This is just one of the holes pointed out in Diloy's story.

More here.

Lacson pointed out that the NBI had earlier announced that they found the shoes of Dacer in the house of one of the suspects, only to be told that the shoes were not Dacer's. The BI then tried to pass the shoes as those of Corbito but his wife, in a television interview, also denied that the shoes were Corbito's. "This only shows that in their haste to solve the case, several lapses were being committed which in the final analysis do not help solve the case.

UPDATE: Dan Mariano in 2001:

Are Salvador “Bubby” Dacer and Manuel Corbito really dead? Have they really been reduced to the armful of bones and teeth that agents of the National Bureau of Investigation claim to have recovered from the boondocks of Indang, Cavite? Were the two yokels the NBI presented to the media really part of the liquidation squad that strangled the PR executive and his driver, then set fire to their bodies?

Despite the readiness of many quarters to believe that the NBI has finally cracked the case, many disturbing questions linger. One of them was raised by a respected clergyman who writes a weekly column for this paper. In his April 5 column, Bishop Teodoro Bacani quoted Fr. Gabriel Baldostamon, curate of the Parañaque parish where the Dacers live, expressing grave doubts about the official version of the fate that befell the controversial PR man and his hapless chauffeur.

Soon after the November 24, 2000, abduction of Dacer and Corbito, Father Baldostamon overheard former national security adviser Jose Almonte tell the PR man’s family that in case the kidnappers return Dacer to Almonte’s group, “they would try to sneak him out to the USA.” In any case, Almonte reportedly said on December 3, Dacer’s family should continue to mourn for him in public “until the opportune time.” Why would anyone make such a proposal unless he had some way of influencing the victims’ abductors?

In a radio interview after the bishop’s column saw print, Father Baldostamon said more doubt surfaced when the NBI presented a white shoe, which was allegedly recovered from the crime scene and which probers said belonged to Dacer, who took to wearing all-white outfits after his wife died several years ago.

When the shoe was presented to Dacer’s children, however, they said it was not their father’s, the priest recalled. They even noted that the footwear had merely been painted white, perhaps by parties desperate to produce evidence no matter how shoddily fabricated to reinforce their case against the presumed perpetrators. Given the unconvincing proof the authorities have dug up, Father Baldostamon said during the interview that he and his parishioners were not yet ready to give up on Dacer. “Which is why up to now, we have not held a Mass for the dead for Bubby Dacer,” the priest told his radio interviewer in the vernacular.

Reading between the lines, it shouldn’t take too much cerebral effort to imagine where the Dacer investigation is being made to go. Meanwhile, the Dacer children are still at a loss as to what has actually become of their paterfamilias.