2 ex-NBI chiefs face Vizconde reinvestigation

Two former chiefs of the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) on Wednesday faced the new inter-agency panel tasked to identify the real culprits behind the so-called Vizconde massacre. The two — Epimaco Velasco (July 1992 to March 1995) and Mariano Mison (July 1995 to February 1996) — faced officials from the Justice and Interior and Local Government departments at a closed door meeting at the NBI headquarters in Manila. The meeting was ongoing as of posting time. Velasco and Mison headed the bureau when the government first investigated the gruesome killings of Estrellita Vizconde and her daughters Carmela and Jennifer inside their Parañaque City home on June 30, 1991. It was in 1995 when charges were filed against Hubert Webb, son of former Senator Freddie Webb, and Antonio Lejano, Michael Gatchalian, Miguel Rodriguez, Hospicio Fernandez, Peter Estrada, and former policeman Gerardo Biong in connection with the crime. Two other suspects, Joey Filart and Artemio Ventura, remain at large to this day. The Parañaque Regional Trial Court Branch 274 convicted Webb and the six others in January 2000. The Court of Appeals sustained the guilty verdict in December 2005. Last week, the Supreme Court acquitted the seven and poked holes at the testimony of so-called star witness Jessica Alfaro. Instead, the SC found Alfaro's testimony as "incoherent, if not inherently unbelievable." The SC said Alfaro was not an eyewitness but merely an asset who merely played the role that she saw the killings first hand. The SC's acquittal of the accused prompted President Benigno Aquino III to order the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG) to conduct a reinvestigation of the massacre. - Sophia Dedace/KBK, GMANews.TV