The Vigo couple’s murder illustrates the tug-of-war between dissent and local politics.

The journalists’ assassinations occurred less than a mile from their home: after a brief stop at a street-side kiosk where they snacked on bananas, George and Maricel Vigo boarded their motorcycle and headed home.

But they never made it. Outside the house of a Kidapawan city council member, two hooded men on a motorcycle overcame the Vigos and fired repeated gunshots.

 
Maricel sustained a single fatal wound in the chest, from a bullet that passed through George’s body. George was hit several times—on his right arm, left and right chest, and neck. Seconds after the shooting, the Vigos’ motorcycle fell to the ground.

They were both declared dead on arrival at the hospital. He was 35; she was 39. They left behind five children.

The story of George and Maricel Vigo’s murder on July 19, 2006 follows a wellworn pattern of extrajudicial killings in the country within the last six years. While police report the murders as solved based upon criminal charges filed against suspects, in reality, almost no prosecutions have been completed in connection with these murders.

Provincial-based journalists who report on corruption and the abuse of power often become prey to powerful political interests and forces that operate outside the confines of the law.

NEWSBREAK traveled to Kidapawan in July 2007 and looked into the circumstances surrounding the Vigos’ killing and the subsequent investigation made by Task Force Vigo.

The Vigo police report is riddled with inconsistencies. At best, the Task Force Vigo investigation—which tags a communist rebel as the gunman—was negligent. At worse, it was fraudulent and intended to cover up the involvement of powerful people in the couple’s death. Friends and family of the Vigos fear that their quest to attain justice for the couple is a futile process.

Swept Under the Rug

In a country ruled by families and clans, South Cotabato is no different.

The Piñol and Taliño families have dominated the local political scene for decades, with elections often coming down to a fierce campaign between members of these clans or their handpicked candidates.

Former congressman Gregorio Andolana, counsel for the Vigo family, claims that the killing of George and Maricel can be traced to their links with the Taliño family, the political rivals of the Piñols.

Maricel Vigo co-hosted a weekly radio program, “Congressional Affairs,” which was sponsored by Rep. Marilou Taliño- Santos and discussed her projects for her district. The couple likewise routinely campaigned for candidates sponsored by the Taliños.

Apart from their politics, though, George and Maricel also reported on sensational stories.

In particular, George had sources within the communist movement, which gave him an important scoop in June 2005, when the New People’s Army (NPA) raided the police station of Magpet town. In that stunning attack, the guerrillas seized high-powered firearms without harming anyone.

George was the first journalist to obtain a video of that raid and showed it—to the humiliation of Magpet Mayor Efren Piñol, who had boasted of having already crushed the guerrillas in his town.

The video, a high-quality production filled with special effects, mocks Mayor Piñol and his brother Emmanuel Piñol, then the governor of South Cotabato. The sparring political factions capitalized on the video to denounce their rivals.

Most notably, Maricel Vigo’s “Congressional Affairs” co-host, Moises Arendain, played the video at a meeting of vice mayors of the province. Arendain, also an ally of the Taliño clan, was vice mayor of the town of Carmen.

It has also been suggested that George had a hand in creating the video—a theory that George’s colleagues deny. Whether or not he did, it is clear that the video sparked high emotions within Cotabato.

A few days after the vice-mayor’s meeting, Gov. Piñol openly accused two “intellectuals” from the province of planning the NPA raid on the police station. The Vigos were convinced that the governor was referring to them.

In an interview with NEWSBREAK, Bishop Juan de Dios Pueblo, a member of the Melo Commission that was created in 2006 to investigate extrajudicial killings, suggested that the Vigos’ death was politically motivated, ordered by powerful people in the community.

A confidential letter on the state of the investigation from the Southeastern Mindanao Regional Office of the National Bureau Investigation (NBI) indicates the agency shared these suspicions. The final line of the NBI letter reads, “In the initial investigation we conducted, raw information [was] received that the gunmen were military operatives and that a politician might have [had a] hand in the killing of the spouses.” The letter does not expound on the “raw information” that the bureau received.

Sensing Death

At Bishop Pueblo’s urging, the Melo Commission in December 2006 took the testimony of friends of family members of the slain couple. None of the witnesses before the Melo Commission testified before Task Force Vigo investigators out of lack of trust or because they were never sought out.

Their testimony before the Melo Commission shows that the Vigos had expressed fear for their lives in the months before their killing.

In January 2006 George told friends that he had learned from a former coworker that the military had identified George on its Order of Battle (OB). A military OB lists suspected enemies of the state and calls for their “neutralization.”

George believed his alleged placement on the OB list was related not only to the video of the NPA raid of the Magpet police station, but also to an incident several years earlier in which he publicly disputed the military’s account of how local NPA leader “Ka Benjie” had been killed.

During the last week of April 2006, Maricel Vigo warned her husband that he needed to halt his regular trips to the couple’s farm because she had received information from a source inside the military that their lives were in danger.

In May 2006, George’s brother was charged with the rape of a minor. George told friends that local politicians had convinced the child’s family to bring the charges as retribution against George.

To Task Force Vigo, though, it was the communist guerrillas who murdered the Vigo couple.

Just four days after the killing, on June 23, 2007, the task force filed charges with the city prosecutors’ office, tagging Dionisio “Jek-Jek” Madanguit, an alleged NPA rebel, as one of four perpetuators. The investigation had not yielded the identities of the other three suspects.

From the onset, the Vigo family considered the investigation a sham and a cover-up. Gregorio Alave, Maricel Vigo’s younger brother, told the Melo Commission, “Task Force Vigo …recklessly pointed at and tagged a certain Dionisio “Jek-Jek” Madanguit as the gunman… To us this is a pure and simple cover-up of the real perpetuators as well as the mastermind of the killing.”

In conjunction with his testimony, Alave filed double murder charges against Toto Amancio, an alleged former bodyguard of former Gov. (now vice governor) Piñol—a claim that Piñol strongly denies. “I don’t have any security guy named Toto Amancio, not before or now. I don’t even know anybody by that name.”

He decries the Left’s repeated moves to link him to the Vigos’ deaths, saying “I am a convenient suspect…I’m not a maniac to kill people just because their beliefs differ from mine.”

Other witnesses before the Commission also associated Amancio with the Vigos’ killing. Andolana told NEWSBREAK he knows relatives of Amancio willing to testify that Amancio’s was involved in the Vigos’ death. However, the police never pursued leads of Amancio’s alleged involvement in the initial investigation or in later months.

Vice Governor Piñol says that Andolana’s claim is politically motivated because “he could not get over his loss to the Piñols in previous elections.”

The Melo Commission likewise did not follow up on the testimony given before it. In January 2007, Andolana addressed a letter to the Commission requesting that it summon additional witnesses and pursue an in-depth investigation. A copy of the letter was furnished to the Commission on Human Rights (CHR). Andolana said he has yet to get feedback from the CHR. One crucial witness before the Melo Commission, civil engineer Venancio Bafilar, appears to have suffered reprisals after his testimony for suggesting that the hostile relationship between George Vigo and Mayor Piñol played a hand in the couple’s murder.

Less than a month after Balifar testified before the Commission, two long-dormant cases involving government contracts were revived against him; the cases now have been dropped. Bafilar also told NEWSBREAK that he has been frozen out of public construction jobs in Magpet since his testimony before the Melo Commission.

Rushed Probe?

Task Force Vigo declared the murder solved although the Kidapawan police chief had reported only days earlier, “This station is still facing a blank wall as to the identity of the perpetuators, since, the witnesses could not identify the perpetuators because the driver was wearing a safety helmet that covered his face while his back rider used a face towel to cover his head and face.”

Given the lack of other circumstantial evidence, it seems inexplicable that investigators never sought out the results of a ballistics test on the bullets collected at the scene of the crime.

North Cotabato Deputy Provincial Police Chief Supt. Jose Calimutan, who headed Task Force Vigo, told NEWSBREAK he expected the city prosecutor’s office to follow through on the results of the ballistics test.

A copy of Task Force Vigo’s investigation also indicates that only two witnesses gave sworn statements before June 23, 2006—the day Task Force Vigo filed charges against Diniosio Maganguit with the city prosecutor’s office. A third witness testified in the evening of June 23, after Task Force Vigo filed the case.

NEWSBREAK interviewed Madanguit’s mother, who lives in a neighboring town of Kidapawan. She had never heard of the Vigo couple, and did not know her son had been accused of murder. Investigators never visited her seeking evidence—not even a photo of Madanguit, which the police did not have. Investigators identified Madanguit on the basis of a police sketch made six years previously.

Madanguit’s connection to the NPA was made via the statement of one witness, who had no knowledge of the Vigos’ murders and testified only that Madanguit had served in the insurgency movement.

Nonetheless, investigators concluded that the NPA ordered the Vigos’ to be killed in retaliation against George. Chief Supt. German Doria of Central Mindanao told the Philippine Daily Inquirer that the NPA “believed it was George Vigo who informed the military about the whereabouts of Commander Benjie.”

The Vigos’ friends claim this is an unlikely scenario, especially as George believed the military had placed him on an Order of Battle list following the controversy surrounding Ka Benjie’s death. Of the six witnesses recorded in Task Force Vigo’s own report, many gave conflicting testimony. In one elemental discrepancy, Madanguit is identified as riding three different motorcycles—including one of a totally different color.

The testimony of a multi-cab driver and his assistant – the only eyewitnesses to the Vigos’ killing identified by Task Force Vigo—suspiciously read nearly identically in response to several of the investigators’ questions.

Whether the multi-cab driver and his assistant were even present during the shooting is uncertain. NEWSBREAK interviewed a witness who said the driver and his assistant arrived at the scene of the crime minutes after the perpetuators shot the Vigos. She refused to give a sworn statement to investigators because she said they wanted her to say the driver and his assistant had witnessed the shooting. The witness asked to remain anonymous for fear of retribution. Says Vice Gov. Piñol, himself a former reporter: “I will appreciate it very much if people linking me to the crime would just file charges in court so I can defend myself.”

Ultimately, Kidapawan prosecutor Christine Jan Pueyo found the evidence presented by Task Force Vigo “insufficient” to link Madanguit to the Vigos’ murder. In January 2007 she directed the city police chief to continue with the investigation. Col. Calimutan of Task Force Vigo also received a copy of the letter.

To date, no further investigation of the Vigo killing has occurred. In fact, neither the police chief nor Calimutan appears prepared to implement an investigation. In cases of extrajudicial killings, the end of a police investigation might just mean the beginning of a new battle to identify and prosecute the masterminds.

As Chief Justice Reynato Puno told NEWSBREAK, “When the police bungle the investigation and yet file, recklessly, a case against an accused, necessarily the courts will dismiss the criminal case for lack of evidence. In that kind of scenario you compound the injustice that has been done to the victim.”