On the night of October 3, 2022, Philippine radio commentator Percival Mabasa — better known as Percy Lapid — was gunned down inside his vehicle by unidentified motorcycle-riding assailants in Las Piñas City, according to the national police and news reports.
He was on his way to work at the time, his brother Roy Mabasa said on Facebook.
Mabasa, host of the “Lapid Fire” program on the DWBL 1242 radio station, had been a prominent critic of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. and his predecessor Rodrigo Duterte in his commentaries and YouTube broadcasts, according to the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines (NUJP).
On October 18, 2022, Interior Secretary Benjamin Abalos Jr. said a suspect named Joel Escorial surrendered to police, confessed to Mabasa’s murder, and handed over a gun he claimed was the murder weapon, news reports said.
Abalos said the gun matched bullets collected as evidence at the crime scene. Escorial was presented by police at an October 18 news conference wearing a bulletproof vest and helmet.
He told reporters that he and three other assailants — Edmon and Israel Dimaculangan, who were on the run, and another known only as Orly or Orlando, who operates out of New Bilibid Prison — were involved in the murder.
The Philippine Department of Justice formally charged all three men in connection with the crime, a report said. At the time, Escorial did not cite a motive or identify the mastermind behind the murder plot, claiming that he would have been killed if he did not carry out the attack.
On November 7, police alleged that Bureau of Corrections chief Gerald Bantag and prison security official Ricardo Zulueta ordered Mabasa’s murder, multiple news reports said.
Eugene Javier of the National Bureau of Investigation alleged that Bantag ordered the killing in response to Mabasa’s coverage of allegations of corruption against Bantag on his late-night radio show, according to those reports.
Javier said investigators discovered “a criminal organization” operating within the bureau of prisons. Criminal complaints were filed against 10 unnamed inmates for the killing, the reports said.
Bantag and Zulueta have denied the charges, and Bantag claims they were set up by an imprisoned drug lord, according to news reports.
As of December 7, 2022, both men had been suspended from their jobs but not arrested, and authorities had issued an order for immigration authorities to be on alert in case they attempted to leave the country, those reports said.
In March 2023, the Department of Justice filed murder charges against them at the Las Piñas Regional Trial Court. The court issued arrest warrants against them in April 2023.
In a joint statement, representatives from the police, Justice Department, and Interior Department said that three gang leaders held in the Philippines’ largest prison, which was under Bantag’s control, were ordered to find a gunman to kill Lapid for 550,000 pesos (US$9,400), AP reported.
The reports said Bantag and Zulueta have also been accused of ordering the killing of Cristito “Jun” Villamor Palana, a prisoner who allegedly assisted in planning the attack. Palana was suffocated to death with a plastic bag by members of his own gang, Javier said in those news reports. Roy Mabasa told CPJ he believed it was an effort to prevent Palana’s plea-bargain testimony against the two suspects.
Five people accused of involvement in Mabasa’s killing have been charged variously with ordering, arranging, and executing the murder plot, with varying degrees of culpability.
In June 2023, a Las Piñas court convicted three New Bilibid Prison inmates — Aldrin Galicia, Alvin Labra, and Alfie Peñaredonda — and sentenced each to two and up to eight years in prison after they pleaded guilty to being accessories to Mabasa’s murder and arranging the killing. Rappler reported that although originally charged as principals, their guilty plea allowed them to be tried as accessories, which carried a lesser penalty.
Rappler reported that Galicia is the commander of the Sputnik gang, Labra heads the Batang City Jail gang, and Peñaredonda leads the Happy Go Lucky gang.
The same court convicted Galicia, Labra, and another inmate, Joseph Georfo, after they pleaded guilty to being accomplices in the killing of Bilibid inmate Palana, who allegedly contacted people outside the prison to kill Mabasa, Rappler reported. Roy Mabasa told CPJ he believed Palana was killed to prevent his testimony against others involved. They were each sentenced to up to eight years and one day in prison.
A Las Piñas court sentenced Denver Mayores, a former aide to Bantag, to 2 to 8 years in prison after he pleaded guilty to being an accessory to Mabasa’s murder in December 2023.
On May 6, 2024, Las Piñas Regional Trial Court Branch 254 sentenced Escorial, the self-confessed shooter, to between eight years and eight months to 16 years in prison for being an accessory to murder.
Escorial was the fifth person convicted for Mabasa’s murder and will be held in a police custodial center until the trial of a second suspect, Christoper Bacoto, concludes. Bacoto was incarcerated for various crimes, including drug trafficking, and was the alleged middleman who hired Escorial as the gunman, according to news reports.
Zulueta died of heart failure on March 15, 2024, at the Bataan Peninsula Medical Center. Roy Mabasa told CPJ in mid-September that he called for an independent autopsy to ensure the identity of the deceased was indeed Zulueta, adding that the police’s claim that Zulueta died from heart failure lacked substantial evidence.
When police were serving an arrest warrant, Jake Mendoza committed suicide after taking his family members hostage in an hours-long standoff on August 11, 2024, in Lipa City in Batangas province. Mendoza had been accused of being Escorial’s accomplice and allegedly helped him plan Mabasa’s murder.
Batang, the former Bureau of Corrections chief who allegedly ordered Mabasa’s murder with his security official Zulueta, remains at large. On June 19, the Court of Appeals rejected Bantag’s petition to quash the murder charges and warrants of arrest issued by lower courts.
Roy Mabasa told CPJ that Bantag had been spotted in various locations across the Philippines, including Bataan, Baguio, Santa Rosa, and Caloocan, seemingly without fear of arrest by police. He suggested police may be protecting him as a fellow officer.
CPJ’s email to Philippine police headquarters requesting comment on the allegation that authorities were deliberately not pursuing or arresting Bantag did not receive a reply.