For the vengeful, the death of Ruben “Gorio” Fernandez, primary suspect in Karen Kaye Montebon’s murder, was poetic justice.
A life for a life.
But that’s not the kind of resolution that brings peace in the family who lost a 17-year-old daughter or a community, whose sense of security was shaken by an intruder’s malevolence.
To gun down a man without an opportunity to hear his side, no matter how foul his record, is to believe there is no need for rules or law.
To accept an ending that is as violent as the original offense of Karen’s death is to accept that human life is expendable, period.
Who shot Fernandez? Why was he silenced? Did he act alone or were there others who should be held liable for murder or other transgressions?
To deny the victim’s family the answers to these questions prolongs their need for closure.
The Lapu-Lapu police presented a convincing collection of evidence that showed Fernandez, a former inmate with a reputation for theft and robbery in Olango Island, was the man on a motorcycle who visited the Montebon’s residence on the morning of Sept. 15, when Karen was home alone.
There was CCTV footage of his two trips. One showed him with his live-in partner, Jenalyn Soon, who dropped by as a family friend to check whether her sister had sent money from the US through the Montebon family. The other trip was a solo visit, the one that investigators believe was the encounter that led to Karen’s death by strangulation in her bedroom.
The motive was robbery. One by one, stolen articles were recovered by the police. However, a closer look shows that drug use could be just as strong an underlying motive.
Shortly after the deed was done, Fernandez took a bag of personal effects and had Karen’s DSLR camera pawned. The P5,000 from that exchange quickly went to shabu. This account rings true, because it was told by his girlfriend, Soon, who admits joining him in sniffing the drug.
Revelations like these led police to the hiding place of Fernandez in Nasingin islet in Getafe, Bohol. While Soon said she spoke up because her “conscience” bothered her, she knew her partner’s vices and joined him in at least one of them.
This part is what gives many a sense of unease about the cooperation of Soon. To freely enter the Montebon’s household and rely on the family as a conduit of a sister’s generosity from abroad intensified a betrayal of trust. What else did the suspect do – alone or as a couple?
Lapu-Lapu police and Karen’s neighbors in Corinthian Subdivision could have learned a lot more if Fernandez had been brought back alive from Bohol to face trial. The answers are not just valuable for the search for justice, they would help a community understand how to crime-proof itself better against another attack on one of its own.