Two ‘chop-chop’ bodies those of Dacer, driver ?

Authorities investigating the abduction of publicist Salvador "Bubby" Dacer are trying to identify two men whose decapitated bodies were chopped into several pieces and dumped in a remote town in Nueva Vizcaya Thursday night.

Agents from the Presidential Anti-Organized Crime Task Force, one of several law enforcement agencies investigating Dacer’s disappearance, have asked Dacer’s children to help identify the bodies.

President Estrada yesterday phoned Dacer’s family and assured them that authorities were trying to speed up the hunt. Mr. Estrada stood as godfather to one of Dacer’s daughters, Ampy Dacer-Henson.

Dacer’s family will hear Mass today, which they have sponsored, at the Our Lady of the Holy Rosary Parish Church near Dacer’s Parañaque City residence to pray for the safe return of Dacer and his driver, Emmanuel Corbito.

Residents of Barangay Baretbet in Bagabag town, Nueva Vizcaya found the body parts, which were placed in five trash bags, last Thursday, nearly a week after Dacer’s abduction.

At about 8:30 p.m., several unidentified men aboard a white Toyota Revo van, with license plates MJT 896, and a maroon Nissan pick-up dumped the bags over the side of the San Lorenzo Bridge, they said. The bridge connects Manila to provinces in Northern Luzon.

After the men sped off heading south, the residents got suspicious of the bags’ contents and called the police.

"The residents thought the bags contained rotten meat, until our police investigators arrived and inspected the bodies," said PO3 Noel Pascua, a local police investigator. "They arrived in a convoy of two vehicles. If they were local residents, they should have arrived in mere tricycles or on foot."

Superintendent Romeo Hilomen, Nueva Vizcaya police director, suspected that one of the men was familiar with the area because the town is very remote.

Hilomen added that the night before the bodies were discovered, a police cruiser spotted the same two vehicles but were not flagged down because the policemen saw nothing suspicious.

Local policemen and residents were later shocked by the bags’ gruesome contents. A tattered, blood-stained, long-sleeved white shirt was found near the bodies.

Two heads believed to be of the two men were found on the same day also near a river 50 kilometers away in Carranglan town in Nueva Ecija, near the boundary of Nueva Vizcaya. But they were "unrecognizable," police said.

Hilomen refused to say if the bodies were that of Dacer and his driver. "I have already dispatched one team to the area and I’m still waiting for their official report about the discovery of the two heads," Hilomen said.

Upon inspection at a morgue, one telltale clue found in one of the bags was a pair of handcuffs, with serial number 718404, still attached to a severed hand. A marking on the handcuff said "PNP (Philippine National Police) property."

Police said one of the bodies was that of a man who had fair complexion, probably stood between 5’3" and 5’5" and weighed between 60 and 70 kilos (132 and 154 pounds). Both bodies had no distinguishing marks. Since the bodies were badly mangled, police could not exactly determine how old the men were.

The bodies were to be brought to the PNP Crime Laboratory at Camp Crame in Quezon City yesterday for autopsy. Hilomen said fingerprints taken from the bodies that might help them identify the victims have been sent to Camp Crame.

Dacer’s white Toyota Revo van was intercepted by several armed men aboard three vehicles — one of them a Toyota van — at the intersection of Osmeña Highway and Zobel Roxas near the boundary of Makati and Manila last Nov. 24. Dacer was on his way to a meeting with his client, former President Fidel Ramos, who has been critical of Mr. Estrada.

One of the suspects, who wore a jacket over what appeared to be a police uniform and carried an Armalite rifle, hit Corbito on the nape when he resisted, according to two street vendors who witnessed the abduction.

Corbito was dragged to one of the vehicles while four other suspects commandeered Dacer’s van with Dacer inside, the witnesses told the National Bureau of Investigation, which is also investigating the case.

Dacer’s van was found last Monday ditched in a deep ravine in the town of Maragondon in Cavite with no sign of Dacer or his driver.

Mr. Estrada’s accuser, Ilocos Sur Gov. Luis Singson, suspected that Dacer knew something fishy about the President and was kidnapped by policemen to silence him. Police officials denied Singson’s accusation. – With Marichu Villanueva, Jaime Laude, Marvin Sy