Confessed killer of girlfriend’s mom, 2 kids, jailed

COTABATO CITY, Philippines — The police had locked in a detention facility a 20-year-old man arrested on Saturday and had confessed to having killed her girlfriend’s mother and her two children using a machete in an attack on Friday morning in Surigao City.

Lt. Col. Diomedes Cuadra, Jr., chief of the Surigao City Police Station, confirmed at noontime on Saturday the arrest of Alejandro Ultado Cortes, who killed Mylene Golloso Virgen, 40, her son John David, 13 and nine-year-old daughter Mary Elizabeth.

Cuadra informed reporters that Cortes openly confessed to his crime, admitting that he murdered Virgen because she disapproved of his relationship with her eldest daughter, whose name is being withheld at the request of family members.

It was neighbors who first discovered that Virgen and her two children were killed when they found their bodies sprawled on the floor of their house, with large, multiple hack wounds.

Witnesses have confirmed seeing a frantic Cortes leaving the residence of the victims in Barangay Luna in Surigao City early Friday, but did not mind, unaware that he had killed their three neighbors using a machete found in the crime scene.

Cuadra and his subordinates cornered Cortes in a secluded area in Barangay Luna after about five hours of search assisted by villagers and community leaders.

Cuadra said the patriarch of the Virgen family, who works in a mining company in Barangay Taganito in Claver town in Surigao del Norte, had been notified of what happened to her wife and two children in the hands of Cortes.