Suspects implicate policewoman’s husband in slayings of her, son

Police Senior Master Sergeant John Mollenido, the husband of slain policewoman Diane Marie Mollenido, was arrested Sunday by operatives of the Quezon City Police District, Criminal Investigation and Detection Unit (QCPD-CIDU) after three previously arrested suspects pointed to him, a reliable source told the DAILY TRIBUNE (DT).

Police earlier hauled in and arrested couple Christian, dismissed cop, and Pia Katrina Panganiban, along with their house help Gil Valdemoro Dy Jr., when forensic examination of a bloodstain recovered inside their house in Novaliches, Quezon City, tested positive as the blood of the victim.

Investigators first thought that the Panganiban couple were the main suspects in the killing, as the crime was committed inside their house, the day before Mollenido and her son were reported missing. But on Saturday, 31 January, the couple told QCPD-CIDU investigators that it was PSMS Mollenido who ordered the killing, resulting in his immediate arrest.

The DT source said the 29-year-old female suspect was a godchild of the slain policewoman, who trusted the couple as her agents in her car buy-and-sell business. A multi-purpose vehicle (MPV) was the supposed topic of discussion during their meeting with the victim on 16 January, when she was shot by the dismissed cop.

The couple's house help, meanwhile, admitted to investigators that he helped clean the crime scene and dispose of the victims' bodies. The couple covered the sofa with plastic when Mollenido was shot in the head at close range. The suspects then turned to her eight-year-old son, John Ysmael, and suffocated him using a plastic bag.

The victims' bodies were then loaded into a sport utility vehicle (SUV), with Mollenido's body dumped in Pulilan, Bulacan, and her son's in a "kalamansi" farm in Victoria, Tarlac.

Mollenido's body was discovered on 24 January in a creek in Pulilan with a gunshot wound to the head.

On Thursday, 29 January, the boy's body was recovered.