G.R. No. 36833. October 11, 1933
THE PEOPLE OF THE PHILIPPINE ISLANDS, PLAINTIFF AND APPELLEE, VS. ELENA MATONDO ET AL., DEFENDANTS AND APPELLANTS.
STREET, J.:
First Instance of Leyte, finding Elena Matondo guilty of the offense of
parricide and her coaccused, Rufino Pelen (alias Peling) and Adriano
Elicito, guilty of the offense of murder, and sentencing each of the
three to life imprisonment, and requiring them jointly and severally to
indemnify the heirs of Gavina Gelsano in the amount of P1,000, and
requiring them to pay the costs.
Gavina Gelsano, the victim
of the crime with which we are here concerned, was a person of means,
resident in the barrio of Cahagnaan, municipality of Matalom, in the
Province of Leyte. Her first husband died many years ago; and to them
had been born one daughter, Elena Matondo, one of the appellants in
this case. Elena is the wife of Arsenio Noel, a nephew of Tomas Veloso,
who, at the time with which we are here concerned, was justice of the
peace of the municipality of Matalom. While Gavina Gelsano remained a
widow, her daughter Elena enjoyed the income derived from the conjugal
property of her parents. When her mother took a second husband in the
person of Crisostomo Roa, Elena was displeased, and one-half of the
conjugal property was assigned to her in her own right. This apparently
did not satisfy Elena, who was disgusted that Roa should have the
enjoyment of her mother’s share. Unpleasant relations therefore
developed between Elena on the one side and her mother and stepfather
on the other.
On May 24, 1931, Elena Matondo placed in the
hands of her chauffeur, Tomas Baring, a fan-knife about eight inches
long wrapped in a piece of paper, with instructions to deliver it to
Rufino Pelen (alias Peling). This person was an ex-convict, having been lately liberated from Bilibid Prison.
Both Elena and her mother lived in Cahagnaan but in different houses,
and the time for a fiesta in Matalom was now approaching. Elena,
therefore, on the same May 24, 1931, which was Sunday, went to the
house of her mother and requested her to come over and stay in Elena’s
house while the latter attended the fiesta mentioned. Gavina agreed and
with her servant, Apolinaria Incierto, came over to stay in the Noel
home. After they had arrived, Elena took Apolinaria Incierto apart and
told her not to sleep in the same room where Gavina Gelsano would
sleep. Apolinaria, however, did not obey this injunction, and when
night came she slept in the room with Gavina. With them was another
young girl, who had come along with Gavina, named Paterna Javines. Also
there was in the house a small child of Elena and Noel, a boy, who
insisted in remaining with his grandmother. Elena meanwhile went on her
visit to Matalom, where she became the guest of Tomas Veloso, an uncle
of her husband, Arsenio Noel. The house of Elena in Cahagnaan was
therefore left without inmates other than the old woman, her two
servants, and her grandchild.
A dance was held Tuesday night
in the municipal building of Matalom, as an incident of the celebration
of the fiesta. Elena attended this dance, and at about midnight she
took Asuncion Ajero (alias Villanueva) aside to a place under
the stairway and asked her to go out and get in Elena’s automobile, of
which Tomas Baring was the chauffeur, and go with him to take two men
to Cahagnaan. Now, Asuncion, as was well known to Elena, was querida
to Tomas Baring, notwithstanding the fact that the latter was married
to another woman. Elena therefore doubtless assumed that this little
excursion would be gratefully received by Asuncion. But the latter was
apparently interested in the dance, and she says that she yielded to
the request reluctantly, though she finally consented to go. Going out,
therefore, to the place where Elena’s car was standing near the public
market, Asuncion took her seat beside Baring, the chauffeur. As she did
so, she noted the presence of two men on the rear seat of the ear.
These men were dressed in dark clothes, and as their hats were drawn
down, their faces were not readily discernible. The two, however,
turned out to be Rufino Pelen and Adriano Elicito. To Asuncion, Baring
explained that they were compatriots of his from his native province,
who wanted to go down to Cahagnaan. Proceeding to that place, Baring
stopped his car under some palm trees about 130 or 140 meters from the
house of Elena Matondo. Pelen and Elicito then alighted from the car
and, taking off their exterior clothing, strapped it to their belts.
They then took Baring aside, so the latter says, and revealed to him
that they had come, with, instructions from Elena Matondo to kill
Gavina Gelsano. In this connection it was explained that the killing
was to be done by Rufino, and that Elicito’s mission was to handle the
house dog. We note in passing that Elicito was a distant relative and a
not infrequent visitor at Elena’s house. He was accordingly well
acquainted with the canines that were kept there. After Pelen and
Elicito had departed on their mission to the house and were seen
climbing up to enter a window, Baring came back to the car and drove
back in company with Asuncion to Matalom.
Rufino Pelen and
Adriano Elicito appear to have made their way into the room where
Gavina Gelsano and her younger companions were sleeping in the home of
Elena Matondo, where the deadly assault upon the old woman was made,
the victim receiving six wounds from a knife and one contusion. The
assassin, however, bungled the job, and none of the injuries were
immediately fatal. The cut which in the end resulted in death was
inflicted in the middle of the back, below the shoulder blade, and
death resulted about seven weeks later from myolitis, affecting the
spinal chord. The woman was evidently much shocked by the assault, and
she was not able to call for help to the servants. The child, Paterna
Javines, was first to become aware that something wrong was going on,
and she called to Apolinaria Incierto saying, “Something has happened
to Gavina Gelsano.” Apolinaria got up at once and hastened to the old
woman, but the latter, not recognizing the girl, pushed her back.
Incierto thereupon turned her head, and as she did so, she saw Rufino
Pelen and Adriano Elicito hurrying out the door. There was a light in
the room and this enabled the girl to recognize the two assassins.
Neighbors were then aroused, and word was shortly sent up to Matalom
for Elena.
Meanwhile Tomas Baring, with his female
companion, Asuncion Ajero, had gotten back to Matalom, and the girl
returned to the dance, or went to a show; while Tomas Baring drove his
car into the premises of Tomas Veloso. Elena Matondo was awaiting his
arrival, and she waved her hand to him out of a window, indicating to
him to meet her in the kitchen. When the two met there, Elena told him
that she had had her mother killed so that her stepfather, Crisostomo
Roa, would not continue to enjoy the usufruct of her mother’s property.
She also said that, as soon as she could collect the insurance of her
mother which, she said, amounted to P10,000, she would reward Pelen and
Elicito for their services to her.
We pause at this point to
say that it came out in time that the policy of insurance on the life
of Gavina Gelsano was for P1,000, and that there was a loan on said
policy of P891, leaving only a balance of P134, payable at its maturity
on November 1, 1932. Much had been made of this discrepancy between the
actual amount of the insurance on the life of Gavina Gelsano and the
amount which Elena stated to Tomas Baring would be collected. But that
such disparity should have existed does not prove that Tomas Baring
testified falsely as to what Elena told him; for she may have been
ignorant of the true amount of the insurance, or it may have suited her
purposes to give the impression to Baring that she was going to be well
prepared to take care of all who had aided her in this fearful
enterprise.
When the household of Tomas Veloso had been
aroused by the news brought early that morning to the effect that
Gavina Gelsano had been assaulted, Elena and Veloso, with others, went
down to the Matondo home in Cahagnaan, and neighbors who had collected
Were rather shocked at the lack of interest in her mother’s condition
displayed by Elena upon arrival. About the first words that Elena gave
utterance to, as she peeped into the room where her mother was lying,
were “Is she not yet dead?” And her subsequent general demeanor
exhibited a lack of sympathy in the condition of the sufferer. For
instance, on one occasion, Elena raised her voice and stamped her feet
on the floor of the room where her injured mother was sleeping.
Awakened by this noise, Gavina was frightened, and trembling, she
begged that she might be removed to another house. Later she was
transferred to the house of one of her sisters in Cahagnaan, and
subsequently she was transferred to Maasin, where she died on July 10.
When Elena arrived in Cahagnaan on the morning of the commission of the
crime, she told Apolinaria Incierto that she must not tell anybody that
she had been able to recognize the assailants of her mother, promising
to reward her for her silence. Also after her return to Matalom on the
same day, she found Asuncion Ajero and cautioned her to tell nobody
that she had made the trip with Tomas Baring and two others to
Cahagnaan in the early hours of that morning. Coupled with this
injunction was a warning to the effect that if she should reveal that
fact Elena would cause her to be attacked and stabbed in the same
manner as she did the old woman who did not die.
On that
same morning Tomas Veloso took the declaration of Gavina Gelsano, in
which the latter stated that she had not recognized her assailants. The
declarations of Apolinaria Incierto and Paterna Javines were to the
same effect. Tomas Baring made a statement shortly thereafter in which
he said that he had been out that night with Asuncion Ajero and had
driven down towards Cahagnaan but went no farther than a bridge.
As a result of these statements, in the procurance of which Elena
Matondo had intervened, it looked pretty much as if the crime might be
covered up. But it so happened that Asuncion Ajero and the wife of
Tomas Baring had a quarrel, and Asuncion let out enough to make known
that she and Baring had gone down to Cahagnaan that night with two men.
Her formal statement was then taken and she went more into details. The
result was that suspicion became fixed on Baring, and he was arrested
on a charge of frustrated murder. As soon as Baring had been jailed,
Elena Matondo became alert and she wrote Baring a note in jail, saying
that he was not to blame and that she (Elena) would go to Matalom to
accuse the woman (meaning Asuncion). Her concluding words were “Tear up
this paper.”
But this note was not sufficient to keep Baring
silent and shortly thereafter he made a statement very much of the
tenor of his subsequent testimony in court. Elena Matondo was then
arrested upon a charge of frustrated parricide, and Rufino Pelen and
Adriano Elicito were arrested on a charge of frustrated murder. In this
charge Tomas Baring, already under arrest, was of course included. As
soon as these last arrests were made, Gavina Gelsano came out with a
new declaration in which she stated that she had been assaulted by two
persons whom she recognized as Rufino Pelen and Adriano Elicito. It
does not appear that this statement had the requisites of a dying
declaration, and it is contradicted, of course, by her earlier
statement to the effect that she did not recognize her assailants. In
forming our opinion on this case we have therefore ignored Gavina’s
statement of June 24. We may add that on June 22, 1931, Apolinaria
Incierto made a similar statement implicating Rufino Pelen and Adriano
Elicito as the persons who actually committed the crime. We note that
the attorneys for the defense introduced the earlier statements of
Gavina and Apolinaria to prove that the assassins had not been
recognized. But the trial judge, rightly in our opinion, attributed
little weight to said statements, owing to the part that Elena Matondo
and Tomas Veloso had played in their procurance.
After the
death of Gavina on July 10, the fiscal dismissed the charges of the
frustrated parricide and murder which had been filed against the four
accused persons and filed another charge of parricide and murder.
Finally, at the trial he procured a dismissal of the charge as against
Tomas Baring in order that this individual might be utilized as a
witness.
The opinion of the trial court shows that his Honor
was fully aware of the grave responsibility which rested upon him, and
his analysis of the evidence as. well as his comment upon the testimony
of the witnesses shows that the trial received conscientious study and
that no circumstance of any value was overlooked in the formation of
the court’s conclusions.
At the end of his analysis of the
proof his Honor enumerates the following circumstances as indicating
the guilt of Elena Matondo. First, she directed Tomas Baring to take
Pelen and Elicito to Cahagnaan on the morning of the crime; secondly,
she delivered to Tomas Baring, about three days before the commission
of the offense, a big knife, directing him to give it to Pelen;
thirdly, she admitted to Baring that she had directed the killing of
Gavina to prevent Crisostomo Roa, her second husband, from enjoying
Gavina’s property; fourthly, she directed Asuncion Ajero to accompany
Tomas Baring on the night in question with a view to misleading any one
who might see them in the car as to the true motive that was taking
them to Cahagnaan; fifthly, she employed flattery and menaces, in
addition to an offer of bribery, to Asuncion Ajero in order to induce
her to tell no one that she had been with Tomas Baring in Cahagnaan on
the fatal night; sixthly, she availed herself of her father-in-law, a
justice of the peace of Matalom, to procure that Asuncion Ajero should
be sent to Cebu immediately after the crime had been committed, in
order to prevent her from giving publicity to the crime; seventhly, she
gave instructions, immediately before the crime, to the servant,
Apolinaria Incierto, that she should not sleep with Gavina Gelsano
while on the visit at Cahagnaan; eighthly, she availed herself of
flattery and promises in her attitude to Apolinaria Incierto, promising
to take her into her service and treat her well if she should reveal to
ho one the names of the aggressors; ninthly, before Tomas Baring was
arrested, she tried to influence the chief of police in his favor,
saying that Baring was innocent; tenth, immediately after the
perpetration of the crime, she managed to procure sworn declarations
from persons who knew of the case, not precisely for the purpose of
identifying the true offenders but to make emphatic the fact that the
guilty persons were unknown; eleventh, when Gavina Gelsano was wounded,
Elena, in place of remaining at her side to take care of her, limited
her visits to rare occasions and showed little interest in the woman’s
condition; twelfth, her conduct after the offense was committed showed
that Elena desired her mother’s death.
These circumstances
and other items in the proof furnish a very strong array of evidence
pointing to the conclusion that Elena Matondo is guilty of having
induced the murder of her mother. It is obvious that the old woman was
not murdered with any purpose of robbery, and she had no enemies that
could have desired her death from mere malice. When the foregoing
circumstances are given their true weight, in connection with the
statement of Tomas Baring that Elena admitted to him that she had
caused the assault to be committed on her mother, to prevent Roa from
enjoying the usufruct of her property, a case is made out which to the
minds of a majority of this court is convincing that Elena Matondo is
guilty. The moral perversity of the crime unfortunately does not make
the commission of the deed impossible, for human experience shows, and
penal codes attest, that the crime of parricide is occasionally
committed.
We entertain no delusion of course as to the
possible connection of Tomas Baring, as an accomplice or even as a
possible principal, in this crime. The opinion of the trial court
suggests that there was a deeper confidence than ordinary between Elena
Matondo and Tomas Baring. We suspect that he had probably been
approached by her with a view to inducing him to accomplish the deed.
But, if so, it was doubtless discovered that some vestige of morality
or lack of nerve made him an impossible agent. His participation was
therefore doubtless intended by Elena Matondo to be limited to the
conveying of the two principals to the place of the murder; and even
supposing that his curiosity may have caused him to stay around for a
while to watch the proceedings or take part therein, it does not result
that the two principal agents convicted in this case are innocent.
With respect to Pelen, any possible doubt as to his guilt is removed by
an affidavit which he has placed upon record, in connection with a
motion for a new trial, in which he admits that he had been hired to
kill Gavina Gelsano and that he was one of the two who entered the
house at Cahagnaan on the morning of May 27, 1931, for the purpose of
destroying her. It is true that, in this affidavit, Pelen pretends that
Tomas Baring was his companion on that occasion and that it was
actually he who killed Gavina.
As against Adriano Elicito we
have the testimony of Baring and Asuncion to the fact that he, in
company with Pelen, went in the automobile to Cahagnaan with them on
the fatal morning. In addition to this, we have the testimony of
Apolinaria Incierto to the fact that he was one of the two who passed
out of the door after the wounds which caused the death of Gavina
Gelsano had been inflicted.
We have already referred to the
written decision of the trial court in this case, and we are here
constrained to reproduce from that opinion the following passage in
which the court discusses certain aspects of the case concerning which
a trial judge is in a much better position to form a right opinion than
any appellate court. Says his Honor:
“To
one having no knowledge of the accused derived from the evidence herein
presented, it would seem improbable that in this country there could be
a daughter capable of committing so heinous a crime as that which the
information imputes to her; and an affirmative conclusion as to her
guilt can only be reached after a thorough examination of the
circumstances surrounding the case as above set out, as well as the
antecedents of mother and daughter. The first was all self-denial,
having a blind, misguided affection for her daughter, to such an extent
that even after she was convinced that she had been the victim of an
attack instigated or engineered by her daughter, she did not utter a
word of reproach or condemnation when the latter went to visit her on
her death bed; but according to the testimony of one of the sisters of
Gavina, she only cast toward her daughter occasional glances full of
measureless sorrow. The latter was a pampered child, used to having her
own way, an incomprehensible soul, capable on the one hand of great
love and sacrifice as shown during the trial. When she was
cross-examined by the prosecution on the conduct of her husband in
abandoning her for a long time and in not visiting her but for a few
moments during her long confinement in the provincial jail, when there
was then pending against her so serious a charge as that of parricide,
she even tried to justify her husband’s conduct and evinced no
resentment whatsoever against him, but, rather, she showed that she had
for him the same affection she had entertained during the first months
of their marriage, * * *. The accused discloses at times a candid and
childish mentality, as when she innocently executed acts and made
statements highly incriminatory to her, like the confessions she made
to the witnesses for the prosecution in regard to this offense; and at
times, an extraordinary mentality, as shown by her skill in picking out
the persons to execute the killing of her mother, * * *. The court
takes into consideration all of these circumstances in determining the
degree of responsibility of the accused and the severity of the penalty
to be imposed upon her.”
In conclusion, we
note that various motions for new trial have been filed on behalf of
the appellants, while the record was still in the court below, and
these have been renewed and supplemented by other motions filed in this
court. These motions are accompanied by numerous affidavits procured
since the trial below. The affiants include various individuals who
were not examined at the trial, as well as some of the witnesses in
this case and the appellants Pelen and Elicito. We have already
referred to the affidavit of Rufino Pelen, in which he admits that he
was employed to kill Gavina Gelsano but states that the assassination
was actually effected by Tomas Baring. Asuncion Ajero would now have us
believe that her testimony and statements made in her affidavit used by
the prosecution at the trial are mere fabrications. None of these
affidavits are of convincing weight, and they evince all the features
of post-trial efforts to divert the court from the conclusions derived
from the proof submitted at the trial. All of said motions are now
denied, as well as the petitions of Elena Matondo to be permitted to
give bail.
The judgment appealed from will be in all
respects affirmed, and it is so ordered, with proportional costs
against the appellants.
Avanceña, C. J., Malcolm, Villa-Real, Hull, and Imperial, JJ., concur.
DISSENTING
VICKERS, J.:
I
dissent, and vote for the acquittal of Elena Matondo and Adriano
Elicito, because their conviction rests on testimony that ought not to
be credited. The case for the prosecution depends chiefly on the
testimony of Tomas Baring and his querida, Asuncion Ajero. An
examination of the record convinces me that Tomas Baring was one of the
two men that attacked the deceased. This is what the deceased herself
believed. There can be no doubt that he was a party to the crime. His
testimony therefore comes from a polluted source. Furthermore his
testimony, given after he had turned state’s evidence, is belied by his
sworn statements made before the trial (Exhibits 1 and 2). Exhibit 2
was sworn to before the clerk of court. Asuncion Ajero, as well as the
other witnesses for the prosecution, had made statements under oath
that were directly in conflict with her testimony at the trial, and
there has been submitted to us an affidavit, in which she repudiates
all that she said at the trial and asserts that her false testimony was
what Tomas Baring and Oisostomo Roa, the husband of the deceased, had
taught her to say.
No satisfactory motive has been suggested
to explain why Elena Matondo should commit the unnatural crime
attributed to her, but the evidence, shows that as a result of these
charges against Elena Matondo her mother substituted Crisostomo Roa for
Elena as the beneficiary of her life insurance policy and executed a
new will, whereby she disinherited her daughter and left all her
property to Crisostomo Roa.
The trial judge enumerated
twelve circumstances as indicating the guilt of Elena Matondo. It is
said in the majority opinion that “these circumstances and other items
in the proof furnish a very strong array of evidence pointing to the
conclusion that Elena Matondo is guilty of having induced the murder of
her mother.”
I cannot assent to that conclusion. I have
carefully considered these twelve points. Some of them are inherently
improbable; others are trivial. Not one of them is convincing; and they
all rest on the credibility of Tomas Baring and his querida, or the testimony of Apolinaria Incierto, a servant girl in the house of Crisostomo Roa.
There is even less justification for convicting Adriano Elicito.
Abad Santos, J.: I concur in the dissenting opinion of Justice Vickers.
DISSENTING
BUTTE, J.:
Upon the findings made in the foregoing opinion of the majority of the
court a strong case is made out against the appellant, Elena Matondo. I
have made an independent and thorough study of the entire record and as
a result thereof entertain a grave doubt that the circumstantial
evidence, upon which the majority opinion rests, is supported by the
weight of the evidence. I cannot believe beyond reasonable doubt that
Elena Matondo had any part in the assassination of her mother, and,
therefore, feel constrained to register my dissent.