When arrested on Tuesday, emblazoned on 26-year-old Jaemark Reyes’ black shirt were the words “Mr. Right.”
Reyes may just be that for the police, the right man — the only man — to answer for the gruesome crime of strangling a woman dead and possibly raping her, too, in Malabon City.
Found dead by the side of the 29-year-old victim, who was seen without underwear, was her dog, stabbed dead apparently to stop a valiant but vain effort to protect his master.
For members of the Northern Police District criminal investigation division unit, as well as the Malabon and Malolos, Bulacan police, it’s an example of an open-and-shut case — of a crime “solved” within hours of its commission.
The police said the victim was killed Monday as her body was later found by her boyfriend, Kevin, around 6 p.m. of the same day, naked and lying in a pool of blood inside her house in Barangay Baritan, Malabon.
Looking at CCTV cameras in the neighborhood, the police had a man who appeared to be Reyes caught on video entering the victim’s house wearing a black shirt at around 1:30 p.m.
He was later seen coming out of the house an hour later already carrying a black sports bag and wearing a different shirt, one with what looked like an image of the cartoon character Tweety Bird.
An e-trike driver whom Reyes hailed to go home in Barangay Flores, also in Malabon, told the police where he brought him. He also recalled to police probers seeing Reyes with a swollen eye.
“Our suspect admitted he really took a fancy for the victim,” Malabon City police chief Col. Albert Barot said in Filipino. “According to him (Reyes), he did not intend to kill her, but she resisted so he strangled her.”
The suspect’s own relatives in Barangay Flores said Reyes admitted to them that he killed someone as he asked them for money to go to his grandfather’s house in Malolos, Bulacan.
Tracked to Malolos, with CIDU, Malabon and Malolos policemen moving on him, Reyes was arrested in front of a school along McArthur Highway. He resisted arrest, according to the police.
Retrieved by the police from Reyes’ possession was the black sports bag which contained the shirt the man in the CCTV video was seen wearing going out of the victim’s house.
Forensics and medico-legal investigators were conducting tests on the victim’s remains to determine her cause of death and whether she was raped. The blood on her proved to be her dog’s.