Head scarf leads cops to Kabacan murder suspect

KIDAPAWAN CITY - A head scarf left by one of the three primary suspects in the killing last week of a couple and their daughter in Kabacan town led authorities to locate him. On Tuesday, Roberto Gracia Cabrera was arrested inside his sister’s house at Barangay Osias in Kabacan by operatives of the local police led by Chief Inspector Ronnie Cordero. Cordero, Kabacan police chief, saidCabrera was tagged as the primary suspect in the brutal slays of couple Roger and Milca Gracia and their daughter, Danny Anne. Cabrera is Roger’s first cousin. Cordero said one of the witnesses, also a relative of the victims, told authorities that the scarf, which was recovered at the crime scene on Sunday morning inside Gracia’s house at Barangay Aringay, belonged to the suspect. Immediately upon learning it, Cordero and his men conducted the arrest and placed Cabrera in police custody. The suspect, according to Cordero, is still not cooperating to investigators. But multiple murder charges were already filed against Cabrera on Wednesday, he said. Even if he wasn’t talking yet, but the evidences that we gathered and the testimonies of our witnesses were pointing towards him as the primary suspect,” said Cordero. A deep-seated conflict between Cabrera and the couple was believed behind the killing. On July 7, four days before the brutal slays, Milca filed abandonment charges against Cabrera at a local court in Kabacan.Allegedly, the suspect left his three-year old child under Gracia’s care without any financial support.Milca brought Cabrera’s child to the custody of the Municipal Social Welfare and Development Office. Cordero said that around 725 p.m., on July 11, the suspect called up the Gracias where he reportedly set up a meeting with them inside the victim’s house at Barangay Aringay. But the meeting ended up in the killing of the victims, Cordero said. Worst, the police said, Cabrera and two of his cohorts seized some of the couple’s properties, including the Kia Avila car, to make it appear that robbery was behind the killings. The Cotabato provincial government has formed a Special Investigating Task Group led by the Cotabato Provincial Police Office to locate the whereabouts of the other suspects.