By Manila Standard Today

Only days after convicted killer Rolito Go disappeared from the New Bilibid Prison in Muntinlupa City, Justice Secretary Leila de Lima learned that another convicted killer had managed to escape detention.

This prompted the justice secretary to temporarily assign National Bureau of Investigation Deputy Director for Comptrollership Rafael Ragos as assistant director to the Bureau of Corrections after its head Gaudencio Pangilinan took an indefinite leave of absence.

De Lima inspected the NBP facilities on Saturday morning and New Bilibid Prison superintendent Richard Schwarzkopf Jr. told her that convicted killer Rommel Laciste escaped from the prison’s maximum security compound on Aug. 15, the day after Go was reported missing.

Laciste was convicted of murder by an Isabela provincial court and had been implicated in several criminal cases, including the 2006 killing of Concepcion Lumanglas, an assistant parole and probation officer, in Isabela.

She sent officials of the National Bureau of Investigation to the New Bilibid Prison on Friday to interrogate Go, who said he was abducted Tuesday night.

De Lima told reporters she received information that contradicted Go’s version of his disappearance from the prison’s minimum security compound. “There is information that he had been gone for two days and one night [before he was reported missing] and was just forced to come up with his abduction story after this was uncovered,” she said.

NBI agents would interview people at the prison to find out if Go was really there all that time, De Lima said.

Go claimed that he and his nephew were kidnapped Tuesday night by four men and denied escaping from the New Bilibid Prison in Muntinlupa City.

He said his abductors, who arrived between 8 p.m. and 9 p.m., identified themselves as NBI agents, but he refused to go with them.

But he said he and his nurse-nephew Clemence Yu were forced to board Yu’s white Honda Civic, exited through Gate 1 with guards on duty, and were taken to a farm in Tanauan, Batangas.

Go is serving a life sentence for shooting dead De La Salle University engineering graduate Eldon Maguan, 25, in his car over a traffic argument in 1991.

He said his abductors released him after they realized he would be unable to pay the P1 million they demanded.

But De Lima said Go’s story was “not plausible” and it were proven that Go escaped, this could delay his scheduled release next year, she said.

http://manilastandardtoday.com/2012/08/19/another-murderer-escapes-jail-bureau-gets-new-chief/