Philippine officials say a suspect in the killings last week of two Australians and their Filipino companion has surrendered.
A hotel worker found the bodies of three victims, whose hands and feet were tied, on 10 July in a room at a hotel in the popular resort of Tagaytay city, south of Manila.
The victims were Sydney man David James Fisk, 57, his partner, Lucita Barquin Cortez, 55, a Philippine-born Australian citizen, and Cortez’s Filipina daughter-in-law.
Tagaytay’s police chief, Charles Daven Capagcuan, told the Associated Press that the breakthrough in the week-old case came when at least three hotel employees identified the suspect based on his image captured by security cameras showing a part of his masked face.
Capagcuan said the suspect’s identification eventually led to his home province of Batangas, near Tagaytay, where he decided to surrender.
Footage showed a man wearing a mask and a hoodie and carrying a sling bag walking out of the victims’ room a few hours before their bodies were discovered.
Tagaytay city mayor Abraham Tolentino and Capagcuan presented the handcuffed suspect, wearing a hoodie, dark eyeglasses and a face mask, at a news conference on Wednesday.
The mayor repeated his apology to the relatives of the victims and to Australia for the “brutal crimes” that took place in his city.
“He wanted to get back at the hotel management for his dismissal,” Capagcuan told reporters, adding that the suspect used to work as a swimming pool cleaner at the hotel.
Officials planned to file criminal complaints of robbery in addition to the killings against the suspect, who allegedly acknowledged he took Fisk’s watch and shoes after attacking him with a knife and suffocating Cortez and her daughter-in-law, Capagcuan said.
The couple had flown from Sydney to Bali for a holiday then went to the Philippines on Monday to visit Cortez’s two children, and decided to take a short break in Tagaytay before returning to Australia, a relative of the woman said.
Fisk was a business developer executive at Australian-owned software company Jiwa Financials, according to his LinkedIn profile. He was previously a sales representative at debt collection software company Debtrak and had a long career in business technology.
