Filipino-Chinese family massacre stuns Manila

Filipino-Chinese family massacre stuns Manila

MANILA (AFP): The murder of a Filipino-Chinese woman and her two young daughters in a suburb of the Philippine capital has stunned the city as police yesterday admitted they were mystified by the killing.

Maria Fe Chui, 30, her daughters Maria Connie, 6, and Maria Christina, 9, were all stabbed to death in their own home on Saturday, said district police deputy director, Senior Inspector David Benavidez.

The killing comes after the revelation last week that Manuel Luis Ongpin, 19, nephew of a former finance secretary, was kidnapped and murdered by a criminal gang on March 26, who still tried to obtain ransom from his family.

The father of the Chui family, Peter Chui, was at his garments factory when the murder occurred.

The family's two household maids told police they were sent out on an errand that day and when they returned less than an hour later, they found the mother and her two daughters "butchered in their own home," Benavidez said.

Benavidez said it was "a very well-planned killing" and that robbery was apparently not the motive because no property was stolen. "The place was not in disarray. Everything was in order, no items were missing," he said.

"We are at a loss," Benavidez said.

The latest killing grabbed headlines of local papers which were still reporting on the aftermath of the Ongpin kidnap-murder case.

President Fidel Ramos, in a speech at special anti-crime summit last week, admitted that the incidence of bank robberies and kidnappings had reached a serious state but insisted that the country was not under siege from criminals despite the image projected by the media.

Brazen daylight bank robberies and kidnappings for ransom, many of them targeting the wealth ethnic Chinese community, have become a major embarrassment to Ramos, a former national police chief.