The Chiong Sisters Case

The Chiong Sisters

Marijoy and Jacqueline Chiong were sisters from Cebu City; their mother, Thelma Chiong, would become a constant presence throughout the case. Marijoy had been a college beauty queen. On the night of 16 July 1997 the two young women were waiting for a ride home at a waiting shed on Archbishop Reyes Avenue, near the Ayala Center shopping mall, when they were seized and forced into a vehicle. Their disappearance set off one of the most closely followed criminal cases in Philippine history, one that is still argued over almost three decades later.

What Happened

On the morning of 18 July 1997 a woman's body was reported at the foot of a cliff in Tan-awan, Carcar, in southern Cebu. Investigators identified it as Marijoy through her fingerprints and items found with the body. Jacqueline was never found, and her remains have never been recovered. According to the findings later upheld by the Supreme Court, the sisters had been taken to a house in Guadalupe, Cebu City, before being driven south, and the charges against the accused included rape.

The Investigation and the State Witness

Police arrested a group of young men. The prosecution's case rested heavily on Davidson Valiente Rusia, one of the accused, who was discharged from the case so that he could testify for the state. The defence attacked his credibility, pointing among other things to a prior burglary conviction in the United States, but the Supreme Court later held that this did not make his testimony inadmissible and refused to recall his discharge. Several other prosecution witnesses placed the accused in Cebu City on the night of the abduction.

Trial and Supreme Court Ruling

On 5 May 1999 Judge Martin Ocampo of the Cebu City Regional Trial Court, Branch 7, found Francisco Juan "Paco" Larrañaga and his co-accused guilty and sentenced the main defendants to two terms of life imprisonment. Larrañaga, who has always maintained his innocence, said he had been in Quezon City taking examinations and later at a bar there that night; the courts rejected the alibi, finding it was not physically impossible for him to have been in Cebu. On appeal, the Supreme Court on 3 February 2004 increased the penalty. It sentenced Larrañaga, Josman Aznar, Rowen Adlawan, Alberto Caño, Ariel Balansag and James Andrew Uy to death for the special complex crime of kidnapping and serious illegal detention with homicide and rape in Marijoy's case, and to reclusion perpetua for the kidnapping and serious illegal detention of Jacqueline. James Anthony Uy, who was 16 at the time, received reclusion perpetua and a lesser prison term because of his age. The convicts were also ordered to pay damages to the family. Reporting from the time and later is not always consistent about which of the Uy brothers was the minor; the Supreme Court decision identifies him as James Anthony.

Commutation, Transfer and Releases

None of the death sentences was carried out. When President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo abolished the death penalty in June 2006, the sentences were reduced to life imprisonment. Larrañaga, who holds Spanish as well as Philippine nationality, was transferred to Spain on 6 October 2009 under a bilateral agreement on the transfer of sentenced persons, with Spain assuring Manila that the Philippine sentence would not be converted. In 2015 his mother said he had been moved to a lower-security regime in San Sebastián and was allowed out during the day to work as a chef. In 2019 a national scandal broke when it emerged that Balansag, Caño and Aznar had been freed early under the good conduct time allowance law. After President Rodrigo Duterte ordered released heinous-crime convicts to surrender, Balansag and Caño returned to the Bureau of Corrections in September 2019. No recent official update on Larrañaga's custody status was found in the reporting reviewed for this file.

A Case That Shaped a Debate

The Chiong case became a fixture of the Philippine argument over capital punishment. The Supreme Court acknowledged that it was difficult to impose death on young men but said it was bound by the law. Supporters of Larrañaga, backed by the documentary Give Up Tomorrow, argued that he had been wrongly convicted, and a 2013 SunStar report cited a study claiming the film helped push the country to abolish the death penalty in 2006, a claim that is difficult to measure. For the Chiong family, the case has instead been about keeping the convicted men in prison: Thelma Chiong campaigned against the 2019 releases and called for heinous-crime convicts to be excluded from early release. Both views continue to surface whenever the Philippines debates reinstating the death penalty or reforming early-release rules.