Murdered Lynn Vi Ebarita's: Close friend yields

MANDAUE City’s police force is tracking down a woman and three men believed to be behind the killing of call center agent Lynn Vi Ebarita, a case that Chief Insp. Eddie Recamara described yesterday as “90 percent” solved.

The “close friend” who offered information to the police was rushed to the hospital, along with her mother, before the friend could sign her confession.

The mother reportedly suffered a minor stroke while the friend was under observation after what appeared to be an anxiety attack.

Ebarita was stabbed 24 times and her body stuffed in a plastic bag placed outside a hotel room. The stench eventually led to the body’s discovery last Jan. 22, five days after a woman first checked in and paid for the room.

After Ebarita’s death was reported, her “close friend” volunteered information to police investigators. These included printouts of some online chats between Ebarita and her US-based boyfriend, as well as between the friend and the boyfriend.

Investigators, however, noticed inconsistencies in the conversations, which they pursued until they pinned the friend down and she reportedly confessed her role in the attack.

Recamara requested that the names of the friend and the four others be withheld, to avoid jeopardizing the investigation.
Recamara is the chief of the Investigation and Detective Management Bureau.

Police have yet to establish what motivated Ebarita’s killers, and have ruled out a love triangle, illegal drugs and robbery.

Ebarita’s boyfriend grew suspicious when, during a chat, the friend referred to him using a nickname that only his girlfriend used.

This made the police suspect that the friend had Ebarita’s cell phone, because she reportedly knew the victim’s personal messages to her boyfriend.

The close friend also initially told the police that she worked last Jan. 18, while Ebarita went to the Nikkei Garden Hotel with
the suspects.

But the police later learned she did not work at all on that day. They began to suspect she was with the victim and other suspects inside the hotel room.

Prior to the killing, the friend initially told the victim’s parents and the police that she asked her cousin to drop Ebarita off at the hotel on her way home.

That claim surprised Ebarita’s father.

It was the friend who told the police that Ebarita and the suspects initially had “a good time” inside the hotel room.

Police later said some of the suspects are the friend’s relatives from out of town, and that she arranged for the meeting in the hotel.