On Feb.

19, in broad daylight on a busy street just a hundred meters away from the
New Bilibid Prison (NBP), Bureau of Corrections (BuCor) legal division chief Fredric
Santos was shot dead by two gunmen on a motorcycle as he was driving to pick up his
daughter from school.
Curiously, all CCTV cameras in the area were found defective. At this writing, almost
a week later, police have yet to announce a lead in the latest of a string of murders of
BuCor officials.

Santos seemed marked for the kill. At a Senate inquiry last year into the questionable
grant of good conduct time allowance (GCTA) to convicts, he testified on the “unholy
alliance” at the state penitentiary that allowed inmates to enjoy all kinds of “favors”
from guards in exchange for money.
“Nababayaran po lahat” was how he described the systemic corruption that apparently
reached all the way to the top. Everything was for sale.

He said only a few inmates were prepared to break the “code of silence” and those
who did “sing” could end up killed, their bodies found where they slept or hanging
from a beam in their cells.
Was it a rubout, considering what Santos knew and did before he was killed?
Sen. Richard Gordon said the killing was “most definitely” connected to Santos’
testimony at the Senate blue ribbon committee’s investigation of the grant of GCTA
to heinous crime convicts including the rapist and murderer Antonio Sanchez.
“Maybe he will become a state witness. Those behind this are afraid; that’s why they
got rid of him,” said Gordon, who chairs the committee. “This culture of killing
people who may have … knowledge of crimes is a threat to everybody. It is a warning
to all in this country that if you know something and then talk, ‘We can kill you.’”
Quite troubling is the fact that Santos was the 15th BuCor official killed since 2011.
Only on Aug. 28 last year, in the midst of the controversy over the GCTA, BuCor
chief administrative officer Ruperto Traya Jr. was shot dead as he was leaving his car.
Traya’s office was in charge of processing the documents of Sanchez and other high-
profile convicts.