In March 2019 in Lapu-Lapu City in the Visayas, 16-year-old Christine Lee Silawan

asked permission from her mother if she could go to church that evening. She was a
member of the church ministry that collected donations from churchgoers. Her mother
allowed her to go, thinking that she would return home after an hour. She never did.

The next day, a body of a girl about the same age as Silawan was found in a field, the
skin and muscles on her face carved clean right down to the bone, revealing the skull,
eyeballs still intact. She also had over 30 stab wounds on different parts of her body,
some of these were defense wounds. Photos of the gruesome scene quickly went viral on
social media. People learned that bone was really white.

Police had a hard time identifying the victim because of what was done to her face.
Eventually, they identified her as Christine based on DNA results. Her mother was
inconsolable.

Nearly a month later, police arrested 42-year-old Renato Payupan Llenes, who
confessed to the crime. According to Llenes, he posed as a different person on social
media and lured Silawan to meet with him. He became obsessed with Silawan, and
when he learned that she had relationships with other boys, he became jealous and
enraged, so he killed her.

“I used a dummy Facebook account to lure Christine. We chatted frequently until we

became a couple on Facebook,” said Llenes in a report by the Inquirer. “We agreed to
meet personally for the first time on March 10 at Sacred Heart Parish in Lapu-Lapu City.
We fought on our way (to Barangay Bangkal) and that’s when I killed her.”

Llenes also detailed how he was inspired by the Momo Challenge that urged children to
commit various crimes and self-harm.

When Llenes was asked where he learned to carve skin and muscle off the bone, he
answered that he learned it on social media sites such as YouTube and Facebook. Llenes
used scissors to remove skin and muscle off Silawan’s face, revealing her skull with her
eyeballs still intact.
Prior to Llenes’ confession, police had arrested a 17-year-old male suspect. According to
Llenes, he came forward because he was haunted by his conscience and that he couldn’t
bear the fact that another person would suffer the consequences of his crime