(Update) 'Mastermind' in Geraldine Palma rape-slay 'surrenders'

(Update 12:27 p.m.) The suspected mastermind in the rape-slay of seven-year-old Geraldine Palma turned himself over to the Quezon City police late Wednesday. Radio dzBB reported Thursday that Henry Tesado denied involvement in the rape-murder of Palma, whose body was found stuffed inside a suitcase floating in Manila Bay last month. The Quezon City police said Tesado contacted its anticarnapping unit and informed lawmen that he was surrendering. A team fetched him from his hiding place in Sun Valley in Parañaque City. He was brought to Camp Karingal in Quezon City for investigation, where policemen said they waited for witnesses to identify him. Tesado was turned over to the Manila Police District (MPD) later in the day. Radio dzBB reported that Senior Superintendent Magtanggol Gatdula, Quezon City police chief, led officials in turning over Tesado to the MPD Homicide Section under Chief Insp. Alexander Yanquiling Jr. Gatdula did not indicate if witnesses went to the Quezon City police office to identify Tesado as the mastermind of the rape-killing. Until his surrender, Tesado was one of two "suspects" still at large for the crime, along with Geraldine's nanny Maritess Ontog. On Wednesday night, a senior Catholic bishop threw his full support behind efforts to go after the suspects in the brutal rape-slay. Lingayen-Dagupan Archbishop Oscar Cruz backed efforts to locate and arrest the "animals" behind the rape-murder of Palma. "They should be pursued resolutely, prosecuted accordingly and placed behind bars securely. They constitute a great danger to humanity in general, and a constant threat to women and girl children in particular to their own young daughters even, if any," Cruz said in his web log. Cruz said that even if the suspects are emotionally impaired, it is no excuse for them to rape and kill an innocent girl. "It is both wrong and false to call them 'animals' simply because real animals are much better than these individuals," the prelate said. However, the prelate lamented that men raping women and hurting them has become regular occurrences that such crimes are hardly news anymore. He said there are now even gang rapes when a woman is voraciously violated by several men or but teenagers one after another. "The really sad and pitiful truth is that the all kinds of conceivable rapes are on the rise in both number and gravity. In effect, they might not be news anymore, except for those whose lives revolve around the human flesh and who continuously salivate for sex," he said. "In other words, rapes and other violations of women and girl children in the country appear to be already beyond the reach of law, outside the capability of the judicial branch of government and consequent penal system. And this is a both a distressing and disturbing phenomenon," he added. Cruz said even brute animals do not really rape other animals, much less do adult male animals sexually violate their young little and helpless female offspring. "No matter what nomenclature psychiatry uses to qualify them, it would be difficult to consider them as normal individuals, to count them among the ordinary members of families and of society, to treat them with the usual deference to human dignity," he said. - GMANews.TV