The Pestaño case: A love affair gone sour

Claiming innocence, the accused navy men have hinted that depression due to problems with a girl may have driven Phillip Pestaño to take his own life. In the second of this 3-part series, the girl in question talks for the first time about her relationship with the young ensign, whose businessman father refuses to acknowledge her existence.   Felipe Pestaño had put his son Phillip on a pedestal: a bright, idealistic, fair-looking young man with a future ahead of him, a son who would make his name in the Navy just as his business had prospered in the same institution. Phillip was engaged to a girl and a wedding date had been set, so why, if he were about to embark on a normal course, take his own life?   Don Pepe, as everyone knows him, stands as a patriarch in the family, having amassed his wealth in the business of boats. His Cebu-based company, Filipinas Fabricators, had profited from millions of pesos worth of contracts with the Philippine Navy for about three decades since the early 1970s, rehabilitating vessels that helped maintain a dwindling naval fleet.   By accusing unnamed officials in high levels of the Armed Forces for being responsible for the life of his son, he had inadvertently run into a conflict of interest: was he an aggrieved father seeking justice, or has the suffering of his deep loss led him to denial and bitterness?   He said his dealings with the Navy ended when his son died, at which time he had a 160-million peso contract to refurbish two patrol ships, two frigates, and a Coast Guard cutter to make them “run like brand new.” It was not clear how contract biddings were done and how the ties were severed eventually, but the long years of partnerships had certainly made him close to senior officials.   His last business deal, he said, was in 2005, this time with the Army, to which he supplied fiberglass attack boats for the Special Forces’ Riverine Company worth 65 million pesos.   Sleepwalking and a slashed wrist   If the defendants are to prove their innocence, it may mean opening further a deeper wound for the Pestaño family: it might show that Phillip, the third of five children, was suffering from depression, possibly over matters of the heart, and the theory of a conspiracy would sink into a hole.   On the BRP Bacolod City were tell-tale signs seen by its small crew on board the ‘Officers’ Country,’ a deck reserved for officers sailing at sea. They had noticed Ensign Pestaño being distraught and disoriented, sleepwalking and even once strangely saluting the wife of the ship’s captain when an officer never did that.   They spoke of an apparent previous attempt at suicide when they were on shore in Zamboanga, the base of the Naval Forces in the south. According to documented accounts, the slash on his wrist needed three stitches.   Retired Lt. Col. Jose del Rosario, the military doctor who treated Phillip, is reluctant to speak about the incident from long ago. In his private psychiatric clinic in the city of Zamboanga, he says he will only talk in court regarding his findings in the medical certificate. He remembers Phillip but not the details about the wound, which came from hitting the door knob, the ensign had told him. The doctor believes Phillip’s story and doesn’t think it was a suicide attempt, saying men don’t slash wrists; only women do that.   The Pestaño family claimed through Phillip’s classmates that it had been just an accident, nothing serious. It would be this incident though, that would seem to establish the young ensign’s state of mind before he was found dead with a single bullet through his head.   Mini-bull ring for the woman he loved   Don Pepe has altogether refused to acknowledge the presence of another girl other than Phillip’s fiancée, revealing the young officer’s dilemma that the Navy says could have possibly triggered an emotional distress.   Djoanna Grace Yasay was just 19 years old when she met Phillip on board the BRP Bacolod City, when the ensign was still a trainee of the Naval Officers Qualification Course that prepares new graduates into their tour of duty. She was helping her mother sell encyclopedia sets to officers, presenting her sales pitch on the ship’s state room – the Officers’ Country – and it would turn out to be the stuff of romance.   Even now, Djoanna says in a rare interview, she said she would turn wistful at the remembrance of it and still burst into tears, particularly when she would watch the movie Titanic as some kind of cathartic experience.    Phillip, she said, had been more than just a dating partner. He had sent her to college to study Account Management, to help pave the way for her future as a wife to him. He gave her his monthly salary for her tuition and had told her that he had joined the Navy to help his father’s flourishing business, to which the family had been anchored.   This made Phillip’s lifestyle uncommon to other officers: he drove his own van when his peers could hardly afford one, and he had the financial safety net of his parents who could afford to give him what he might need. Once, said Djoanna, he gave her 500 dollars in cash for her schooling – which was being lavish with her as much as he could rest on his family’s income.   And as a gesture of his serious intentions he had also given her a mini-bull ring from the academy that officers acquired after graduation, to be given to the woman they would choose to be their wife. It was tantamount to an engagement.   It all came apart after nine months, with Phillip ending the relationship for no obvious reason. “He asked for a cool-off and I didn’t believe in that, so I returned the ring and told him to give it back to me once he’s sure of our relationship,” she says.   But until today, “I’ve been wondering what I did wrong.” There were no big fights. She thought it might have bothered him that she belonged to the religious group of Jehovah’s Witness, as opposed to Phillip’s Catholic upbringing, raised in the Jesuit school of Ateneo de Manila before going to the academy where he finished in 1993. Then the other girl by a similar name had come into the scene, becoming his fiancée and forming a love triangle as it were.   Djoanna’s complaint   Prodded by her mother “to teach him a lesson,” Djoanna filed a complaint in May 1995 at the provost marshal of the Philippine Fleet in Cavite province. In her official typewritten report, she said she had intimate relations with Phillip and that he had reneged on his promise to marry her.   Unknown to Djoanna, her complaint might have had a more serious implication. It could have just languished in a bureaucratic file, but it was the sort of thing that would have prevented Phillip from getting a promotion and possibly tarnishing his budding career.   Phillip had been performing fairly well since his qualification course. He was also active in sports and the martial arts, until something appeared to have taken the zest out of him sometime in July and August, shortly before he died, according to navy records. The ship’s captain, Ricardo Ordonez, wanted him to be his tennis buddy but found the ensign sulking in his room instead. The operations officer, Reynaldo Lopez, who was his upperclassman, was cultivating him to run the bridge but saw him slackening.   Still, it never came to Djoanna that her boyfriend had abysmal personal problems to warrant an extreme action, nor did she ever hear him talk of difficulties or frustrations in his job. She had met his family and thought they were amiable enough, visiting their house in Quezon City from time to time even after the breakup – so it would seem as a surprise that Don Pepe would insist that Phillip had no girlfriend previous to his fiancée.    Djoanna, now a mother of three children, said she was particularly close to Phillip’s younger sister and felt no pressure from the family. “You wouldn’t notice if something was in their minds,” she says.   The last she had seen Phillip he had lost weight. One classmate was worried that he had gotten too pensive, joking to Phillip that he might have been “falling in love with love.”   Phillip had let on so little of what was going through him and what is to be believed of the cause of his death – was it denying to himself the love of his life, forsaking it to pursue a familial duty? Or was it the fighting nature of idealism that got him into trouble, as his father has been claiming all these years?   It would be months since their break-up in late 1994 when Djoanna saw on the television news that Phillip was dead on board the BRP Bacolod City. – With a report from Leilani Chavez/YA, GMA News   Next: Re-enacting his last voyage   Part 1: His death haunts them still   Criselda Yabes is a veteran journalist specializing in military and defense reporting. She is the author of the books Boys from the Barracks and Peace Warriors: On The Trail with Filipino Soldiers.