Barrameda sister to slay suspect: ‘can’t escape now’
It took almost 18 years for actress Rochelle Barrameda to come face-to-face with one of the primary suspects in the 2007 killing of her sister Ruby Rose, whose body was found in a drum dumped off Navotas City.
Barrameda went to Camp Karingal in Quezon City on Friday night and positively identified one “Victor Vidal Dueñas,” also known as “James Paul Dwight,” as actually fishing magnate Lope Jimenez. Jimenez is the uncle of Manuel Jimenez III, Ruby Rose’s husband.
Confrontation at QCPD
Jimenez, however, was arrested in Mandaluyong City for another case: the murder of businessman William Pascaran Sr., whose remains were found buried in Bulacan, disposed of in a way eerily similar to Ruby Rose’s fate.
Ruby Rose went missing on March 14, 2007, and her body was later recovered stuffed in a steel drum filled with concrete inside Jimenez’s property in Navotas. She was identified through her dental records.
In 2009, a witness identified Lope Jimenez and his older brother Manuel Jr., Ruby Rose’s father-in-law, as the masterminds of the murder.
He was acquitted, together with the father and son Jimenez, by a Malabon court in 2019. The Barrameda family then brought the parricide case against Ruby Rose’s husband to the Court of Appeals (CA).
Inside the Criminal Investigation and Detection Unit of the Quezon City Police District, a police officer asked Jimenez if he knew Barrameda. The suspect said no.
“You don’t know me? Are you sure?” Barrameda asked him.
“Who are you?” asked Jimenez, by then seated on a monoblock chair and wearing a yellow detainee’s shirt.
“I’m the sister of Ruby Rose Jimenez, the woman you ordered killed,” Barrameda replied.
Jimenez, however, denied he was the Navotas businessman and uncle of Ruby Rose’s husband, insisting he was Dueñas.
Barrameda had the last word in the exchange: “You can’t escape now.”
Prayers answered
Later speaking to the Inquirer, Barrameda said she was sure “It’s him. I know him as Lope Jimenez.” “The features, the face, the height, it’s him.”
“He kept on denying it, (insisting) that maybe I’m wrong. But it’s him. He was actually shocked. He didn’t think he would actually meet me.”
Barrameda said she last saw Jimenez in person in 2007 when they were searching for Ruby Rose.
“I wanted to hurt him back there, but I held back,” she said, referring to their meeting at the police station after almost two decades.
“What is important is that he is now arrested because we have been praying for this for a long time,” Barrameda said.
The arrest of Jimenez “after a long period of hiding,” she said, gave her and her family hope that justice may finally be within their reach.
They are now counting on the CA case to revive public interest in the killing.
“I hope this is the beginning, that the case of my sister Ruby Rose will be heard again and she will finally obtain justice,” Barrameda said. “God is very good. He will make a way.”
