CEBU CITY, Philippines — A trial court judge has ordered the Cebu City police to turn over Bohol provincial board member Niño Rey Boniel to the Bureau of Jail Management and Penology in Talibon, Bohol.
The commitment order, received by the Cebu police at 3:15 p.m. Thursday, set a 72-hour deadline to move Boniel, who was arrested June 8, the day after he allegedly abducted and murdered his wife Gisela, mayor of Bien Unido town.
He has since been detained at Cebu City police Station 2 and a parricide complaint has been filed against him before the prosecutor’s office in Lapu-Lapu City, Cebu.
Boniel’s transfer was ordered by Acting Presiding Judge Marivic A. Trabajo-Daray of the Talibon Regional Trial Court after finding probable cause against him in the kidnapping and serious illegal detention charges filed by Angela Leyson, his wife’s best friend, and her teenaged son.
The Leysons were with the mayor when she was abducted, allegedly by Boniel and several accomplices, from the Bien Unido Double Barrier Reef Dive Camp on June 7. The mayor was then allegedly killed on board a pump boat and her body dumped at sea.
The search for her body continues in the waters between Bohol and Caubian Island in Lapu-Lapu City.