MANILA – Former lawmaker and cult leader Ruben Ecleo Jr. was arrested yesterday by authorities in San Fernando, Pampanga, Philippine National Police chief Archie Gamboa said.
Ecleo’s arrest, according to Gamboa, came some eight years since he was convicted of his wife’s slay and escaping an earlier graft conviction.
Ecleo, a former Dinagat Islands representative and considered as the No. 1 most wanted on the Department of the Interior and Local Government’s list, was arrested along with his driver Benjie Faran.
Police also seized Toyota Grandia, over P170,000 in cash, fake IDs and jewelry from Ecleo, who has a bounty of P2 million on his head.
The suspect was considered as the “supreme master” of the cult Philippine Benevolent Missionaries Association.
In 2012, Ecleo was sentenced to life imprisonment for the slay of his wife Alona Bacolod-Ecleo in Cebu City in 2002. The court also ordered Ecleo to pay P25 million in compensatory damages to his wife’s family.
Ecleo’s detention was after he strangled Bacolod-Ecleo to death in their home and dumped her at a ravine in Dalaguete town south of the city in January 2002. Bacolod-Ecleo’s body was found three days after the crime.
Ecleo was also convicted of graft in 2006 for the anomalous construction of the public market and town hall, and repairs of his cult’s building in San Jose, Dinagat Islands when he was mayor there in the early ‘90s./PN
