Love, sex, greed for money don’t mix

“There are crimes of passion and crimes of logic. The boundary between them is not clearly defined.”

-- Albert Camus

By Alex P. Vidal

NEWARK, New Jersey -- We don’t need Hollywood or Tagalog crime and soap opera movies to warn us that it’s not only taboo to mix love and insatiable greed for money, it’s downright fatal.

We don’t need to be reminded that excessive love for money, sex, and betrayal are synonymous with violence and death.

If some friends, office mates, and relatives of both Kevin Piosca, 33, and May Luzurriaga, 53, had misgivings about the duo’s alleged romance from the very start, they may have a strong basis to think and feel that way.

Some of them probably didn’t believe Piosca’s arrest for allegedly masterminding Luzurriaga’s murder in a refreshment in Concepcion, Iloilo in the Philippines on January 11, 2018, was only a coincidence.

Was the alleged amorous play poisonous from the beginning?

Luzurriaga’s alleged assailant, Edmar Camangyan, 24, believed to be Piosca’s henchman, was also nabbed in Sara town two days after the grisly murder.

A CCTV reportedly caught the trigger man while fleeing on board a motorbike after shooting Luzurriaga in the back of her head. She died from a fatal wound before reaching the hospital.

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Probers led by Concepcion police commander, Chief Inspector Abner Jordan, have gathered that Piosca, a cop assigned to the Sara Police Station, owed Luzurriaga some P1 million cash in debts.

Pressures for the cop suspect to settle the debt reportedly mounted “when the victim learned he was secretly maintaining romantic liaisons with two other women.”

Probers reportedly gathered further that days before the murder, the victim received threats allegedly from the suspected mastermind.

It was not immediately established if the alleged love affair between Piosca and Luzurriaga “ended” because of infidelity or non-payment of a whooping debt.

This could be another case of crime of passion we normally watch in the movies and reality TV police series.

There are many lessons to be learned from the crime:

1. A romance can be faked because of money;

2. A bogus love affair can end fatally when infidelity has been uncovered;

3. Money can’t buy happiness;

4. Money can be used as a leverage to punish a Lothario;

5. Murder can be used as a “final solution” to end a sexual relationship and to elude payment of debt.

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A group of New York-based Filipino-American revelers, some of them former officials of the scandal-ridden Philippine Independence Day Parade, Inc. (PIDCI), is flying to Iloilo City in the Philippines to witness the 2018 Dinagyang Festival dubbed as #GoldenDinagyang which officially started on January 12, 2018 with the “opening salvo.”

The visitors, some of them had been in the city before as guests of former Mayor Jed Patrick Mabilog, plan to have a courtesy call with Mayor Jose Espinosa III, Iloilo Governor Arthur Defensor Sr., and Guimaras Governor Samuel Gumarin and will be accompanied by media liaison officer Jay Balnig of the Cream magazine. Good luck and bon voyage!