‘I will face what I did’: On the run, a hitman gives one last confession

Matobato, now 65, says he killed more than 50 people for the man he called “Superman”, pulling in a salary from City Hall of a little more than $US100 ($160) a month and receiving envelopes of cash for successful hits. He rarely hid his identity as he kidnapped and killed, he said, because working for the mayor gave him impunity.

Matobato knew that breaking the omerta of what came to be known as the Davao Death Squad made him a marked man. He was given sanctuary by priests and politicians, who hoped his confessions might be used to one day hold his former boss to account.

When I first met him last year, Matobato was waiting for the International Criminal Court, or ICC, to take him as a witness in its inquiry into whether Duterte committed crimes against humanity. In 2018, international prosecutors began investigating Duterte, who was president from 2016 to 2022, for overseeing extrajudicial killings in Davao City and later across the Philippines he justified as part of a law-and-order campaign against illegal drugs and other societal ills. No exact tally exists of how many people were victims of his drug war – a killing spree that included far more than drug pushers and petty criminals – but low estimates are at 20,000.

By the time we met, Matobato had a new name and a new job shearing sheep and feeding chickens – no killing anymore, he said. At least two other members of the Davao Death Squad had already made their way overseas to be witnesses for the ICC. He was aching for his chance, too.

His declining health added urgency. Although Matobato cannot read, he understood the irregular jags of his electrocardiogram, signs of a troubled heart.

While another former hitman says he secured immunity in exchange for his testimony at the ICC, Matobato told me he was not seeking the same. If the ICC wanted to punish him for the killings he had committed, so be it.

“I will face what I did,” Matobato said. “But Duterte, he must be punished by the court and by God.” He just hoped his recounting of his crimes would lead the former president to prison.

‘I know how to kill very well’

At 1.57 metres tall, Matobato is used to being underestimated. He grew up poor, his father killed by communist rebels, he said. Barely able to write his own name, he worked as a security guard before a police officer offered him the chance in 1988 to join a group of enforcers cleaning up a crime-ridden city.

Their corps was eventually called the Heinous Crimes Unit. Matobato said he was a “force multiplier,” a low-ranking hitman.

“This is no joke,” Matobato said. “I may be small, but I know how to kill very well.”

Death Squad members often worked at the Laud quarry on the outskirts of Davao City, each cave and hideaway swathed in tropical green. There, the squad dismembered and buried hundreds of bodies over a quarter-century, according to statements from five men who said they were members of the group. Duterte sometimes presided over the torture, executions and grave digging, they said.

At least once, Matobato ate at the quarry. According to Matobato and another member of the squad, the hit men set up a barbecue. Matobato sliced a chunk of thigh from a fresh corpse. They grilled and ate the flesh, each bite tightening the bond between the hit men, Matobato said.

“He would come home with blood on his clothes, but he always said it was from cockfights,” said Joselita Abarquez, Matobato’s common-law wife. “I had to wash a lot to get the clothes clean.”

On one occasion in 2009, Matobato crouched in a limestone outcropping with his Colt. He said he had been given orders to shoot dead a woman who was going into the Laud quarry to find evidence of extrajudicial killings.

Matobato said he didn’t question the hit.

The hit list came to include businesspeople who challenged the interests of Duterte’s sons, politicians whose spheres of influence pressed against Duterte’s, and journalists who pointed out Duterte’s public prescience in who would soon turn up dead. On that day in 2009, the list also included Leila de Lima, the head of the Philippine Commission on Human Rights, who had been leading a months-long investigation into the rising body count in Davao City.

Armed with a search warrant, de Lima and her team pinpointed a couple of places in the Laud quarry where another hitman had confessed to her that human remains were buried.

At the first spot, they shovelled and found bones and a skull. By that time, the sun was setting. There was no time to explore the other suspected mass grave near where Matobato hid with his gun cocked.

“We waited, but she never came,” Matobato said. “We failed in our mission.”

Matobato didn’t forget de Lima. When, in 2014, he decided to confess his crimes and go into hiding, the woman who had been on his kill list helped arrange his escape and public confession.

Waiting for confession

Two years later, in 2016, under the guidance of de Lima, Matobato gave his Senate testimony about the Davao Death Squad. He spoke of witnessing Duterte shoot a weapon. Some senators grilled him in English, a language he barely spoke.

Matobato’s handler on the death squad, Arturo Lascanas, a senior police officer, was called as a defender of Duterte. In crisp English, Lascanas rejected Matobato’s accusations entirely.

In 2016, Duterte was inaugurated president with a resounding mandate. Matobato remained in hiding.

A year after the Senate inquiry, Lascanas made his own public confession. His health was failing, and he was seeking absolution, he said. Everything Matobato had said at the hearing was true, Lascanas finally admitted. He had been Matobato’s boss. He had executed hits as a leader of the Davao Death Squad. And he had been personally instructed by Duterte to kill.

Not too long ago, Lascanas quietly left the Philippines and came under the protection of the ICC. Matobato acknowledged that Lascanas could neatly diagram the complex hierarchy of the death squad, Duterte sitting at the very top. He knew that Lascanas’ sworn statement was many pages longer than his own. Still, Matobato had confessed first, and he could not understand why the ICC didn’t want him, too.

In the spring, there were rumours that Matobato would follow Lascanas into overseas exile under the court’s protection. But the weeks kept slipping by.

“I have to be patient,” he told me, sighing. “I am good at following orders.”

I was preparing to visit Davao City with photographer Jes Aznar, and Matobato told me he was worried for us. The extrajudicial killings in Davao have not stopped.

“With Superman, life is cheap in Davao,” Matobato said. “One bullet, two bullets.”

The escape

The day started with a farewell to the sheep, goats and chickens that Matobato had cared for while in hiding. His turn to flee the Philippines and tell of his crimes had finally come.

The family — Matobato, his wife and his two stepchildren — loaded a van with suitcases packed with Filipino snacks and Catholic talismans. Over his shoulder, Matobato carried a black laptop case, the same one in which he used to keep his Colt pistol. He has never owned an actual computer.

Matobato had managed to obtain a new identity with a new passport and a new job description: gardener. He practised saying his new name, first, middle and last, but the syllables came out funny, with a question mark hanging over them. His thick hair had been shaved, and he wore large glasses and a grey goatee. A mask covered part of his face.

The throng of travellers at the airport disoriented Matobato. It had been a decade since he had been in a crowd. Back when he killed in Davao City, he said, he never bothered to conceal his identity. Now, he was desperate not to be seen.

As he waited in line at immigration, Matobato’s lips moved soundlessly. He was not praying, he later said, but repeating his new name. Matobato’s new passport received an exit stamp. As the plane took off for Dubai, United Arab Emirates, he cradled a figurine of the Virgin Mary in his hands. This time, he said, he was invoking God. Flying filled him with fear.

Shortly after the flight’s takeoff, he downed a beer but he was still jangly, he said. Next to him slept two Catholic priests who had negotiated his long escape from the Philippines.

Matobato diverted his attention by watching The Beekeeper, a movie about a hitman.

“Very good,” he told me, giving two thumbs up. “Very realistic.”

On the next flight, another long haul, Matobato watched more movies about hitmen. At the duty-free shop in the country that is his new home — The New York Times is not identifying his whereabouts for his security — Matobato gazed at the fully stocked liquor aisles. There was Johnny Walker in blue and black and green and double black — more labels than he had ever seen, he said. He glanced at the priests, and one picked up a bottle for a celebration.

On that first night in his new home, drinking Johnny Walker Blue Label decanted in plastic cups, Matobato said he felt free for the first time in decades. Superman’s men, he said, could not come after him anymore. He raised his glass. Tears trickled down his face.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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