\n<\/p>\n
There are, the hit man said, many ways to kill.<\/p>\n
A string tied between two sticks strangles with a tug of the wrists. A butcher\u2019s blade, long and thin, slices into the heart.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Edgar Matobato said he fed a man to a crocodile, but only once. Mostly, he said, he ended people\u2019s lives with a trusted weapon: his .45-caliber Colt M1911 pistol.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor almost 24 years, I killed and disposed of many bodies,\u201d Mr. Matobato said of his time with a death squad in Davao City, in the southern Philippines. \u201cI am trying to remember, but I cannot remember everyone.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\u201cI\u2019m sorry,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
We were sitting in the outdoor kitchen of Mr. Matobato\u2019s secret refuge in the Philippines. A fierce rain sent water skittering into the room. Mosquitoes followed. He slapped one dead, its body oozing someone else\u2019s blood.<\/p>\n
Mr. Matobato was in hiding. He has been for a decade, ever since he confessed to his crimes and divulged who ordered the bloodletting: Rodrigo Duterte, the mayor of Davao City, who later became president of the Philippines.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Mr. Matobato, now 65, says he killed more than 50 people for the man he called \u201cSuperman,\u201d pulling in a salary from City Hall of a little more than $100 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.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Mr. Matobato knew that breaking the omert\u00e0 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.<\/p>\n
When I first met him last year, Mr. Matobato was waiting for the International Criminal Court, or I.C.C., to take him as a witness in its inquiry into whether Mr. Duterte committed crimes against humanity. In 2018, international prosecutors began investigating Mr. 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 \u2014 a killing spree that included far more than drug pushers and petty criminals \u2014 but low estimates are at 20,000.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
By the time we met, Mr. Matobato had a new name and a new job shearing sheep and feeding chickens \u2014 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 I.C.C. He was aching for his chance, too.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
His declining health added urgency. Though Mr. Matobato cannot read, he understood the irregular jags of his electrocardiogram, signs of a troubled heart.<\/p>\n
For people in the Philippines who are keen to bring Mr. Duterte to account, the testimony of hit men like Mr. Matobato is crucial. But they also recognize that granting these killers any kind of legal protection, much less forgiveness, is a necessary evil.<\/p>\n
While another former hit man says he secured immunity in exchange for his testimony at the I.C.C., Mr. Matobato told me he was not seeking the same. If the I.C.C. wanted to punish him for the killings he had committed, so be it.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor almost 24 years, I killed for Duterte \u2014 24 years, 24 years,\u201d Mr. Matobato said, repeating the number like a mantra.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\u201cI will face what I did,\u201d Mr. Matobato said. \u201cBut Duterte, he must be punished by the court and by God.\u201d He just hoped his recounting of his crimes would lead the former president to prison.<\/p>\n
At 5 feet 2 inches, Mr. 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 policeman offered him the chance in 1988 to join a group of enforcers cleaning up a crime-ridden city.<\/p>\n
Their corps was eventually called the Heinous Crimes Unit. Mr. Matobato said he was a \u201cforce multiplier,\u201d a low-ranking hit man often drawn from the ranks of security guards or dropouts from rebel militias.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is no joke,\u201d Mr. Matobato said. \u201cI may be small, but I know how to kill very well.\u201d<\/p>\n
Over many months, I checked hundreds of details in Mr. Matobato\u2019s recollections with testimony from several others who said they had also been members of the Davao Death Squad. While there were small points of divergence, the vast bulk of their memories matched.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
The Davao Death Squad developed its own code and methods. \u201cTrabajo\u201d meant a hit. A towel emblazoned with the words \u201cgood morning\u201d hanging over the shoulder of a spotter would signal the positioning of the target to be killed. Brown packing tape kept the victims\u2019 screams from posing a distraction.<\/p>\n
The men 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. Mr. Duterte sometimes presided over the torture, executions and grave digging, they said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Mr. Matobato said that at the quarry, which was owned by a policeman who was a founding member of the Davao Death Squad, he specialized in body disposal. He grew practiced at the geometry of butchery, turning a human into a package of flesh and bones fit for a compact burial space. It was also important, he said, that the corpses not be easily identifiable.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Mr. Matobato said he would slice through the thorax, remove the vital organs and lop the limbs. Then he would cut off the head and place it in the cavity the innards had occupied. He would pour engine oil over the butchered body to stanch the smell.<\/p>\n
Cutting off the ears, he said, was for no real reason. But once he started, it was sometimes hard to stop.<\/p>\n
\u201cYes, ma\u2019am,\u201d Mr. Matobato told me, his hand mimicking each motion of dismemberment. \u201cI was very good at chop-chop.\u201d<\/p>\n
After busy days at the quarry, Mr. Matobato and the other hit men would often drive to the Vista View restaurant. They took over a favored caba\u00f1a overlooking the Laud quarry. They feasted on seafood and halo-halo, a kind of Filipino ice cream sundae.<\/p>\n
At least once, though, Mr. Matobato ate at the quarry. According to Mr. Matobato and one other member of the squad, the hit men set up a barbecue. Mr. 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, Mr. Matobato said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\u201cHe would come home with blood on his clothes, but he always said it was from cock fights,\u201d said Joselita Abarquez, Mr. Matobato\u2019s common-law wife. \u201cI had to wash a lot to get the clothes clean.\u201d<\/p>\n
On one occasion in 2009, Mr. Matobato crouched in a limestone outcropping, not with a curved carving blade, but 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.<\/p>\n
Mr. Matobato said he didn\u2019t question the hit. This many years in, he admitted, he knew he was no longer just killing \u201ctrash,\u201d as he referred to petty offenders.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen we started, we were proud that we were neutralizing criminals, drug pushers, thieves, making Davao safe,\u201d Mr. Matobato said. \u201cThen it changed, but we kept following Superman\u2019s orders.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
The hit list came to include businessmen who challenged the interests of Mr. Duterte\u2019s sons, politicians whose spheres of influence pressed against Mr. Duterte\u2019s, journalists who pointed out Mr. Duterte\u2019s 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 monthslong investigation into the rising body count in Davao City.<\/p>\n
Armed with a search warrant, Ms. de Lima and her team pinpointed a couple of places in the Laud quarry where another hit man had confessed to her that human remains were buried.<\/p>\n
At the first spot, they shoveled 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 Mr. Matobato hid with his gun cocked.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe waited, but she never came,\u201d Mr. Matobato said. \u201cWe failed in our mission.\u201d<\/p>\n
Not long after her Laud quarry investigation, Ms. de Lima\u2019s tenure at the human rights commission ended. Her Davao City findings languished. An associate of Mr. Duterte\u2019s said that the skeletal remains her team found were those of Japanese soldiers from World War II.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
But Mr. Matobato didn\u2019t forget Ms. 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.<\/p>\n
Two years later, in 2016, under the guidance of Ms. de Lima, Mr. Matobato gave his Senate testimony about the Davao Death Squad. He spoke of witnessing Mr. Duterte shoot a weapon. His performance was halting. Some senators grilled him in English, a language he barely spoke.<\/p>\n
Mr. Matobato\u2019s handler on the death squad, Arturo Lasca\u00f1as, a senior police officer, was called as a defender of Mr. Duterte. In crisp English, Mr. Lasca\u00f1as rejected Mr. Matobato\u2019s accusations entirely.<\/p>\n
In 2016, Mr. Duterte was inaugurated president with a resounding mandate. Mr. Matobato remained in hiding. For one five-year stretch, he and his wife were confined to a house, unable to leave because of the perceived threats from the president of the Philippines.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe ran out of tears,\u201d Ms. Abarquez said of that period of isolation. \u201cWe almost went crazy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr. Matobato said he wanted only to stay in a darkened room. Images of those he killed floated past his closed eyes. The memory of the young ones, the girls, especially, made him feel like he had to throw up, a queasiness that had never affected him during all those years in Davao.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
One night while sequestered in that house, he tied some linens together and decided to hang himself.<\/p>\n
\u201cI couldn\u2019t live with myself, with all that I had done,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
But he found he couldn\u2019t kill himself, either.<\/p>\n
A year after the Senate inquiry, Mr. Lasca\u00f1as made his own public confession. His health was failing, and he was seeking absolution, he said. Everything Mr. Matobato had said at the hearing was true, Mr. Lasca\u00f1as finally admitted. He had been Mr. Matobato\u2019s boss. He had executed hits as a leader of the Davao Death Squad. And he had been personally instructed by Mr. Duterte to kill.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Not too long ago, Mr. Lasca\u00f1as quietly left the Philippines and came under the protection of the I.C.C. Mr. Matobato acknowledged that Mr. Lasca\u00f1as could neatly diagram the complex hierarchy of the death squad, Mr. Duterte sitting at the very top. He knew that Mr. Lasca\u00f1as\u2019s sworn statement was many pages longer than his own. Still, Mr. Matobato had confessed first, and he could not understand why the I.C.C. didn\u2019t want him, too.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\u201cI am ready to tell all my crimes,\u201d Mr. Matobato said. <\/p>\n
By then, Mr. Matobato and Ms. Abarquez had secretly moved into a Catholic Church compound, under the protection of priests. They had more space and animals to tend, fruit trees to nourish them, too. Mr. Matobato took video calls with I.C.C. investigators.<\/p>\n
\u201cI told them everything about what I did on Superman\u2019s orders,\u201d he said. He raised his hand to his head in a salute.<\/p>\n
In the spring, there were rumors that Mr. Matobato would follow Mr. Lasca\u00f1as into overseas exile under the court\u2019s protection. But the weeks kept slipping by.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have to be patient,\u201d he told me, sighing. \u201cI am good at following orders.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nervous energy kept Mr. Matobato\u2019s legs jiggling, his toes barely reaching the ground. Even though Mr. Duterte left the presidency in 2022, the family\u2019s continued grip on power \u2014 his daughter is vice president, his son is Davao City mayor, and Mr. Duterte himself is making noises about wanting to reassume the mayoral position \u2014 made Mr. Matobato all the more desperate to leave the Philippines.<\/p>\n
I was preparing to visit Davao City with the photographer Jes Aznar, and Mr. Matobato told me he was worried for us, the muscles in his jaw twitching. The extrajudicial killings in Davao have not stopped. In one spate earlier last year, seven bodies were found on city streets.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\u201cWith Superman, life is cheap in Davao,\u201d Mr. Matobato said. \u201cOne bullet, two bullets.\u201d<\/p>\n
He formed a pistol with his fingers and pointed at my heart, before laughing, although not for very long.<\/p>\n
A culture of fear still pervades in Davao City. I met with a mother who lost three children to the drug war, one in 2013, one in 2016 and one in 2023. We spoke for hours, and she trembled as she described each son who was killed: Vivencio Jr., 19, who was watching basketball when the gunmen pulled up on motorcycles; Veejay, 21, who was taken into an unmarked van and shot dead as he tried to escape; and Harry Jay, 32, whose corpse with two bullet wounds she claimed from the hospital.<\/p>\n
When Jes and I arrived at the Laud quarry, at a shooting range that operates on the fringes of the property, we were followed by two men, one of whom filmed us on his cellphone. We left quickly, wondering whether we were imagining a threat. But when we later showed the two men\u2019s photos to Mr. Matobato, he confirmed that they were members of the Davao Death Squad.<\/p>\n
The day started with a farewell to the sheep, goats and chickens that Mr. Matobato had cared for while in hiding. His turn to flee the Philippines and tell of his crimes had finally come.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
The family \u2014 Mr. Matobato, his wife and his two stepchildren \u2014 loaded a van with suitcases packed with Filipino snacks and Catholic talismans. Over his shoulder, Mr. 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.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Mr. Matobato had managed to obtain a new identity with a new passport and a new job description: gardener. He practiced 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 gray goatee. A mask covered part of his face.<\/p>\n
Still, Mr. Matobato, with his compact but coiled energy, worried that he was recognizable. One of the sons of the owner of the Laud quarry had worked as a police officer at the airport in the Philippine capital, Manila. The priests and politicians arranging Mr. Matobato\u2019s escape worried that he was being targeted for a hit.<\/p>\n
The throng of travelers at the airport disoriented Mr. 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. He could shoot someone in broad daylight and stroll away. Now, he was desperate not to be seen.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
As he waited in line at immigration, Mr. Matobato\u2019s lips moved soundlessly. He was not praying, he later said, but repeating his new name. The immigration officer had no questions, and Mr. Matobato\u2019s new passport received an exit stamp. As the plane took off for Dubai, he cradled a figurine of the Virgin Mary in his hands. This time, he said, he was invoking God. Flying filled him with fear.<\/p>\n
Shortly after the flight\u2019s takeoff, he downed a beer but he was still jangly, he said. He was in the middle seat of a middle row in economy class. Next to him slept two Catholic priests who had negotiated his long escape from the Philippines.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Mr. Matobato diverted his attention by watching \u201cThe Beekeeper,\u201d a movie about a hit man.<\/p>\n
\u201cVery good,\u201d he told me, giving two thumbs up. \u201cVery realistic.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
At the Dubai airport, Mr. Matobato, who had eaten everything served to him on the nine-hour flight, was still hungry. The priests led him and his family to a Five Guys for hamburgers. A server from the Philippines smiled at the clergymen and offered them free fries. Mr. Matobato chewed his burger in silence, taking big bites and wiping his fingers clean. Then he put his face mask back on.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think anyone recognizes me, but you can never be sure,\u201d he said, his eyes scanning the restaurant. \u201cSuperman is powerful. He has his spies everywhere.\u201d<\/p>\n
On the next flight, another long-haul, Mr. Matobato watched more movies about hit men. Bullets flew on the screen. At the duty-free shop in the country that is his new home \u2014 The New York Times is not identifying his whereabouts for his security \u2014 Mr. Matobato gazed at the fully stocked liquor aisles. There was Johnny Walker in blue and black and green and double black \u2014 more labels than he had ever seen, he said. He glanced at the priests, and one picked up a bottle for a celebration.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe pursuit of justice is long and arduous, but with Edgar out of the Philippines, we are one big step closer to bringing Duterte to account,\u201d said the Rev. Flaviano Villanueva, who helped form a kind of church witness protection program for penitent members of the Davao Death Squad. \u201cWe have to tell the world, tell the Filipino people that ours is not a society that accepts wanton violence, that ignores extrajudicial killings, that glorifies a president who boasts about murder.\u201d<\/p>\n
For speaking out against the violence of Mr. Duterte\u2019s drug war, Father Villanueva and another Catholic priest were tried for sedition. They were acquitted after Mr. Duterte left office.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
In a car for another drive to another safe house, Mr. Matobato fell asleep within minutes. It was as if a decade\u2019s worth of tension in his body had uncorked.<\/p>\n
Over the next few days, Mr. Matobato would experience the dislocation of being a permanent exile. He did not understand the language, the people or the culture. Still, he was free to walk around, unmasked and unrecognized. At a superstore, he maneuvered a large shopping cart through the aisles, staring at the unfamiliar foods. He prayed at a cathedral. He went on walks with his wife, just the two of them. They held hands.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know what he did is wrong, but he is my husband,\u201d Ms. Abarquez said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
On that first night in his new home, drinking Johnny Walker Blue Label decanted in plastic cups, Mr. Matobato said he felt free for the first time in decades. Superman\u2019s men, he said, could not come after him anymore. He raised his glass. Tears trickled down his face.<\/p>\n
His family went to bed, jet-lagged and disoriented. But Mr. Matobato did not want to sleep. Killings once submerged in his memory surfaced.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\u201cDid I tell you about the time we killed the girls?\u201d he asked me.<\/p>\n
He had, back when we were in the Philippines. That was the first time I had seen Mr. Matobato cry. Sitting with his wife, he had described how he and other death squad members kidnapped three young women around 2013. They were told the women were drug dealers, but Mr. Matobato didn\u2019t think they were. The hit men bundled the women into a van.<\/p>\n
At a quiet bend, where Gold Street meets Ruby Street, several men stayed in the back of the van and raped the women, Mr. Matobato said. He said his role was to act as lookout, standing outside the vehicle to ward off any passers-by. The women were killed in the van, then their bodies were swathed in packing tape and dumped in a patch of forest, Mr. Matobato said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey were so young,\u201d he said. \u201cThey weren\u2019t criminals. I don\u2019t even know their names.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ms. Abarquez had been listening to her husband speak. She stood up and walked away.<\/p>\n
There were so many unidentified corpses that turned up in Davao City back then that I was not able to confirm with certainty Mr. Matobato\u2019s account. One police officer said there were at least three instances of multiple female bodies found in Davao City around 2013.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s like that with many of the extrajudicial killings, both in Davao City and nationwide. Evidence is hazy. People are still afraid to talk. In the end, it\u2019s unlikely that most of the death squad members will ever face prosecution.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Back in his new home, I told Mr. Matobato that he had already described the deaths of the three young women to me. His eyes glistened.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn my nightmares, I see the girls, and they are screaming,\u201d he said. \u201cThey were so young, so innocent. They didn\u2019t deserve to die.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr. Matobato swallowed more whiskey. Then he smiled, his teeth small and white.<\/p>\n
\u201cI haven\u2019t told you about these ones before,\u201d he said. \u201cYou can write it down.\u201d<\/p>\n
For an hour, and then another, he related more killings he said he committed. My hand hurt from writing down every death, every instrument of killing: a knife, a .45 Colt, a rope, a heave into the sea.<\/p>\n
Mr. Matobato sipped his Johnny Walker. He was still awake. Absolution eluded him. So he told me one more story, just one more, of a man he says he killed for Superman.<\/p>\n
Audio produced by Sarah Diamond.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n