LEGAZPI CITY ---- Florencio Fernandez, the convicted killer of Cong. Moises Espinosa, Sr. said he sought the help of lawyer Rainier Butalid to ensure safe conduct of his surrender after bolting out from his prison cell.

        On the request of Butalid, Camp Crame sent two helicopters to fetch Fernandez at the Masbate airport for his formal surrender at Camp Crame. 

        In a press statement at the Masbate airport before he boarded the chopper, Fernandez said a plot to liquidate him prompted him to bolt the provincial jail last June 22. 

        He charged that his political foes were behind the plot, and that Provincial Warden Ricardo Bulanon and a certain Boy Espinosa, a jail guard, were involved in the supposed conspiracy to liquidate him.

        He added he found out lately that Bulanon is related to the Espinosas.

        He theorized that his would-be killers will strike while he is being brought to the National Bilibid Prison (NBP) or just after he arrived at the NBP. 

        He said the provincial warden had been compelling him to agree to his transfer to the NBP despite the lack of pre-admission documents required by the NBP.

        Asked to comment on the accusation of Fernandez, Mario Espinosa, the son of the late congressman, strongly dismissed the allegation saying it was a desperate move by a convicted inmate.

        “How can we conspire with them (Bulanon and Espinosa) when I don’t have any control or influence over these people,” the young Espinosa said. 

        Bulanon and this Boy Espinosa are not in any way related to our family, Espinosa explained.   

        He lamented that with the kind of treatment Fernandez is getting, he feared a reversal of decision from the higher courts [despite the lower court’s decision of conviction] that may set free a notorious criminal who masterminded the killing of his father. Mar S. Arguelles