18

The Reporter

2015–2017 ... On the trail of a killing ... The bodies pile up ... A Philippine officer presses the case ... Corruption at the top ... An ocean adventure

"W" hen I arrived here, he was already dead," said Roberto Manuel, the Philippine police officer who had been the first at the scene of Bruce Jones's murder. We were standing on a crumbling road outside of Angeles City in December 2015, where Manuel had come upon Jones's blood-soaked car, still running, five years earlier. Occasionally we were interrupted by the audible pop-pop of the gun range a hundred feet down the road, the same one where Jones had been headed after lunch with John Nash. Manuel pulled out some crime scene photos he'd taken on his phone that day. With hand motions, he demonstrated exactly how far from Jones's window the gunman must have been standing when he fired: close enough to ensure accuracy, he said, but not so close as to shatter the window, which was left with four bullet holes. By the time Manuel arrived, John Nash had already left the scene, taking Jones's wife and son to the hospital and leaving Jones to bleed out in the front seat of his car.

Like many dramas surrounding Le Roux, the Jones murder seemed to contain mysteries within other mysteries, unexplained