Long-wanted US murder suspect nabbed after getting passport in PH

US Embassy in Manila, Philippines. AP FILE PHOTO

PHILADELPHIA—Twenty years after he allegedly gunned down his wife’s friend in a Philadelphia restaurant, a fugitive “spiritualist” who sold religious artifacts around the world is in custody after visiting the US Embassy in the Philippines.

Santiago Pedroso, 71, applied for an emergency passport in Manila on Sept. 6, prompting a routine criminal check. The 1992 murder charge soon popped up, leading the FBI to compare an old file photo with one submitted to the embassy.

“Just looking at the two photographs, we knew immediately it was him,” said FBI special agent David E. Carter of Philadelphia, one of two agents who greeted Pedroso on Wednesday when he returned to US soil in Los Angeles.

The murder warrant charges Pedroso in the June 1992 death of 41-year-old Delores Alvarez.

His estranged wife had recently moved in with Alvarez when he ran into them in a restaurant on Father’s Day, according to newspaper reports at the time.

Pedroso allegedly shot Alvarez five times just after she ordered dinner, as his teenage daughter begged him to stop, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported at the time.

Pedroso walked out of the restaurant and disappeared, investigators said.

Authorities in Manila arrested him outside the embassy on Sept. 9. He is now in custody in Philadelphia, where he was arraigned Friday on charges that include murder, illegal possession of a firearm and reckless endangerment.

The 1992 Inquirer article described Pedroso as a “spiritualist” who ran a religious bookstore.

Detectives said Pedroso was enraged by the friendship between Alvarez and his estranged wife, 44-year-old Maria Gomez.

A naturalized US citizen from Cuba, Pedroso traveled widely after that, selling religious wares around the world, the FBI said Friday.

The FBI believes Pedroso was in the Philippines by 1996, perhaps landing there as a cruise ship stowaway.