Mythmaking by Duterte has its corollary in the journalists and the crowds that gather eagerly at the scenes of the killings, where rumor flies faster than facts. A Barbie doll, all blond hair and pink clothing, lay near Angel’s body. After much discussion, the crowd, based on no actual evidence, settled on the theory that Jerico had given her the doll as a symbol of their romance.

Angel’s open-coffin wake was held at the end of a tiny alley in Quezon City. A sister and one friend sat stoically on their own until a church group showed up to sing a hymn. Angel’s real name, it turned out, was Ericka Fernandez, and she was the third of seven children. One of her sisters denied that Angel had ever used drugs — it was “a made-up story,” she said. Likewise, she said the Barbie-doll romance was invented by neighbors — according to her, Angel and Jerico weren’t a couple anymore at the time of their murders, and Angel had bought the doll herself as a gift for a family member. The coffin was half open, revealing a girl in a white dress with large, poorly concealed sutures holding her neck together. A few doors down, women played a raucous dice game.

Jerico’s wake was held about a mile away, and better attended, if only because it took place in a busy footpath. The coffin stood on display in front of his uncle’s house, as food vendors plied their offerings nearby and children skipped underfoot. A dog napped under the half-open coffin.

Jerico was innocent, said his father, Rommel Camitan. “He’s not a pusher. Hundred percent, sir. Not a pusher. For me he is a good son. Ask our neighbors.” Camitan sat on a plastic stool in the street, sheltered by a tarp that friends had strung overhead. Without enough cash on hand for a funeral, the family was buying another week by having Jerico’s body injected with more preservative against the tropical heat. Inside the coffin, illuminated by a light-up Jesus, Jerico had been cleaned up, though the thick makeup could not conceal the zigzag split in his forehead. A week after death, one of his eyes was caving in.

Despite his anguish, Camitan endorsed Duterte’s campaign. “All this talk of finishing drugs and the drug war is good,” Camitan said. “But he has to be sure that their target is the right person.” He added: “There have been cases around here. Usually they are pushers or addicts.” Good people had nothing to fear, he told me. “The only ones who should feel afraid are the ones who did something wrong.”

There is no certain or easy way to get off Duterte’s list. The mayor who died in his jail cell had flown to Manila to clear his name, and the barangay kapitan Art Jimenez tried before he was gunned down in traffic. After learning that he was named as a “drug personality,” Jimenez presented himself at Police Station 3. Sagpang, the National Police station commander, told me that a drug-screening team gave Jimenez a test: no trace of methamphetamines or cannabis in his system.



But Sagpang still insisted that Jimenez had been involved in the drug trade at a higher level, protecting two “Muslim drug pushers,” according to his sources. The kapitan’s driver and bodyguard that day were also drug users, he said — he seemed surprised that both were wounded in the assassination but survived.