LAGIM: A Filipino True Crime · LAGIM Podcast

The Mary Jane Veloso Case

·1 hr 40 min·5 clips

Customs found 2.6 kilograms of heroin in Mary Jane Veloso’s luggage, with a street value of half a million dollars.

The case begins with Mary Jane Veloso. After a short solidarity note and a brief personal introduction, the host moves into a longer version of a case first released on Patreon a couple of years earlier. The pace is measured, almost tense by design. The account stays close to the late-April 2015 crisis, when officials, lawyers, and family members were trying to stop an execution that kept getting nearer. April 22 matters here. A message about a filing in Indonesia, scheduled for April 28, went to the DOJ and drew no response from de Lima at that point. Another message followed 24 hours later. Around the same time, Vice President Binay raised clemency with Indonesian officials while attending the Bandung Conference. Aquino also appears in the record. The host notes reports that he wrote a second letter to President Widodo, again asking for executive clemency roughly a year before his presidency ended. The answer stayed murky. Widodo gave broad reassurances while holding to his position that drug-related offenses carried capital punishment. Then everything shifted. On April 24, 2015, Mary Jane was transferred at 1.25 a.m. to Nusa Kambangan, the island tied to executions. Her family was blindsided. Her lawyers had not been notified right away, and relatives had reportedly been told the transfer would not happen anytime soon. Manila seemed confused too. The DFA told the public that morning it had not heard of any transfer, which leaves the host asking whether officials were out of the loop or being evasive. The lawyers kept working. They filed a second petition for judicial review that same day, even as a prosecutor soon gave the family notice of an impending execution without a specific date. The mood darkens fast. Mary Jane said her farewells, entrusted letters to DFA representatives, and then her lawyers received the 72-hour notice that made the threat immediate. The ending does not tidy it up. The host presents Mary Jane as someone facing a hard reintegration, and as someone who had already spent more than a decade living with death over her shoulder.

As heard by us

A careful, grim timeline of a case where every delay mattered.

The episode follows Mary Jane Veloso's case with a clear, date by date calm that makes the pressure easy to feel. It keeps returning to the same hard fact: a woman moving through clemency appeals, diplomatic pressure, and an execution clock that keeps edging closer.

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Why you'd press play

You want a serious timeline of Mary Jane Veloso's fight against execution.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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