A drug personality has been shot dead and was believed to be done by a vigilante group. Daughter of the late Third Baron Lord Anthony Moynihan, Maria Aurora Moynihan, got killed and was left in the streets of Manila on Sept. 10.
Maria, 45, was also allegedly involved in the opiates trades. She had been on bond after illegal possession of drugs charges in 2013. Beside her dead body was a sign that read, "Drug pusher to the celebrities," The Guardian reported.
"Witnesses told us they heard a series of gunshots, then saw a vehicle leaving the area. They did not see its license plates," Chief Inspector Tito Jay Cuden told Agence France-Presse.
Local media publicized a video of a vehicle which stopped and opened its doors in the remote area of the street where the body was found lately. The poor quality of the footage makes it difficult to tell exactly what happened.
Maria's father, Lord Anthony, was cited as "brothel-keeper, confidence trickster, drug-smuggler and even a police informer" in his Telegraph obituary. The third baron took his father's place as the Liberal whip in the House of Lords in 1965. However, he was faced with charges of more than 50 including fraud forcing him to flee to Spain and the Philippines afterward.
He remarried a Filipina and became acquainted in the local narcotic trade said the Australian police. To avoid arrest he referred to the late president Ferdinand Marcos as his drinking buddy. After getting associated with a Sydney criminal syndicate, "Double Bay Mob" that smuggles heroin from Manila, the lord baron was convinced to ploy as a police informant.
Maria Moynihan seemed to follow his father's footsteps on the illicit drug trade. She was arrested in a buy-bust operation in 2013 and was charged with illegal drug use. Although she was found with marijuana, ecstasy, and crystal meth she was not charged with selling them, CNN reported.
"We ask the public at this time to respect our need for privacy so that we may continue to heal in our own way," Moynihan's sister, actress Maritoni Fernandez said in a statement published by local media.
Maria's passing over is only the most recent in the developing and savage clean up in the Philippines' drug trade launched by the "Iron Fist" himself President Rodrigo Duterte.
