The penniless family of murdered Bennylyn Burke held a memorial for her surrounded by the charred remains of their destroyed home in the Philippines. It was ravaged by fire just days before her ashes were returned to them from Scotland where she was killed along with her two-year-old daughter Jellica by paedophile IT worker Andrew Innes.
Heartbreaking images show her grieving relatives lighting candles and surrounding the 25-year-old’s remains, which were inside a cardboard box wrapped in plastic. Bennylyn, 25, moved to the UK in search of a better life after growing up in the Philippines in poverty.
She met Innes just days before he killed her and her toddler daughter on February 21, 2021 and raped another child. The sadistic murderer buried their bodies under the kitchen floor at his Dundee home.
In an interview with the Sunday Mail, Bennylyn’s dad Ben Aquino and her sister Shela revealed the hell of having to pay tribute to Bennylyn in the shell of their ramshackle house in the shanty towns of Quezon City. She is yet to have a proper funeral.
Shela said the fire happened on June 7, 2021, a few days before they were due to pick her remains up at the airport in Manilla. She said: “It was terrible.
"It was really very painful and very difficult for us to think about how and where we can put her to commemorate her and to say prayers. We had no lights or doors or windows or anything.
"We just made a shelter where we put some chairs and candles, and found a table to place her and put her photographs.
“We prayed together and remembered her but it wasn’t a proper funeral. It is not what we want for her, but we have nothing.”
Shela said the family have no money and are still rebuilding their home in the hope they can give Bennylyn the final resting place she deserves. Her dad Ben, 62, said: “We had to live in a tent for two months but I then started to find some work and friends also helped.
“It is not easy. We have had to rely on donations from the Filipino community in the UK to help us even get Bennylyn’s ashes back as all of this costs money. We don’t have anything left for the home.
“We have slowly tried to put together the walls and the roof of the house but we haven’t been able to finish it. We’ve just put together aluminium sheets and bits and pieces of wood so that the rain doesn’t come in and it’s screened off from people outside.”
Bennylyn first met twisted Innes through dating site Filipino Cupid for which he’d built a special computer programme to trawl and make a database of women with young children who he wanted to pursue. He travelled to meet Bennylyn at her home in Bristol and brought her and Jellica to Dundee before murdering them.
Shela described her “bright and happy” sister who loved to sing and enjoyed doing karaoke with friends in the Philippines and little Jellica who was “always happy and laughing”. She said: “Andrew Innes thought Bennylyn was nobody – that nobody would look for her or try to find her if she was gone. But I never gave up trying to help my sister.
“I kept asking the police what was happening and tried to find out where she was. Even after we found out what had happened we never gave up the fight for justice for her and Jellica.
“We are glad justice has now been done even if Andrew Innes thought he could get away with it. The court case was very difficult to listen to because there were a lot of lies told by Andrew Innes during his testimony and I don’t believe what he was saying about my sister.
“All throughout the period, I was just praying and hoping that the truth will come out from the hearing and give justice to Bennylyn and Jellica. I am now looking forward to leaving the UK and returning home knowing justice has come.”
Innes, 52, was sentenced to at least 36 years behind bars for Bennylyn and Jellica’s murders, and the rape of another child at his Troon Avenue home in Dundee. His crimes were described by Lord Beckett as “among the worst” to ever come before the High Court.
Ben said: “I feel very sad about what happened to Bennylyn and Jellica because they were both taken away and nothing can bring them back. Even though there’s justice, still there’s the pain, terrible pain, that I feel because of the loss of my daughter and granddaughter.
"There’s no justice to me that they are gone. Our lives will be the same again.”
Charity the Kanlungan Filipino Consortium will donate any funds received for the next month to the Aquino family. Donate at www.paypal.com/GB/fundraiser/charity/3154931
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