The minister who followed the call of God - but ended up manacled and tortured to death in jungle swamp
By BARBARA DAVIES
Right up until the moment he was brutally murdered, David Brash believed his life was being guided by the will of God. In the eyes of the 62-year-old Baptist minister, God was behind his marriage last year to a pretty young Filipina girl, 40 years his junior.
And at a time when he could have been forgiven for considering retirement and a quieter pace of life, his unwavering faith was also behind his decision to leave his home in Warrington, Cheshire, and move to the marshy wilderness of the southern Philippines with his young bride.
There on the wild, rural island of Mindanao, Brash preached that tragedies and disasters were God's punishment for the "sin of mankind", unaware that the most evil sin of all was being plotted against him.
Last week, barely a month after he left the UK for the last time, the deeply religious missionary's badly burnt body was recovered from a swamp in the village of Barangay Tagapira.
It has yet to be formally identified, but his 22-year-old wife Annalyn has, according to Filipino authorities, already confessed to paying two men to have him killed.
In addition, she has been charged with the crime of "parricide" - a strangely archaic term which usually refers to the killing of a parent or close relative.
From the point of view of the Filipino police, the case is as good as closed. Two men, Renante Puerto Prado, Brash's 22-year-old driver, and Noah Martinez Noah, 30, have also been charged with the minister's murder despite the fact that they are still on the run.
But in a country notorious for corruption, the investigation into Mr Brash's death is still mired in confusion and rumour.
Now, the Mail has pieced together the extraordinary series of events which led to this complex man's brutal murder.
According to local media reports, Mr Brash's wife Annalyn and suspected hitman Prado were lovers. Annalyn is also alleged to have told police her husband was beating her.
Could such a serious allegation against this man of God really be true, or is it her attempt to defend her actions in arranging his death?
Just hours before confessing to the police, she sent a text message to a Filipino pastor who had been best man at her wedding to Brash, begging for forgiveness and prayer, and admitting that she had succumbed to "anger, emotion and temptation".
Back in Britain, Brash's former wife, 61-year-old Veronica, and their two sons, Andrew, 36, and Ian, 35, are struggling to come to terms with his death, as are members of Runcorn Independent Baptist Church, who waved him off on his missionary dream last month.
And yet the meticulous diaries Brash kept for the past five years and posted on his personal website give clues to the dangers he faced, long before he married a young woman who appears to have led him to a terrible and agonising death.
Ultimately, David Brash was an idealist. He believed in the goodness of people, and his blinding faith left him vulnerable to being exploited.
According to friends, he embraced his new life in the Philippines with typical zeal, seemingly uncaring that his new home was in what the Foreign Office describes as a "no-go area".
He became embroiled in a world shrouded in church corruption and financial scams. When he died, according to his diaries, he was on the brink of exposing the lies he had encountered.
But five years ago, Brash was living a different, far more ordinary life.
The farm labourer's son, who was born and bred in Liverpool and Cheshire, ran his own one-man computer repair company and devoted most of his spare time to his church. His wife Veronica and two sons completed the happy family picture.
Then, in February 2002, he received an e-mail invitation from pastor Edgar Burgonios, whose church was on the island of Mindanao in the Philippines. Brash visited for two weeks the following August, a trip he later described as "life-changing".
"After years of plodding along in a small church, my horizons have widened considerably," he said.
He was bowled over and flattered by the chance to preach to seemingly adoring crowds of foreigners and as soon as he arrived back in the UK, he began excitedly planning his next trip.
That took place in May 2003. This time, Brash began distributing heavily- discounted Bibles wherever he could.
But he also soon found himself caught in what he later discovered to be a financial scam - allegedly at the hands of Edgar Burgonios, the man who had originally invited him to the islands.
Brash used his own credit card to obtain cash to buy land after Burgonios said it would be used to build a church and an orphanage.
That he did so without question might be seen, by some, as an example of his selfless generosity. Others would regard it simply as a deep-seated naivety. In his diary, Brash wrote: "Truly the Lord was at work. Add to that the fact that I was there and able to lay my hands on money instantly, and you can see the Lord's timing. The building project certainly has the Lord's seal upon it."
But during his next trip to the Philippines, in the summer of 2004, Brash began to suspect his friend's motives.
After discovering that the pastor had bought the land in his own name - and not the church's - Brash appears to have seen the light (as he might have put it) and took legal action to try to get his money back, having told friends that he had uncovered corruption.
Later, during another visit to the island, he finally confronted the pastor and his wife.
He wrote: "If they want me to drop my action they must cooperate fully with my lawyer (I doubt that they will). I told them that I was fed up with being lied to by Christians, that those who tell lies about me are not my friends."
By now, he had met Annalyn, the young teenage girl who would eventually become his second wife. Their paths first crossed in August 2004, after which he told friends he "got on very well" with the 19-year-old, whose mother worked for the local Pentecostal church.
But it seems their friendship grew the more he went to visit the island - a situation which appears to have made him a target for enemies and detractors.
During one church tour, he found that only two hotel rooms had been booked for himself, his "lady assistant" and their driver.
He recalled: "To my amazement, the pastor booked the young lady and myself into the double room, in spite of my protests. 'Say that she is your daughter,' I was told.
"After the pastor had departed we swopped around so that the young lady had the single room.
(To be continued...)
