Deseree Manoso was a single mother from Olongapo City, Philippines, determined to provide a better life for her two children, Grace and Nicky. Her world revolved around her family until 2016, when she met Jamie Flanagan on an online dating site.

Jamie, a 53-year-old retired Australian police officer, grew up in Toronto and had a turbulent past, including two failed marriages and a recent struggle with PTSD after leaving the police force.

He moved to Olongapo in 2016, selling his assets in Australia to finance a new life.

Despite their age difference and cultural disparities, Deseree and Jamie quickly grew close.

Jamie embraced Deseree and her two children, and by November 2016, the couple was engaged. They moved into a shared home in the Santa Monica Subdivision in Subic, along with Deseree’s children.

Their blended family seemed happy, with Jamie easily taking on the father figure role. They celebrated New Year’s Eve together in 2016. However, beneath the public facade of their perfect relationship, deep-seated problems began to emerge.

In July 2019, tragedy struck. Police responded to a call from Deseree’s family, requesting a welfare check at Jamie’s home. Inside the couple’s bedroom, police found the lifeless body of 42-year-old Deseree.

She was found with three neckties tied tightly around her throat, the other end secured to a closet.

The scene was immediately suspicious, suggesting a suicide, which Jamie, a retired police officer, calmly asserted to the responding officers.

He claimed Deseree could no longer handle her emotional distress.

However, the local authorities had deep suspicions. Aligned with the family’s disbelief that Deseree would abandon her children, police immediately ordered an autopsy.

The medical legal officer’s report was definitive: Deseree did not die by suicide. The cause of her passing was asphyxia due to manual strangulation, indicating foul play.

An arrest warrant was immediately issued. Police returned to the home and arrested Jamie Flanagan. In an interview with investigators, Jamie admitted they had argued intensely on the night of July 22.

The fight centered on his desire to end their relationship and take their shared son, Raymar, back to Australia, leaving Deseree and her two older children behind.

While Jamie maintained that Deseree had taken her own life, arguing that the medical examiner must be wrong, the prosecution believed the truth was far darker: the scene was staged to cover up a heinous crime.

They alleged that Jamie, a former police officer, used his specialized knowledge to arrange the body and create a convincing suicide scenario.

Furthermore, the victim’s sister, Lizel, testified that Deseree had told her about Jamie’s other relationship in Australia and mounting tensions over his possessiveness and money issues.

The final confrontation was over the separation and custody of their son, Raymar.

In 2019, Jamie Flanagan was charged with homicide, which was later elevated to first-degree murder based on the family’s testimony and the forensic report.

While the outcome of the trial is not fully detailed in the current report, the evidence pointed to a calculated crime rooted in the perpetrator’s inability to accept rejection and his desire to retain sole custody of their son.