Summary Execution

“An incredible true story that reads like an international crime thriller.”—Steve Jackson, New York Times bestselling author

On June 1, 1981, two young activists, Silme Domingo and Gene Viernes, were murdered in Seattle in what was made to appear like a gang slaying. But the victims’ families and friends suspected they were considered a threat to the dictatorship of Philippines dictator Ferdinand Marcos and his regime’s relationship to the United States.

In Summary Execution, attorney and author Michael Withey describes his ten-year battle for justice for Domingo and Viernes that he fought because “They killed my friends.” Follow along as he embarks on a long and dangerous investigation and into the courtroom to obtain convictions of three hitmen, and then prove in U.S. federal court that Marcos was behind the assassinations. If so, it would be the first time in U.S. history that a foreign head of state would be held liable for the murder of American citizens on U.S. soil.

However, to accomplish this Withey and his legal team, working with the victims’ families and friends, would have to overcome numerous obstacles including exposing the perjured eyewitness testimony of an FBI informant, uncovering the brutal murder of an accomplice who was being sought to turn state’s evidence, and working around the failure by local authorities to prosecute the Marcos operative who planned the murders.

“Remarkable . . . The story has so many twists—as well as amazing turns—that prove the point that conspiracy theories aren’t necessarily fiction.”—Eric Nalder, Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist