‘All signs point to a possible sex offender of the grossest kind’: Philippine minister gives update on Thomas Markle investigation

All signs point to Thomas Markle Snr possibly being a ‘sex offender of the grossest kind’, according to a Philippine minister. 

Authorities are currently trawling through a trove of child sex abuse images that allegedly belong to the 82-year-old former Hollywood lighting technician.

In an update on its investigation, Philippine interior minister, Jonvic Remulla, said the forensics data is expected to be completed in a week, but ‘right now all signs point to a possible sex offender of the grossest kind’.

Mr Remulla said ‘we want to be sure before we release the findings’ and that a statement would be released once the data had been analysed. 

‘Please give us a week to determine the contents and to come up with a definitive picture,’ he said.

Mr Markle confessed to The Mail on Sunday last night he had paid for sex while living in the Far East but he denied sleeping with under-age girls.

The Duchess of Sussex told her estranged father last year that she knew he had abused young girls and that he would never see Archie and Lilibet. 

Meghan, 45, sent a letter to Mr Markle while he was recovering in hospital in the Philippines after having his leg amputated. 

The Mail on Sunday was in the room when someone hand-delivered the white envelope to him, but we did not ask about its contents out of respect for the duchess’s privacy. 

But it has been revealed by The Sun on Sunday that in it Meghan told him he would never hear from her again or meet his grandchildren. 

Scotland Yard first told Meghan seven years ago about the ‘troubling and disturbing’ child sex abuse claims about her father after being sent a letter, understood to have been written by Mr Markle’s late first wife, Roslyn Loveless. 

Roslyn’s daughter and Meghan’s half-sister, Samantha Markle, 61, has insisted that if her mother was behind the letter, then she sent it out of ‘hatred and bitterness’. 

Ms Markle has said Roslyn was an alcoholic and ‘not credible’ and added: ‘She was bitter that dad left her and had a successful career in Hollywood. There was a lot of hatred and bitterness there.

‘She never ever once mentioned to me that she thought dad was a paedophile.’

Meghan has been estranged from her father since 2018 and he did not attend his daughter’s wedding to Prince Harry that year after ‘suffering a heart attack’ and saying he did not want to embarrass her. 

King Charles stepped in to walk his daughter-in-law down the aisle at Windsor Castle.  

Mr Markle has vowed to ‘do whatever it takes’ to clear his name after being accused of sickening child sex crimes, saying: ‘I have never had sex with anyone under the age of 18.’

He relocated to Cebu City in the Philippines from his home in Mexico last year. He is currently in a nursing facility in Florida where he is learning to walk with a prosthetic limb after his left leg was amputated in December last year. 

Last week, Meghan said she had been assured the allegations were being investigated. But the Met admitted on Saturday it had failed to pass on the details of the ‘alleged offending outside the UK’ to other law enforcement agencies.

The force said it may refer itself to the police watchdog over its handling of the case. Asked about the Met case, Angela Rayner said today it was ‘an operational issue’.

The Housing Secretary told Sky News: ‘Meghan Markle has faced a tremendous amount of intrusion into her family. It must be difficult as a daughter to have all this out in the open.’

She added: ‘As a mother myself, I can understand the difficulty that that is for Meghan, and for it to be all over the news every day.

‘Her estrangement from her father has been something that’s been in the Press for some time. But she’s been really clear now, I think, on the reasons, some of the reasons, why that is the case.

‘But at the heart of this, you’ve got a mother who is trying to raise her children and protect them, and to have a great family life, and that is obviously very difficult when you’re in the public eye.’

Meghan published a powerful statement on Saturday in which she said news of the find had left her ‘deeply distressed’, and explained it was this knowledge that was behind her decision to never allow her father to meet Prince Archie, seven, and Princess Lilibet, five.

She added the decision, which came after a letter handed to her by the Met’s royal protection team, was made to ‘safeguard’ them. 

‘I am deeply distressed at the news that has come to light in the last 24 hours, and my thoughts are with any children who may have been harmed,’ she said. 

‘In 2018, a letter was sent to the Metropolitan Police and Royalty and Specialist Protection. That letter was subsequently shared with me. It made troubling and disturbing allegations against my father and I was given assurances that these were being investigated.

‘I hope it can now be understood that, despite certain media publications’ distortion over the years, any distance from my father and my choice to not allow him to have contact with our children, was for one reason: to protect them.

‘I trusted that the authorities were doing the same for other families.

‘Although the breadth of what has now been uncovered is more sickening than one could ever imagine, my sincerest hope is that justice will be fully served and that the priority remains the safety and protection of innocent children.’

Meghan’s half-brother, Tom Markle Jr, 60, claimed he was the one to have found a trove of child sex abuse images on computers his father left behind in the Philippines. 

He says he discovered the material when he went looking for a phone for his fiancée Rose in storage boxes in the house he and his father shared. When he opened one phone he saw ‘vile’ child sex images and then turned on a computer and found a screensaver with ‘hundreds’ of sexual pictures of children. 

The ‘sickening’ collection is said to include videos of girls no older than ten or 11 involved in sex acts. 

One 35mm photograph reportedly shows a bearded man resembling Mr Markle having sex with a young Asian girl. ‘I have never been in a photograph like that,’ Mr Markle said on Saturday. 

The 82-year-old admitted that when he was single, he travelled to the Philippines at least twice and ‘slept with prostitutes’, adding: ‘I like Asian women but that is not a crime.’ 

Police in the Philippines hauled off four boxes of evidence on Friday and spent nine hours with Tom Jr logging the evidence.

The FBI said it was ‘aware of the allegations’ and would ‘investigate any related allegations of federal violations of US law’.

Tom Jr has since issued a public apology to the duchess for ‘protecting the wrong person for the past nine years’.

‘Having seen what I’ve seen, I believe the man I’ve been defending and caring for is a monster,’ he said. ‘I now know exactly why you don’t talk to him any more and why you won’t let him meet Harry or his grandchildren.’

Officials confirmed on Saturday that Mr Markle was being investigated by officers in Cebu City’s anti-trafficking and anti-child abuse task force. Meanwhile, the FBI is poised to launch its own investigation after being contacted by Tom Jr.

Meghan’s half-sister Samantha, who is Mr Markle’s main caregiver, believes if a photograph exists of her father on a bed with a young-looking Asian woman ‘it may be one of his girlfriends’, adding: ‘Dad dated a wonderful Japanese woman called Carolyn who I loved. She was in her thirties but she looked like a teenager.

‘Asian women have great skin and are small and petite. They look much younger than they are. Dad had another girlfriend called Gail. She was Asian and gorgeous but looked very young.’

Mr Markle was married twice, to Tom Jr and Samantha’s mother Roslyn Loveless, and then to Meghan’s mother Doria Ragland. He said: ‘Do I love beautiful young women? Yes. Do I like looking at pictures of beautiful women? Yes.

‘But I have always dated age-appropriate women and I know if you talk to my ex-wife [meaning Doria, Roslyn died in 2024] or any of my ex-girlfriends they would tell you we had a normal sex life.’

His most recent girlfriend in the Philippines was his nurse Rio Canero, 46. There is no suggestion she engaged in prostitution.

Mr Markle said: ‘I never shared a house with Tom. My computer and old phone were packed up in Mexico and put on a boat to the Philippines. It took months. I kept asking my son for my computer and he said it was coming. He would never give it to me and I didn’t understand why.’

He says Tom Jr told him when the boxes arrived in the Philippines they were in storage in the hotel in Cebu where they stayed when they first arrived there for a ‘fresh start’ in January 2025. The pair then lived in a neighbouring high-rise but Tom Jr told him his computer remained in storage.

Afterwards they moved into two houses outside the city but Mr Markle was only there ‘for a few days’ before suffering a massive blood clot. He went from hospital to a long-term care facility and then returned to the States in May this year for medical care. 

‘I have not had my computer or phones for nearly two years,’ he said. ‘If there is anything bad on there it was put there by someone else.’

The Daily Mail has contacted the Duchess of Sussex’s representative for further comment.