Cebu Holds Thomas Markle’s Laptop While London Checks a Letter

Cebu police have secured a laptop belonging to Thomas Markle, father of Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, after his son turned over four boxes from the 82-year-old’s former home. Interior Secretary Jonvic Remulla said on Saturday, October 24, that the machine is in forensic examination and that the son, Thomas Markle Jr, is the person who brought the material in.

Markle has not been charged. He calls the claims “sick lies.” The live work is in Cebu, not in London, and it started with his son.

Cebu Has the Laptop for a Week

Justice Undersecretary Nicholas Ty, who heads the Inter-Agency Council Against Trafficking, said the Anti-Trafficking and Anti-OSAEC task force in Cebu “is currently investigating the matter.” OSAEC is the Philippine term for online sexual abuse and exploitation of children. Remulla, speaking a day after Ty, said investigators were still confirming that Markle is already in the United States and that “his laptop has been secured and is undergoing forensic investigation.”

He told interviewers the digital exam would take one week and that national police were analysing the data to determine the scope of any alleged offences. No prosecutor has announced a charge. The government’s newswire posted the Department of Justice confirmation on October 23.

DOJ probes Meghan Markle’s dad for possession of child porn materials

MANILA – The Department of Justice (DOJ) on Friday said it is investigating reports involving an octogenarian American national who left child abuse videos and photos in his home in Cebu province.

DOJ… pic.twitter.com/Sw8saWhPbq

— Philippine News Agency (@pnagovph) October 23, 2026

The FBI said it is “aware of the allegations and will provide support, as appropriate, to the Philippine authorities,” and that it “will also investigate any related allegations of federal violations of US law.” That is a support brief and a possible US file, not a completed case.

WHO IS INVESTIGATING WHAT

Markle Jr, 60, a former window fitter who moved to Cebu in January 2025 to help care for his father, says he found child sexual abuse images mixed with family mementos after the older man was flown back to the United States in May. He says he first tipped US channels on July 10, 2026, then gave Philippine officers a sworn statement. Those US channels, in his account, were the FBI tip line, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, and Pennsylvania state police, where his father had been staying.

The Met’s File That Was Never Opened

UK police are not investigating Thomas Markle. A Metropolitan Police spokesperson said the force is “aware of media reports that officers from the Met’s Royalty and Specialist Protection Command were involved in the passing on of a letter in 2018” and is “undertaking inquiries internally in an effort to confirm this.” The inquiry is about the force’s own officers. It is not a criminal file on the man named in the letter.

That split is the part the Meghan-centred argument keeps missing. A letter about him was already in police hands in 2018. The gap in London is not that nobody told the police. The gap is that royal protection passed the paper to the duchess and the force now says it never investigated the subject of it.

Royalty and Specialist Protection is the armed command around the royal household. The Fixated Threat Assessment Centre, a joint police and NHS team set up in 2006, sits inside that world. A 2025 statement by a Metropolitan Police superintendent assigned to the centre said its police officers from royal protection command work in the same office as the NHS staff. The Met has not said whether it can find the 2018 original. A Sussex representative said the duke and duchess still have a copy and will hand it back if officers cannot.

What the 2018 Letter Set in Motion

Meghan released a statement on Friday, October 23, after the Cebu claims became public. She said she was “deeply distressed at the news that has come to light in the last 24 hours,” and that her thoughts were “with any children who may have been harmed.” She then turned to the letter.

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.

Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, statement, October 23, 2026

She said she hoped it would now be understood that the distance from her father, and her choice not to allow him contact with their children, was “for one reason: to protect them.” People close to the Sussexes say she was told in 2018 that speaking publicly could damage any future investigation, and that she first saw the letter in the summer after her May 2018 wedding.

She did not describe the letter’s contents beyond “troubling and disturbing.” Accounts from people who say they have seen the document describe it as addressed to the Fixated Threat Assessment Centre, the unit that takes referrals of threatening communications to public figures. That centre is built to assess people who fixate on royals and politicians. It is not a child-abuse forensic lab. The Met has not confirmed the letter’s text, its addressee, or any link to the boxes now in Cebu. Those are still two records until someone in authority ties them together.

The public break with her father came earlier, in the run-up to the wedding, after he admitted posing for staged photographs. He did not attend. The letter, on her timeline, arrived after that. Both things can sit on the same family history without being the same event.

More Than Nine Hours at the Station

Markle Jr says that when he found the material he “was horrified” and “had no option but to report my dad.” He says he has “supported, cared for him and helped him for years,” and that this “stops now.” He says he will not speak to his father again “unless I’m called to give evidence against him.”

He has described spending more than nine hours formally submitting the material in Cebu, in four boxes that took more than one officer to move, and of finding files on an old phone and on computer drives among ordinary keepsakes. Philippine officials have confirmed the handover and the laptop. They have not confirmed his count of “hundreds, if not thousands” of images, and they have not described what the forensics have found.

FROM THE 2018 LETTER TO THE CEBU BOXES

1. May 2018: Meghan marries Prince Harry. Thomas Markle does not attend after admitting he posed for staged photographs.
2. Summer 2018: A letter making allegations against him is shared with Meghan. She says she was assured it was being investigated.
3. 2025: After a series of strokes, he moves to the Philippines. Thomas Jr relocates to Cebu in January 2025 to help care for him.
4. December 2025: Surgeons amputate his left leg. He later leaves the Philippines, in May 2026, for treatment in the United States.
5. July 10, 2026: Thomas Jr says he alerts the FBI tip line, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, and Pennsylvania state police.
6. October 22, 2026: The Cebu claims are published. The next day Meghan issues her statement, her father denies the claims, and Ty confirms the Cebu task force inquiry.
7. October 24, 2026: Remulla says the laptop is secured and in forensic examination, with results expected in one week.

The dates make one thing plain. London’s letter is eight years old. Cebu’s boxes are a 2026 complaint about material left in a house the father had already left.

Samantha Markle Calls the Claims a Vendetta

Samantha Markle, 61, who is helping care for their father in Florida, says her brother invented the story after money stopped. “There is no merit in these disgusting allegations whatsoever and my brother is disgusting for making them up. He wants to destroy our dad. Shame on him,” she said. She said he “first came out with these lies a few weeks ago when the cash from my dad was cut off,” and that he had “used dad as a cash cow for years.”

Her chain-of-custody point is specific. She says the computers were packed in Mexico, sent by cargo ship, stored in a basement in the Philippines, and then kept at Thomas Jr’s house, and that their father “had no access to those computers for two years.” She says that “leaves a lot of room for tampering,” that he was in a rehabilitation facility, and that he has “severe physical and cognitive issues” and is “too frail and sick to defend himself.”

I’m shocked, I’m hurt and I’m very upset that my son is making these accusations against me. I could never do what I’m being accused of. It’s the worst thing anyone could accuse me of.

Thomas Markle Sr, remarks on October 23, 2026

He also said the accusations were “sick lies,” that he had “no idea why Tom is trying to destroy me,” and that the computers “were in a storage unit, managed by my son’s friends for years and were handled by several other people.” He is 82, a retired television lighting director, and is living in a Florida rehabilitation centre while he learns to walk again after the December 2025 amputation. Meghan, his daughter with Doria Ragland, has been estranged from him since 2018. Samantha and Thomas Jr are his children from an earlier marriage.

WHAT WE KNOW

• Cebu case: Ty confirmed the OSAEC task force inquiry; Remulla confirmed the son’s handover and a laptop now in forensics.
• London file: The Met is not investigating Thomas Markle and is only checking whether royal protection officers passed a 2018 letter to Meghan.
• His denial: Markle has not been charged and calls the claims “sick lies.”
• US posture: The FBI will support Philippine authorities and look at related federal violations; it has not announced a charge.

WHAT IS UNCONFIRMED

• The 2018 letter: The Met has not confirmed its text, its addressee, or any link to the 2026 boxes.
• What is on the drives: Jr’s count and descriptions remain his account until Cebu publishes forensic results.
• Who held the computers: Samantha and Thomas Sr say the machines were out of his hands for two years; that claim is part of the dispute, not a finding.

Online argument has treated Meghan’s eight-year silence as the whole story, as if the police had never been told. The letter she describes was already with the Met. Jr did walk into a Cebu station in 2026 with boxes. Those are different acts, in different countries, on different dates, and only one of them has produced a forensic clock.

How Philippine Law Treats Possession of Abuse Images

If Cebu moves from examination to a charge, the statute on the table is Republic Act No. 11930, the Anti-Online Sexual Abuse or Exploitation of Children and Anti-Child Sexual Abuse or Exploitation Materials Act, which lapsed into law on July 30, 2022. It punishes production, distribution, possession and access of child sexual abuse or exploitation materials, online and off. For its gravest listed offences it sets life imprisonment and a two million peso fine. IACAT, which Ty heads, carries the extra mandate under that law to coordinate OSAEC cases, which is why a trafficking council is the body speaking in Cebu.

WHAT REPUBLIC ACT 11930 REACHES

• The acts: Production, distribution, possession and access of child sexual abuse or exploitation materials, including when an offline act has an online component.
• The top penalty: Life imprisonment and a fine of not less than two million pesos for the gravest offences listed in the Act.
• The coordinator: A National Coordination Center against OSAEC sits under IACAT, the same council now running the Cebu task force inquiry.

Possession still has to be proved, and so does whose hands were on the machines. Samantha’s two-year gap and Jr’s sworn handover are the fight the forensics have to sort. Remulla said investigators would need a week with the laptop, and Markle, who has not been charged, is in Florida denying every claim.