At the 301 Ramos Street Sports Bar, in the heart of Cebu’s seedy red-light district, you’ll find an unusual tribute to the city’s most famous expat residents.
Hanging beneath an air conditioning unit, near various replica football shirts and Premier League team flags, is a fake California number plate bearing the word ‘MARKLED’.
It was donated to management by Thomas Markle Jr. According to regulars, for much of last year he was in the neon-lit venue virtually every night, where beers cost £1 and patrons are attended to by a friendly team of fetching young waitresses.
The Duchess of Sussex’s portly 60-year-old half-brother, who lived a ten-minute cab ride away, liked to play pool, often for hours at a time. But the real draw was the person serving drinks: an enchanting local barmaid-cum-dancer by the name of Rose Ann Gabuya.
Rose is quite the firecracker. On a now-deleted TikTok account, she has for years performed energetic dance routines in lingerie or swimwear, showcasing an extensive tattoo collection. Former colleagues described her as a ‘fun party girl’ who had quickly become ‘big friends with Mr Tom’.
That’s something of an understatement. Despite the vast age and height differences, the 6ft 3in American was soon introducing the diminutive Rose as his ‘girlfriend’. She subsequently moved in with him. And a fortnight ago, the twice-divorced former window-fitter decided to formalise their relationship, using the occasion of her 28th birthday to propose marriage. She said yes.
On the surface, Thomas Jr should therefore now be living the expat dream. For as I have discovered over recent days, the chance to acquire a fetching local romantic partner plays a significant role in drawing older Western men to the Philippines.
Many choose to see out their days in a sort of second youth, partying in the country’s astonishingly cheap bars and restaurants, and using modest pensions to fund upscale luxury apartments for their new spouse.
Rose Ann Gabuya, who is engaged to Thomas Markle Jr
Rose’s Facebook page, filled with pictures of the couple jet-skiing, drinking cocktails and taking boat trips to golden beaches, shows off some of the high points of their day-to-day existence.
But despite the domestic bliss, a shadow now hangs over Thomas Jr’s Asian odyssey.
To blame, of course, is his 82-year-old father, Thomas Sr, with whom Thomas Jr moved to the Philippines in January 2025.
The duo initially lived and partied together in Cebu, the country’s traffic-choked second-city. But declining health meant Thomas Sr soon found himself more or less housebound. Last December, he was rushed to hospital for life-saving surgery, having developed a huge blood clot in his left leg, which was eventually amputated. In May, he returned to the US for treatment.
Two months later, Thomas Jr says he made an appalling discovery. In four cardboard boxes, which his father had shipped to the Philippines and subsequently left behind, he allegedly found a huge stash of child pornography consisting of ‘hundreds if not thousands of images’ of abuse, including photographs of Thomas Sr allegedly assaulting a young girl, as first revealed by The Sun.
The material, which he says he found while searching for a mobile phone handset to give to Rose’s father, includes DVDs, photographs and various computer files.
Two weeks ago, Thomas Jr handed it over to local police. A few days later, the country’s interior minister said that signs point to Thomas Sr being ‘a possible sex offender of the grossest kind’.
Markle Sr described the allegations as ‘sick lies’ and said he was being framed by his son.
Last Friday, the Daily Mail revealed it had discovered a second stash of child pornography in Thomas Sr’s abandoned storage unit near his former cliff-top home in Rosarito, Mexico.
Police raided the unit – which Markle Sr denies is his – on Saturday, seizing child pornography including magazines showing children being sexually abused and photographs of young naked Asian women.
Here in Cebu, detectives are now poring over evidence in the case, a process local sources tell us they expect to take ‘weeks rather than days’. Insiders believe the Philippines will eventually seek Thomas Sr’s extradition from the US, with whom an extradition treaty has existed since the 1990s, though the process is likely to be complicated by his advanced age and ill health.
Like most of the world, Thomas Jr is still coming to terms with these awful developments. And central to the increasingly dark scandal lie some very awkward questions indeed.
Among them: what first possessed his father, at the age of 80 and already in declining health, to attempt a new life halfway around the world, in a grimy industrial city which boasts few tourist attractions? How – and where – did he spend his time? And why did the chilling possessions he allegedly left behind take so long to be discovered?
The tale, I have established, begins in May 2022, when Thomas Sr suffered a stroke, forcing him to abandon a somewhat distasteful planned publicity stunt that would have seen him flying to Britain for the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee celebrations.
Shortly afterwards, Thomas Jr, with whom he had an occasionally fractious relationship, moved into the house in Mexico where his father had been living since retiring from his job as a Hollywood lighting director in the early 2010s.
On the face of things, the arrangement worked for both men.
Thomas Sr gained a sort of live-in carer, or at least someone to help look after the property, which (somewhat sinisterly, given recent events) he’d fitted with plywood sheets to cover windows that faced inland.
Thomas Jr, an unemployed bankrupt who had endured multiple run-ins with the law, including a 2017 arrest for allegedly putting a gun to a girlfriend’s head during a drunken row (charges were later dropped after they reconciled), could live rent-free in a place where his father’s modest income would stretch far further than in their native US.
Money was, however, a growing problem. Thomas Sr had also been declared bankrupt in 2016, shortly before news of his daughter’s relationship with Prince Harry catapulted him into the public eye. Court filings at the time revealed that he was living off the equivalent of a £1,100 per-month pension plus £2,000 in monthly social security payments.
While these had grown with inflation, and he’d since generated the odd cash windfall after working with media to monetise his daughter’s association with Harry, his monthly income of around £5,000 was increasingly stretched and he could ill afford the medical bills related to his stroke.
Thomas Jr met barmaid and dancer Rose at a local bar he often visited
In 2024, the socialite and royal author Lady Colin Campbell – no fan of the Duchess of Sussex – set up a GoFundMe to provide Markle Sr with an 80th birthday present after alleging that Meghan had ‘rejected and abandoned’ him.
After raising almost £50,000 from well-wishers, father and son agreed to seek a fresh start in a place where, as Thomas Sr put it: ‘I can enjoy a quieter, friendlier existence.’ The destination of choice was Cebu.
On a financial level, this made sense. Average annual wages in the sprawling city, where a third of locals live below the poverty line, are just over £300 per month, making Westerners of even limited means very wealthy indeed. Smart modern flats can be rented for a few hundred dollars per month, you can dine in the most stylish restaurants for under £10, and a pint of beer rarely tops £1.50.
However, recent developments suggest that, for Thomas Sr at least, cash may not have been the only motivating factor in moving to the Philippines.
In years gone by, Meghan’s father has spoken somewhat enigmatically of having spent time in the country, including in a conversation that was leaked (by Thomas Jr, as it happens) to America’s National Enquirer magazine in 2018, during which he recalled having ‘enjoyed myself a lot’ in the Playboy Club, an ‘X-rated jiggle joint’ on the top floor of a hotel in Manila.
Speaking to The Mail on Sunday last week, Thomas Sr offered more squalid details on that topic, revealing that he had visited the country at least twice as a single man and ‘slept with prostitutes’, but insisting: ‘I have never had sex with anyone under the age of 18… I like Asian women, but that is not a crime.’
While only Thomas Sr will know whether previous experiences with sex workers played a role in the decision to move to Cebu, it is perhaps telling that in an interview to mark his departure, he remarked: ‘I travelled in that part of the world when I was a younger man. The people are so kind and welcoming, and they are respectful to older people.’
On arrival in Cebu, where they touched down shortly after New Year in 2025, the Markles initially took up residence at the Quest Hotel, a vast three-star establishment in the city’s business district where rooms cost about £20 per night.
The venue is a popular choice for newly arrived expats because it contains several floors of condominiums which can be rented for around £500 per month, plus a lively bar area next to its swimming pool, which is a popular destination for young Filipino women hoping to meet older Western men.
This is hardly unusual: as visitors to Cebu swiftly discover, almost every drinking establishment frequented by foreigners falls into one of two categories.
One variety is known as the ‘bikini bar’. In practice, this is the local version of a strip club, visited by the most rackety sex tourists. Scantily-clad dancers perform for mostly elderly foreign men, and are paid commission on drinks that clients buy for them. Some double up as de-facto brothels, requiring customers who wish to adjourn to a more private area with an employee to pay a heftier fee.
The other, which includes the Quest Hotel’s venue, is called a ‘sports bar’. While this reflects the fact that they screen the odd football match, they also tend to have live bands. Prostitution tends to be discouraged in such establishments. They are instead popular with 20 and 30-something local women looking for a longer-term relationship with expat men, usually involving some sort of financial arrangement.
Average wages in Cebu are just over £300 per month, making Westerners of even limited means wealthy (Picture: Getty Images)
‘These people are often single mothers, or women from middle-class families who speak good English but have fallen on hard times,’ is how one barman explained it. ‘They are looking for a rich old man who is going to die soon.’
The trick, he says, is to find a man who is looking to buy property in the Philippines: ‘Because land cannot be owned by foreigners, they can often be persuaded to put it in the name of a girlfriend or fiancee. When the man dies, the girl knows she will end up with a nice house, so the older the man they can find, the better.’
Such relationships may look exploitative, and there is of course something mildly depressing about the spectacle of tiny young Filipino women on the arms of obese white-haired pensioners, but the arrangements tend to work both ways.
Gerry, an elderly expat from South Carolina who I encounter with his 30-something girlfriend in Cebu’s Howling Dog Sports Grill, puts things bluntly. ‘Back home, women are all fat. Here, they are just beautiful. Of course, they want a better life. But what’s so wrong about that?’
The Markles enjoyed living at the Quest but were forced to leave at short notice a month or two into their stay, purportedly following some sort of late-night altercation at the bar.
By then, a shipment of their belongings, including the four cardboard boxes at the centre of the current police investigation, had arrived at the venue and were being stored in its basement. Sources at the hotel say that detectives visited on Wednesday to inspect the area.
Father and son moved to a tower block above the Galleria, a shopping centre by the city’s port, taking adjacent £500-a-month apartments on the 19th floor. By now, Thomas Sr’s health had declined. Obese, and with ongoing heart problems, he had difficulty walking unaided.
Instead, friends recall him spending days on the sofa, watching black-and-white Hollywood films. On the one occasion he managed to venture out to a hairdresser in May 2025, a photographer took unedifying pictures that were published around the world, showing him ‘struggling’ with the intense heat.
Thomas Jr, by contrast, was very much enjoying life. Regulars at the 301 Ramos Street Sports Bar recall him spending almost every night on the premises pursuing Rose. ‘Tom was always there,’ said one. ‘He’s a perfectly nice man, provided he’s not had too much to drink.’
The bar is a curious and in some ways mildly depressing place. As I approached the front door last week, a man tapped me on the shoulder and held out a hand containing black-market boxes of Viagra. He appeared to be offering them to all visitors. A few yards down the road stood a pair of prostitutes, soliciting passing pedestrians.
Inside were a couple of dozen Western men. Some sat at the bar, talking to waitresses and occasionally giving each other fist bumps. Others shared tables with bored-looking local girlfriends, barely exchanging a word. A singer attempted to sing Western pop songs.
‘Once or twice, Thomas invited everyone back to his place after the bar shut. He also had a birthday party at the apartment block which got pretty lively. Everyone knew who he was, and knew who his father was, but we almost never saw [Thomas Sr],’ says the acquaintance.
On a deleted TikTok account, Rose peformed dance routines in lingerie or swimwear
There are times when this scene would, undoubtedly, have also been up Thomas Sr’s street. But by late 2025, it became apparent that his declining health made even getting out of the tower block, let alone heavy drinking, increasingly difficult.
Last October, an earthquake measuring 6.9 on the Richter scale struck the city, putting the lifts in his apartment building out of action and effectively leaving him trapped. It was therefore decided to move to more accessible accommodation.
By now, Thomas Jr’s relationship with Rose was becoming more formalised (they had gone ‘Facebook official’ in May). And presumably seeking a quieter life away from the fleshpots of central Cebu, the Markles decided to move to a gated community on the south-western tip of Mactan, a suburban island connected to the city by road bridges.
Thomas Jr, 60, proposed to Rose on her 28th birthday
Thomas Jr agreed to rent a two-storey property, purchasing a golf buggy to allow him to drive into the local town. Thomas Sr was set up with more modest premises around the corner.
Then disaster struck. In December 2025, Thomas Sr developed painful swelling on his lower left leg. By the time he sought medical attention, his entire foot was black thanks to a 14in blood clot. Doctors performed a life-saving operation, amputating his leg just below the knee.
‘Yet despite the domestic bliss, a shadow now hovers over Thomas Jr’s Asian odyssey’
FFor a time, things were touch and go. With news of his plight making the front pages, Meghan sent a letter telling her ailing father that she never wished to see him again and that he would never see his grandchildren.
This note, delivered by the hospital’s president and a lawyer in an extraordinary scene captured on camera and exclusively reported by the Daily Mail, is thought to have revealed that she believed he had sexually abused children.
In 2019, a letter that made sex abuse claims against Thomas Sr was sent to the Met Police, and then shared with Meghan. Markle Sr told the Mail on Sunday last week: ‘She never said a word to me about this letter accusing me of such terrible things. If Meghan or anyone else had come to me in 2019 and told me about the letter I would have had a chance to defend myself.’
As a result of the operation, Thomas Sr was never able to move into his new home and its contents, including the four cardboard boxes now at the centre of the investigation, were moved to his son’s property. He instead took up residence in a rehab facility at the University of Cebu medical centre.
It was here, in March this year, that his story took yet another surreal twist, with news that the 82-year-old patient had ‘found love’ with his 46-year-old nurse, Rio Canedo. ‘I never expected to find joy and happiness again at my age,’ said Markle. ‘I feel truly blessed to have found someone very special who takes such good care of me… I never expected to meet Rio and have my life changed in such a wonderful way.’
The relationship was, however, cut short in May, when Thomas Sr returned to the US to continue his rehabilitation and receive a prosthetic leg. Ms Canedo, a divorced mother of two, accompanied him to the airport for an emotional farewell, promising to look after him again when he eventually returned.
Like many unsuspecting people who knew Thomas Sr well, she is understood to have been traumatised by recent developments. For the man she knew appears to have been harbouring a very dark secret.
And the only way he’ll be coming back to Cebu, the sex tourism hotspot he once called home, will be in a pair of handcuffs.