Philippine police have arrested a man accused of murdering nine people, including a Canadian man with strong ties to Vancouver Island.

Filipino Mark Dizon, a 28-year-old computer technician, is alleged to have gone on a killing spree in the last two weeks during robberies in three gated communities in Angeles City, a community in the Pampanga province of the Philippines, police Senior Supt. Danilo Bautista said.

Geoffrey Alan Bennun — a 60-year-old retired hotelier who started his career in Victoria and has family on Saltspring Island — and his 20-year-old Filipina girlfriend were the first victims. Police say a man broke into their hotel room on July 12 at the Oasis Hotel, shot them and fled with electronics, which he later tried to pawn.

Dizon is also accused of killing Briton James Bolton Porter, 51, and his Filipina girlfriend, along with American Albert Mitchell, his wife and three domestic helpers in two subsequent robberies.

Police captured the suspect in San Fernando City north of Manila on Tuesday after his father, fearful that his son would be killed in a gun battle, worked with authorities and arranged to meet him.

Witnesses initially identified Dizon as the murderer through his Facebook account, where police found out that a daughter of one of the victims was one of his former girlfriends.

The suspect tried to pull out a gun when police pounced on him Tuesday, but he was quickly subdued, Bautista said.

The killing of Bennun, a world traveller who started his career by moving up the ranks at what is now the Fairmont Empress hotel, has shocked his expansive network of friends and colleagues around the world.

“He was just as comfortable in his three-piece suit as in his shorts and

T-shirt,” said Rick Pomeroy of Sooke, who was a bartender at the Empress in the early 1980s when Bennun was the food and beverage manager.

“I was just a bartender. He was the boss,” said Pomeroy, noting they worked together for about five years. Yet the two remained friends for the last 25 years — a story echoed by many of Bennun’s friends, who said he had a knack for staying in touch amid his busy, globe-trotting schedule.

“Geoffrey was a gentle soul and a very kind man,” wrote longtime friend Paul Draskovich, of Amsterdam, in a memorial blog posting. “His eccentricity endeared him to a lot of people and he was genuinely loved in return.”

While Bennun spent most of his time outside of Canada, he would organize get-togethers of the Empress staff whenever he was in town, Pomeroy said. Bennun, he said, would return once a year to visit his sister Yogesha Bennun — who died of cancer a few years ago — and her two children on Saltspring Island.

Born in South Africa, Bennun attended boarding schools in Britain before following Yogesha to Saltspring Island in the late 1970s.

In 1983, he founded the Dove for Peace Foundation in Vancouver.

After leaving the Empress, Bennun went on to manage five-star hotels across Asia and ran the media village at the 2000 Sydney Olympics.

After the slaying, Bennun’s older brother, Trevor, their niece Gypsy Fisher and her husband, Jordan Fisher, travelled to Angeles to talk to authorities and to cremate his remains in Manila.

In a blog post, Trevor Bennun described the pain of seeing the crime scene — “The smell and scene will remain with me forever” — and how difficult it was to set aside his emotions as the necessary arrangements were made.

“I have been rendered speechless by all the support and love,” he wrote. “I always knew that I loved Geoffrey, but it is only now in death that it has hit me, by how much.”

Memorial services are being planned in Sydney, Australia, and on Saltspring Island in August.

As family and friends mourn, there is a feeling of relief that a suspect is in police custody.

Angeles Mayor Edgardo Pamintuan paraded a handcuffed Dizon before press photographers yesterday and said murder charges had been filed against him.

“We have solid evidence to pin him down, including the items that he had stolen that were recovered,” Pamintuan told Agence France-Presse.

Dizon allegedly befriended the victims first so they allowed him to go into their homes freely on the pretense of fixing their computers, Bautista said.

kderosa@tc.canwest.com