MANILA (Mindanao Examiner / 18 Apr) – Philippine authorities are investigating whether a missing U.S. Peace Corps volunteer found dead on Wednesday was murdered.
Government soldiers discovered the decomposing body of the 40-year old Julia Campbell in a shallow grave in the mountain village of Batad in Banaue town in Ifugao province, north of Manila.
“We cannot say this early what really happened. Forensic experts and pathologists were sent to help police in the investigation,” a Filipino military spokesman Col. Bartolome Bacaro said.
But police believed Campbell was murdered. “It is (a) homicide (case). The culprits even covered her body with earth and rocks to hide the crime,” said Supt. Pedro Genir, of the Ifugao police force.
Campbell, a former journalist, was missing since April 8 in Ifugao province where she intended to hike alone.
There are currently 137 Peace Corps Volunteers serving in the Philippines. More than 8,000 volunteers have served in the country since 1961, making it the second oldest Peace Corps program in the world.
Campbell, from Fairfax, Virginia, had served as a college teacher in Legazpi in southern Luzon since she began her Peace Corps service in the Philippines in March 2005. (Mindanao Examiner)
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