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Manhunt on after US woman's death in Philippines
`TRAGIC END':
A man who had sold a drink to the Peace Corps worker was seen in the area where her body had been found in a shallow grave, police said
AP
, MANILA
Saturday, Apr 21, 2007, Page 5
Police looking for a man they say was spotted acting suspiciously near the shallow grave where a US Peace Corps volunteer was found buried in the northern Philippines, officials said.
Jun Addug, a local official in Banaue township, said on Thursday that a 13-year-old boy saw the man rushing down to a dry creek when he realized he was being watched on April 8 -- the day that Julia Campbell of Fairfax, Virginia, disappeared during a solo hike.
Troops Campbell's body on Wednesday in the creek, covered with soil, gravel and grass.
The boy, who did not see the 40-year-old Campbell, later saw the same man going back up to the trail, Addug said.
The man -- a resident of Batad village, where Campbell was last spotted -- has not been seen since, Addug said.
Senior Superintendent Pedro Ganir, police chief of Ifugao Province, said the man was the husband of a woman who had sold Campbell a Coca-Cola before she headed off to see the area's famed mountainside rice terraces.
Ganir investigators were looking into "robbery with homicide or rape with homicide" -- common motives when women disappear in the country -- but he said he had no evidence without an autopsy.
Philippine Gloria Macapagal Arroyo's spokesman, Ignacio Bunye, said the government was cooperating with US officials in the investigation.
"It is unfortunate that a committed and selfless person who has ... obviously grown to love our country met a tragic end here," Bunye said in a statement.
Campbell's was flown to Manila on Thursday and will be kept until the arrival today of a Japan-based team of US forensic pathologists who will observe the autopsy, said Geary Barias, chief of the police Directorate for Investigation and Detective Management.
Campbell a freelance journalist who had reported for the New York Times and other media organizations -- was among 137 Peace Corps volunteers in the Philippines. She had been teaching English at the Divine Word College in Legazpi city, southeast of Manila, since last October.
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