Security tightened at Campbell's funeral area

Authorities have disallowed the viewing of the remains of a female volunteer of the US Peace Corp now lying at a funeral parlor in Pasay City, radio dzBB reported on Sunday. The report said that after the transfer of Julia Campbell's body to the city's Rizal Funeral Homes, Saturday night, the local police and officials of the US Embassy tightened the security in the area. DzBB said Nick De Leon, the funeral home's director was told by authorities not to allow anyone to go near Campbell's sealed tomb. He was also reportedly told not to give any information that has anything to do with Campbell. The transfer was made after the Philippine National Police Crime Laboratory completed a lengthy and thorough medical examination on Campbell's cadaver at the Loyola Memorial Chapels in Guadalupe, Makati City. The transfer was also in keeping with the US Peace Corps decision to hold Campbell's wake in Pasay. Blows to the head killed Campbell who was found buried in a shallow grave in Batad village, Banaue, Ifugao, officials said after an autopsy. Campbell, 40, of Fairfax, Virginia, suffered "multiple blunt traumatic injuries of the head," police Chief Inspector Mamerto Bernabe, a pathologist who headed the autopsy, told reporters at the Loyola Memorial Chapel. Bernabe, assistant chief of the medico-legal division of the national police crime laboratory, said Campbell sustained "plenty" of injuries on the face and the top of the head. "This only means that her death wasn't an accident," crime laboratory head Chief Superintendent Arturo Cacdac said. He said Campbell's arms also were injured, indicating that she tried to block the blows. Campbell's remains were immediately turned over to the Peace Corps after the six-hour autopsy, which was observed by US forensic experts, he said. "During the debriefing, the US experts concurred with our own experts," he said. Cacdac said a full report will be submitted to PNP chief Oscar Calderon. It may take up to three weeks to obtain results from DNA test on samples taken from "critical" parts of Campbell's body, including her fingernails, he added. Campbell's body was found buried in a shallow grave Wednesday, 10 days after she went missing during a solo hike in Batad in Banaue township to see the area's famed mountainside rice terraces. Regional police commander Chief Superintendent Raul Gonzales said the autopsy showed whoever was responsible "made sure she was dead." Senior Superintendent Pedro Ganir, police chief of Ifugao province, which includes Banaue, said police recovered a bloodstained pole used to pound rice made of hard wood near the residence of a suspect, who has gone into hiding. The suspect has been identified as the husband of the woman who sold Campbell a Coca-Cola before she proceeded with her hike in the remote area — a World Heritage site — in Ifugao province, about 260 kilometers (160 miles) north of Manila. The woman, however, told GMA News her husband was not in Batad when Campbell disappeared. Ganir earlier said investigators were looking into "robbery with homicide or rape with homicide" — common motives when women disappear in the country. Stacy Mactaggert, a US Embassy spokeswoman, said Campbell's remains would be brought home to her family in the United States as soon as legal requirements, such as a death certificate, are completed. Campbell — a freelance journalist who had reported for The New York Times and other media organizations — left 136 other Peace Corps volunteers in the Philippines. She had been teaching English at the Divine Word College in Albay province's Legazpi city, southeast of Manila, since October 2006. She also helped launch an ecology awareness campaign and build an Eco Center in Donsol in Sorsogon province, famous for whale sharks. - GMANews.TV