Everyone fumbled for answers when American Peace Corps volunteer Julia Campbell went missing.
BY ACE ALEGRE
Contributed to Bulatlat
Vol. VII, No. 14 May 13-19, 2007
Everyone fumbled for answers when American Peace Corps volunteer Julia Campbell went missing.
Was she kidnapped? Or was she taken as hostage of the communist guerrillas? Was she lost in the wilderness? Or simply, did she accidentally slide along the stonewalled rice terraces?
Authorities brushed aside any link of the New People’s Army (NPA). Ifugao had long been “cleared” of NPAs, Cordillera police spokesman Supt. Joseph Adnol had insisted. A week after Campbell went missing on April 8, no word from any kidnapper had been heard; thus, police negated the kidnapping angle.
Campbell’s disappearance caused headaches.
For 10 grueling days, Philippine authorities combed the idyllic Banaue Rice Terraces in the village of Battad not for its breathtaking centuries-old man-made terraces but for any sign of the 40-year-old Fairfax, Virginia native who had left her promising career as a journalist in the Big Apple to live with the less fortunate Filipinos in Legaspi City, Albay (550 kms. south of Manila) as a volunteer worker.
The U.S. Embassy dangled millions to anyone who could find her alive. And as the days went by, the famed Banaue Rice Terraces, home to the world famous woodcarvers – the Ifugaos – was a labyrinth for the endless search.
Until one afternoon, on April 18, bomb-sniffing dogs from the Philippine military found her half buried, her feet protruding from a shallow grave. She was bludgeoned to death.
The search for Campbell came to a halt. But more questions than answers began to surface.
Was it an accident? Or was she killed – and why?
Ifugao tribal peoples are not known as fierce unlike other tribes in the Cordillera mountain region. More so is this true in Battad, a long-time tourist destination and interior village where practically every villager is akin to one another. Harmony in the village is maintained as Ifugaos are also clannish.
It is far-fetched for Battad to be a lair of thugs who prey on whites, nor is there any enthno-centric sentiment that pushed anyone to hate or harm strangers.
Dontogan
Several days after Campbell was found dead, police named 25-year-old Juan Dontogan as suspect and maybe a witness. He was described as the husband of Grace, the owner of the store where Campbell was last seen buying softdrinks before she went missing.
