Two Australians and their Filipino companion were killed at a hotel in a preferred resort south of the Philippine capital, and police try to discover and track down the suspects, officials said Thursday.
According to a police statement, a hotel worker found the bodies of the victims, whose hands and feet were tied, in a room on the Lake Hotel in Tagaytay City, Manila, on Wednesday.
The motive for the killing will not be yet clear, said Tagaytay police chief Charles Daven Capagcuan, adding that the suspect didn’t take a number of the victims’ valuables, including their cellphones.
“We were shocked by the incident,” Tagaytay Mayor Abraham Tolentino said, apologizing to the victims’ families. “We are very sorry to our Australian friends. We will resolve this as soon as possible.”
The victims are believed to be an Australian man in his 50s, his Filipino partner who had grow to be an Australian citizen, and her Filipino relative.
Investigators were interviewing witnesses and reviewing security footage from the hotel, including footage that showed a person wearing a mask and hoodie and carrying a shoulder bag who left the victims’ room hours before their bodies were discovered, Capagcuan said.
The Australian couple were speculated to return to Australia on Wednesday, the day they were murdered, but decided to take a brief vacation in Tagaytay, said the Filipino son of the murdered Australian-Filipino woman, who asked to not be identified because he was afraid of what had happened to her mother and since the suspect remains to be at large.
Tagaytay, positioned about 60 km (37 miles) south of Manila, is popular with domestic and foreign tourists who come for its cool climate and the possibility to see considered one of the world’s smallest lively volcanoes, positioned in the course of a lake.
Tolentino said the Australian’s stays can be flown back to Sydney and each women can be buried within the Philippines, in accordance with the desires of their relatives. The government would pay for the ladies’s funeral and burial, he said.
A spokesperson said that “due to our privacy obligations” no further details were provided.
