TAGAYTAY (AP) – Two Australian nationals and a Filipina companion were killed in a hotel in a popular resort city south of the Philippine capital and police were trying to identify and track down the suspects, officials said yesterday.
A hotel worker found the bodies of the victims, whose hands and feet were tied, in a room at the Lake Hotel in Tagaytay city, south of Manila, on Wednesday, according to a police statement.
The motive for the killings was not immediately clear, said Tagaytay police chief Charles Daven Capagcuan, adding that some valuables of the victims, including their mobile phones, were not taken by the suspect. “We were shocked by this incident,” Tagaytay Mayor Abraham Tolentino said, apologising to the families of the victims. “We’re very sorry to our Australian friends. We will resolve this as soon as possible.”
The victims were believed to be a man in his 50s from Australia, his Philippine-born partner, who had acquired Australian citizenship, and her Filipina relative.
Investigators were interviewing witnesses and examining security cameras at the hotel, including one footage that showed a man wearing a mask and a hoodie and carrying a sling bag who walked out of the victims’ room a few hours before their bodies were discovered, Capagcuan said.
A Filipino relative of the Australian woman told the AP that the Australian couple flew from Sydney to the Indonesian resort island of Bali for a vacation then headed to the Philippines on Monday to visit her two children from a previous marriage in the country.
The Australian couple was supposed to fly back to Australia on Wednesday, the day they were killed, but decided to briefly take a vacation in Tagaytay, said the Filipino son of the slain Australian-Filipino woman.
