The police investigation into the disappearance of beauty pageant contestant Catherine Camilon has revealed an intricate and delicate arrangement that she had to go through while in an alleged relationship with a police major. This was before she went missing on Oct. 12 in Batangas. 

Police Col. Jacinto Malinao, head of the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group Calabarzon Field Office, revealed that the parents of Catherine had no knowledge that their daughter was in a relationship with the married police official.

That relationship only surfaced when her sister began talking with Catherine’s friends who even provided screen shots of a conversation between the missing beauty pageant contestant and one of her friends.

In that screenshot conversation, Malinao said they discovered that Catherine was once subjected to physical abuse by the police official.

“One of the critical aspects that we saw there was that Catherine allegedly told the wife of Major De Castro that he has another woman,” said Malinao.

In the same screenshot conversation thread, Malinao said that Catherine was supposed to meet De Castro on Oct. 12, the day she went missing along with her car, a Nissan Juke. 

Before the supposed meeting, Malinao said Catherine told a friend, a fellow beauty pageant contestant, that she already wanted to part ways with De Castro. 

“This was in the screenshot conversation… we cannot say that (that de Castro does not want to end the relationship) directly. We want to validate this (that Catherine wants to leave de Castro) kind of information,” said Malinao.

But he said one of the angles that the CIDG investigators were pursuing was that the two had a quarrel when they supposedly met on Oct. 12 in connection with the intention of Catherine to end the relationship.

“”It’s very critical to establish the motive. There is a criminal offense and we are trying to find out why this happened, what is the possible motive. And this is one of the strong motives that we are looking into,’ said Malinao. 

Denial 

De Castro, along with three civilians, was already charged with kidnapping and serious illegal detention, the initial cases filed by the police as Catherine remains missing.

De Castro is now under restrictive custody, and when the CIDG talked to him to shed light on the incident, Malinao said the former denied that he had anything to do with it.

“He said he had no knowledge of the incident because he was inside the camp when it happened,” said Malinao.

“But this is still under investigation, we have counter-intelligence efforts in coordination with the Police Regional Office IVA to determine if he was indeed inside the camp on October 12.”

“Maybe it was in the paper that he was there but we are dealing with a human being, a moving individual,” he added.

Expecting the worst 

While the police are optimistic that Catherine is still alive, Malinao said they were also anticipating a worse-case scenario, considering that she is still missing until now.

“We are still hoping for the best and realistically speaking, we are expecting for the worst considering that October 12 was the last date that she was seen alive,” said Malinao.

At least two witnesses earlier surfaced and told the CIDG that they saw a body being taken out of a red Honda CRV in Batangas.

Police already found the vehicle and recovered at least 17 strands of hair and blood stains inside. 

Malinao said they could not still process the identification procedure since Catherine’s family had asked for more time to give their DNA samples.  

“They requested to defer it and we understand that,” said Malinao.