PNP bent on finding Pampanga couple

EVIDENCE Officials of the Tarlac provincial police and Capas town police, along with Bureau of Fire Protection officers, inspect on June 29 the burned car used by missing couple Geneva Lopez and Yitshak Cohen, in Capas, Tarlac. —PHOTO COURTESY OF CAPAS POLICE OFFICE

MABALACAT CITY — The Philippine National Police has identified a former police officer as among the seven persons of interest in the disappearance of a Pampanga beauty pageant contestant and her Israeli boyfriend in Central Luzon, according to the chief of the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group (CIDG).

Geneva Lopez, 27, a former Mutya ng Pilipinas Pampanga candidate, and her Israeli boyfriend Yitshak Cohen, 37, have been reported missing since June 21, when they left their house in Angeles City, Pampanga, for Tarlac province to check a property that they were planning to buy.

The CIDG, according to its chief, Maj. Gen. Leo Francisco has been looking at seven persons of interest, including a former policeman assigned to Angeles City who served as the middleman for the real estate transaction. Francisco, however, did not name them.

READ: P250,000 reward offered for info on missing pageant bet, boyfriend 

Francisco said in an interview over dzBB on Thursday that the former police officer is willing to cooperate with the investigation.

“Based on the preliminary investigation, he did talk to the couple then they parted ways. They only found out later that the burned vehicle of the couple was discovered,” he said.

The middleman said in a sworn statement to the Capas police that he met the couple in front of a gasoline station in Barangay Cristo Rey around 2 p.m. on June 21 and they drove on board their separate vehicles to Armenia, which is accessible via Cojuangco Road. The middleman said he parted ways with the couple after Lopez inspected the two parcels of agricultural land in Armenia.

The couple’s vehicle, a Nissan Terra sport utility vehicle (SUV), was found early in the morning on June 22 along the Capas-San Jose Road in Capas.

The CIDG, Francisco said, is looking into three motives behind the couple’s disappearance but declined to provide details.

So far, there are no indications that Lopez and Cohen were killed, he added.

‘Straight facts’

In Pampanga, the Central Luzon regional police formed an investigation task group to consolidate all collected information and solve the case “as soon as possible.”

According to Capt. Erica Evangelista, public information officer of the Tarlac provincial police, Special Investigation Task Group (SITG) “Geneshak” now possesses the security camera footage obtained from residential and commercial buildings set up along roads where the vehicle used by Lopez and Cohen had traversed on the day they disappeared.

“The video footage are being reviewed by the SITG, which has collated all information from different police offices, stations and units. Col. Reynaldo Ogay Jr., the SITG head, wants information to be accurate for the speedy resolution of the case,” she told the Inquirer in a telephone interview on Thursday. Ogay is the Central Luzon police’s deputy regional director for operations.

But Evangelista clarified that the SITG Geneshak had not identified anyone as a person of interest as of Thursday.

“Colonel Ogay ordered the immediate review and reassessment of all available information to get straight facts,” she said.

Evangelista said different versions of stories and sometimes even contradicting information have been shown and released to the public, including posts on social media about the missing couple.

She said facts “needed to be separated from fiction” in order to conduct a credible investigation and reach a conclusion.

Meanwhile, the Inquirer learned that PNP chief Gen. Rommel Francisco Marbil directed on June 29 all police offices and units involved in the investigation to solve the missing couple’s case within five days or until Thursday. It was learned that the Central Luzon police and other police units were seeking an extension of the five-day deadline, as investigators remained clueless about what happened to the couple.