NBI seeks ICMP’s help to identify ‘suitcase girl’

It has been a year since a girl was found stuffed inside a suitcase floating in Pasig River, but authorities still remain clueless about her identity.

The National Bureau of Investigation has requested the International Commission of Missing Persons (ICMP) to help the NBI in conducting DNA tests to help identify the girl.

NBI Director Nestor Mantaring wrote to the ICMP to ask for help to determine if the girl is Geraldine Palma, 7, who disappeared along with her nanny, Marites Ontog, last August. Gerald, the girl’s father, identified the body as that of his missing daughter.

The Manila Police District (MPD) investigators doubted Gerald’s claim because the girl was taller than the height indicated in Palma ‘s school records.

“We already wrote to ICMP to conduct DNA test on the body of the victim. I believe they have better, advanced facilities and they’re better experienced in handling such cases,” Mantaring said.

Arnel Dalumpines, NBI Special Task Force chief, said the NBI was asked to help identify the body of the girl through DNA testing.

The NBI had exhumed the victim’s body but Mantaring said the sample specimens taken were considered degraded, having been contaminated with formaldehyde. As a result, initial test results were “inconclusive.”

“Maybe we could send them bone samples for identification,” he said. “We hope that through this, we will be able to finally confirm or negate the identity of the victim.”

Established in 1996 and based in Sarajevo, Bosnia Herzegovina, the ICMP has been engaged in using DNA as a means of identifying huge numbers of missing persons and victims of calamities such as the 2004 tsunami in Thailand.

It has also been helping in the identification of bodies retrieved from the ill-fated Princess of the Stars, which sank earlier this year.