Jacqueline Chiong was a young woman who went missing alongside her sister in 1997. Seven men have been convicted of her abduction, rape, and murder, although there is speculation that her disappearance was fabricated and both sisters are still alive and living in Canada.
Case[]
Jacqueline and her 20-year-old sister, Marijoy, were abducted outside of a mall in Cebu by seven men on July 16, 1997. Allegedly, three of the men took turns raping the sisters before they were both murdered. Two days after the abduction, a body that was later identified as Marijoy was found in a ravine, but Jacqueline has never been found.
In 2004, six of the men were sentenced to death for the murders of Jacqueline and Marijoy; the seventh was not eligible for the death penalty since he was a minor at the time of the crime. However, capital punishment was abolished in the Philippines in 2006, and none of the defendents were executed. One of them, a Spanish citizen, was sent to Spain to serve the remainder of his sentence. In 2019, four of the men were controversially released under the Good Conduct Time Allowance Law.
Despite the case being technically solved, a large amount of people in the Philippines believe that the sisters are both still alive and that the entire murder case was fabricated by the government. While the body found in the ravine was identified as Marijoy by her family, this was never confirmed by forensic means and it is possible that the body may have been misidentified. In 2018, photographs were discovered from social media of Jacqueline and Marijoy's family members that depicted two women bearing a striking resemblance to the sisters. Allegedly, they changed their names and are now alive and well in Canada. These allegations have never been definitively confirmed or denied.
Sources[]
- Chiong murder case on Wikipedia
- Philippine news