Slain physician laid to rest, confessed killer faces murder case

COTABATO CITY, Philippines — Relatives and friends buried on Saturday morning the cremated remains of a popular physician brutally killed here last July 23 by a member of her staff who had confessed to the crime, now under police custody.

Medical practitioners here and from towns around and some 300 other sympathizers attended the burial of the obstetrician-gynecologist Maria Vicenta Tello at the Marian Hills Memorial Park in nearby Barangay Awang in Datu Odin Sinsuat, Maguindanao del Norte.

Tello’s spouse, Agustin, is a retired police general who had served, while still a colonel, as provincial police director of Maguindanao that got divided into Maguindanao del Sur and Maguindanao del Norte via a plebiscite last year.

“We are grieving but our grief is somehow consoled with a belief that the wheel of justice will soon roll over his confessed killer, " Tello’s husband said.

Tello was strangled to death, while inside a function facility in one of the buildings in the Cotabato Regional Medical Center here by a member of her staff, Nasrudin Endaila, after confronting him about allegedly having mishandled large sums of monthly dues paid by doctors to the Cotabato Medical Society, where she was a treasurer.

Endaila admitted having embezzled the funds after narrating how he killed and buried Tello in a secluded area inside the CRMC compound during a press briefing Thursday, presided over by Cotabato City Mayor Bruce Matabalao and senior officials of the Cotabato City Police Office.

Endaila’s admission of his offense was done after investigators had found earlier the same day, with the help of CRMC personnel, the spot where he buried Tello.

Col. Querubin Manalang Jr., city police director, said the incarcerated Endaila is now awaiting prosecution for murder.