On February 8, 2011, six-year-old Ella Joy Pique was walking home from her elementary school in Minglanilla, Cebu, chatting with her friends. It was a routine she did every day. But on this day, a dark vehicle stopped beside the group of children. According to her friends, the people inside offered Ella Joy two P50 bills. She was lured into the car, and was never seen alive again.

The following day, her small body, wrapped in a white blanket, was discovered near a cliff in a neighboring town. Her school bag, containing her books and two P50 bills, was found nearby. The tragic event sparked a massive and highly-publicized investigation, but one that would soon become a case study in procedural failure and devastating mistakes.

Based on the testimony of Ella Joy’s young friends, police released a sketch of the suspects: a foreigner and a Filipina. Days later, authorities made a dramatic arrest at the Mactan International Airport, detaining a Norwegian man and his Filipina fiancée as they prepared to leave for a Valentine’s Day trip. The child witnesses were brought in and positively identified the couple. To the police and the public, it seemed the case was solved.

However, the couple had an ironclad alibi. They provided CCTV footage, hotel receipts, and photographs proving they had been at the Waterfront Hotel for the entire day of the incident and could not have been involved. After 17 days in custody, amidst public criticism and the resignation of the provincial police chief, the case against the innocent couple was dismissed.

The investigation was reset, and a new task force focused its attention on a second couple: a British national named Ian Charles Griffiths and his Filipina partner, Bella Ruby Santos. A new set of witnesses emerged with compelling stories. One claimed the couple had attempted to lure another child into their car on the same day. Others claimed they saw the couple’s black Pajero near where Ella Joy was taken and later near the cliff where her remains were found.

Charges were filed. Griffiths, however, had already left the country and was never successfully extradited to face trial in the Philippines. Bella Ruby Santos faced the charges alone. The prosecution built its case on the new witness testimonies. But the defense’s argument was simple and powerful: there was no physical evidence.

In August 2012, the results of a forensic examination of Bella Ruby’s vehicle came back. There was no trace of Ella Joy’s DNA, no blood, no hair—nothing to connect the vehicle to the crime. The prosecution’s case began to crumble.

In October 2014, the judge acquitted Bella Ruby. The ruling hinged on two critical failures. First, the lack of any forensic evidence. Second, and perhaps most devastatingly, the unreliability of the original child witnesses.

The judge noted that the same children who had positively identified the innocent Norwegian couple had later positively identified the second couple. Their testimony, the cornerstone of the investigation, was deemed untrustworthy.

Today, more than a decade later, the tragic case of Ella Joy Pique remains officially unsolved. Due to a series of investigative blunders and a lack of credible evidence, the person or people responsible for the little girl’s untimely de@th have never been brought to justice, leaving her family with a pain that has never known closure.