Dr. Maria Vicenta “Marivic” Tello was a pillar of the Cotabato City community, a respected physician who embodied the spirit of selfless service. For a decade, she served as a “Doctor to the Barrios,” a demanding and often thankless role that saw her providing medical care to the poorest and most remote communities in the region. She was the treasurer of the city’s medical society, a loving wife to a retired police colonel, and a mother of two. Her life was one of dedication and respect. That life came to a brutal and shocking end in July 2019, when she was murdered and buried in a shallow grave just steps from her office—not by a stranger, but by her own trusted secretary.

Dr. Tello was a complex and passionate individual. While known for her immense generosity and care for patients, she also possessed a fiery temper that occasionally surfaced. In a widely reported incident in 2016, she was temporarily blacklisted by Cebu Pacific after slapping a flight attendant during a dispute over an overhead bin. This public display of anger, however, was seen by many as an aberration in a life otherwise defined by service. After her decade in the barrios, she settled into a more administrative yet equally crucial role at the Cotabato City Medical Society, with her office located within the secure compound of the Cotabato Regional Medical Center.

The tragedy began as a baffling missing person’s case on July 23, 2019. Dr. Tello failed to return home from work, a highly unusual occurrence. Her husband, Agustin, was in Baguio at the time, and it was the family’s house helper who, late that night, reported her missing after she became uncontactable. An initial police search of the medical center yielded no clues. The mystery deepened when CCTV footage confirmed she had entered the building that morning, but she was never seen leaving through the main entrance, creating a perplexing “locked-room” scenario.

For three agonizing days, her family, led by the now-returned Agustin, searched frantically, their hope dwindling with each passing hour. The case finally broke when investigators, following a new lead, returned to the medical center compound to re-examine the grounds. The crucial tip came from a witness, a maintenance worker named “Mang Rod,” who recalled that the doctor’s secretary, Nasrudin “Nadin” Endaila, had borrowed a shovel from him on the day of the disappearance. As police scoured the area, they noticed a patch of freshly disturbed earth in a vacant lot near the office building. They began to dig, and soon unearthed the body of the missing doctor.

The autopsy confirmed she had died from strangulation, with blunt force trauma to her head. The investigation, which had seemed to be at a dead end, now had a prime suspect and a murder weapon.

Initially, Nadin denied everything. He concocted a story for the police, claiming Dr. Tello had become upset after a heated phone call with a “rude person” and had stormed out of the office for the day using a private side door, thus explaining her absence on the main CCTV footage. It was a plausible lie that briefly sent the investigation in the wrong direction. However, just hours after this initial interview, the pressure seemingly became too much. Nadin, accompanied by a lawyer, walked back into the police station and made a stunning and complete extrajudicial confession.

He admitted to being the sole perpetrator and mastermind. According to his confession, the crime was not premeditated but a spontaneous act of extreme rage. On the day of the murder, he claimed Dr. Tello had angrily and repeatedly accused him of stealing ₱22,000 in missing funds from the medical society’s association fees. He alleged that she screamed at him and verbally abused him, refusing to listen to his denials. Later that day, while she was taking a nap in her office, his anger boiled over. He took a hammer and struck her on the head, then strangled her to death with a rope he found nearby.

In the hours that followed, Nadin went about a cold and calculated cover-up. He approached Mang Rod and borrowed the shovel under the pretense of replanting some of his boss’s lemongrass (tanglad). He then dragged her body to the vacant lot just outside and buried her in the shallow grave he had dug. Following his confession, he led investigators to the locations where he had disposed of the hammer and the doctor’s personal belongings, including her ID, cellphone, and wallet.

Nadin was arrested and charged with murder. After a lengthy trial, he was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison (reclusión perpetua), and was also ordered to pay the Tello family ₱10 million in damages. The case of Dr. Marivic Tello is a shocking and tragic story of a workplace dispute that spiraled into a violent and senseless crime, shattering a community’s sense of safety and revealing the dark potential for violence lurking behind the facade of a normal office relationship. It serves as a grim reminder that a life dedicated to healing can be undone in a moment of uncontrollable rage.