Oct 8, 2026 · 23 min · 16 segments
For more of my latest content, subscribe to my YouTube channel, Dark Asia with Megan and join our awesome community. Your support means everything…
[mysterious music] The first thing investigators needed was a name.
The body was too decomposed for easy identification.
Her name was Mary Rose Tiburcio, 39 years old, from the Philippines, a domestic worker.
She had already been reported missing in May of 2018, almost a year earlier.
And yet for 11 months, she lay undiscovered at the bottom of a flooded mine shaft, around 20 miles from the capital, while her case lay unsolved.
In the end, it wasn't police work that found Mary Rose Tiburcio.
It was the rain.
Why did no one look for her? And hold on to that question, because the case is about to get bigger.
Six days later, April 20th, search crews were still working the same mine shaft where Mary Rose was found, and they pulled out a second body, another woman, also from the Philippines, also a domestic worker.
Her name was Arian Palanas Lozano, and she was 28 years old.
Two women, same location, both foreign, both domestic workers.
And it would turn out both had been strangled to death.
This was no longer just a tragedy.
A tragedy is one woman.
Two women in the same hole in the ground is a pattern.
Somebody chose this place.
Somebody used it more than once.
Somebody carried these women out there to an abandoned mine in the middle of nowhere and dropped them into the dark, expecting no one would ever come looking.
And that person was right, because both of these women had been reported missing, but no one had come looking.
To understand how that happened, you have to understand the situation these women were living in.
But there was a catch.
As we see in many of these situations, their visa was tied to their employer.
If these domestic workers left, even if their employer was abusive, they risked losing their right to stay entirely.
[mysterious music] The first thing investigators needed was a name.
The body was too decomposed for easy identification.
Her name was Mary Rose Tiburcio, 39 years old, from the Philippines, a domestic worker.
She had already been reported missing in May of 2018, almost a year earlier.
And yet for 11 months, she lay undiscovered at the bottom of a flooded mine shaft, around 20 miles from the capital, while her case lay unsolved.
In the end, it wasn't police work that found Mary Rose Tiburcio.
It was the rain.
Why did no one look for her? And hold on to that question, because the case is about to get bigger.
Six days later, April 20th, search crews were still working the same mine shaft where Mary Rose was found, and they pulled out a second body, another woman, also from the Philippines, also a domestic worker.
Her name was Arian Palanas Lozano, and she was 28 years old.
Two women, same location, both foreign, both domestic workers.
And it would turn out both had been strangled to death.
This was no longer just a tragedy.
A tragedy is one woman.
Two women in the same hole in the ground is a pattern.
Somebody chose this place.
Somebody used it more than once.
Somebody carried these women out there to an abandoned mine in the middle of nowhere and dropped them into the dark, expecting no one would ever come looking.
And that person was right, because both of these women had been reported missing, but no one had come looking.
To understand how that happened, you have to understand the situation these women were living in.
But there was a catch.
As we see in many of these situations, their visa was tied to their employer.
If these domestic workers left, even if their employer was abusive, they risked losing their right to stay entirely.
The rest of this transcript — segmented and speaker-labeled, so you land on the exact moment something was said
Search every transcript — by keyword, by phrase, or by meaning, across every show Radar indexes
Trends — what is surging across podcasts, measured against its own baseline
Alerts — when a name you follow appears in a newly indexed episode
No account is needed to search Radar.
