SINGAPORE — Jonalyn Alvarez Raviz told her employer that her husband was abusive and often took all of her salary.

The foreign domestic worker also said that she intended to divorce him because she had caught him cheating on her repeatedly.

Things then took a tragic turn when her decomposed body was found among thick vegetation in an open field along Tampines Road on Sept 6 last year.

A buckled strap around her neck, resembling the strap from her husband’s sling bag, was tied to a tree.

In her written findings from a coroner’s inquiry, State Coroner Kamala Ponnampalam said on Tuesday (Aug 27) that Raviz’s death was “an unlawful killing likely perpetrated by her husband”.

The coroner also revealed that Raviz’s husband — who was not named — had absconded from Singapore to Bangladesh four days before the body was discovered.

The couple had married in 2015. He worked as a process maintenance worker in Singapore, while she had worked for her employer here, who was also not named, since October 2016.

LAST SEEN BOARDING A BUS

Raviz’s employer previously told the court that Raviz intended to cut short her employment and return to the Philippines in mid-September last year, without telling her husband.

Raviz had told her employer before that he had threatened to kill her if she decided to leave him. The employer then told his company about the threat.

It was not stated if the company did anything about it.

On the morning of Sept 2 last year, Raviz’s husband travelled to Pasir Ris where her employer’s home was.

The couple met there, as they usually did on Sundays, and were last seen boarding a public bus travelling towards Tampines Road at about 4pm.

Screenings of an ez-link transport card revealed that Raviz alighted from the bus about half an hour later along Tampines Road, before Defu Lane 2.

At about 5pm, her husband took a taxi from 62A Defu Lane 1 and got down at his dormitory along Jalan Papan in Jurong. A colleague noticed that he was no longer carrying the sling bag with yellow straps as he did earlier.

Around 6pm, he was spotted leaving the dormitory with hand-carried luggage.

He bought a ticket for Dhaka, Bangladesh an hour later at a travel agency, called another colleague to say he would not be returning to the dormitory and left Singapore.

NECK INJURIES

After his company and Raviz’s employers filed missing-person reports, police officers searched the area close to where Raviz had alighted at the bus stop.

Her body was eventually found four days later.

A forensic pathologist certified her cause of death as consistent with a compressive neck injury. There were no discernible defensive injuries on her body.

Her blood was also found on her husband’s soiled jeans and sandals, which he had left behind in the dormitory.

The police said that efforts are ongoing to locate her husband and a warrant for his arrest has been issued, State Coroner Kamala noted.

“Based on the evidence uncovered, there is a basis to suspect foul play… In the circumstances, I find Ms Raviz’s death to be an unlawful killing, likely perpetrated by her husband,” she said.