Geneva Sarita Lopez was on the cusp of realizing her dreams. At 27, the former BPO team leader was a celebrated contestant in the Mutya ng Pilipinas Pampanga pageant, her beauty and intelligence captivating the local community. She was happily engaged to her 37-year-old Israeli fiancé, Yitshak Cohen, a successful businessman. They were a golden couple with a bright future.

But that future was brutally extinguished in June 2024, when they were lured into a deadly trap over a land deal, their bodies later unearthed from a shallow grave in a remote quarry. The alleged mastermind was not a stranger, but a disgraced ex-policeman.

The tragic story is a complex tale of a business deal turned into a cold-blooded murder plot. In 2021, Geneva entered into a financial agreement with Michael Angelo “Giyang” Guiang, a dismissed police officer. Guiang pawned a piece of land to her, with the contract stipulating that the property would be forfeited to Geneva if he failed to repay the loan. When Guiang defaulted, rather than honoring the agreement, he allegedly chose to eliminate his creditor.

On June 21, 2024, Guiang put his deadly plan into motion. He contacted Geneva with a clever ruse, pretending he had found a buyer for the land and needed to meet to finalize the multi-million peso transaction. Geneva, accompanied by her fiancé Yitshak, canceled her other plans and went to the meeting. It was the last time their families would hear from them.

In the days that followed, a frantic search was launched. The families, wracked with worry, created a Facebook page and offered a ₱100,000 reward for information. The first grim clue came when a motorist discovered the couple’s SUV engulfed in flames in a remote area, its contents, including documents and ATM cards, burned to ashes. It was clear that foul play was involved.

The entire case was blown wide open by the conscience of an accomplice. A mechanic, identified as “Junjun,” walked into a police station and confessed his role in the crime’s gruesome aftermath. He told investigators he had been hired for ₱50,000 by Guiang’s crew to dispose of the evidence.

He recounted the horrifying task of driving the couple’s vehicle, their bodies inside, to a rugged quarry site in Tarlac. There, under the direction of the killers, he helped bury them in a shallow grave. He then drove their SUV to another location and set it on fire as instructed.

In a display of shocking audacity, Guiang, the alleged mastermind, had walked into a police station just a day after the disappearance, pretending to be a helpful “middleman” to mislead the investigation. But armed with Junjun’s detailed confession, police now knew the truth. They located the shallow grave and recovered the decomposing bodies of Geneva and Yitshak. The autopsy confirmed they had both been shot to death.

Based on the whistleblower’s testimony, police swiftly arrested the masterminds, Guiang and another dismissed police officer, Romel Buzo. In the following months, four other accomplices were also apprehended. The story of Geneva Lopez and Yitshak Cohen is a devastating example of how greed can curdle into a meticulously planned and ruthless crime.

It’s a tragedy of a bright and ambitious woman whose business acumen and trust were turned against her, a case ultimately solved by the one man involved who could no longer live with his dark secret.