The body of Catherine Shaw, a 23-year-old English woman who went missing in Guatemala on March 5, was discovered on Wednesday, March 13, with what police say are “blows to the body”. Her death is currently being investigated as a murder.
Authorities said in a statement that Shaw’s body was found “unclothed and decomposing” in the “brush near a mountain overlook” on the Indian Nose hiking trail, according to the New York Post.
However, The Lucie Blackman Trust, a United Kingdom-based charity has been aiding the Shaw family in the search for Catherine, said that “foul play was probably not involved.”
Matthew Searle, chief executive of the Lucie Blackman Trust, said that Catherine “had been fasting for the days leading to her disappearance and that she had been disposing of possessions, including clothing.”
“She was very much a nature lover and adored sunrises, so it seems quite conceivable that she went up the mountain to greet the sunrise, shedding clothing as she went, and due to her lack of intake of food and fluid may have passed out or fallen, causing the wounds to her body,” the statement read.
Shaw was last seen leaving the Eco Hotel in Guatemala’s San Juan La Laguna on Tuesday, March 5. When her roommate and friend woke up that morning and saw that Shaw was missing, she noticed that she had left without her money, phone, and passport, according to Cosmopolitan.
The National Institute of Forensic Sciences of Guatemala, who performed the post-mortem exam, said in a statement that Shaw died of a traumatic brain injury “somewhere between four to six days before she was found.”
That is all the information that is available at this time. This article will be updated with new and relevant information should it become available at any time. If there is anything that we missed, please feel free to send an email to editor@teamcoed.com and we will respond as soon as possible.
