MANILA, Philippines (AP) – A Peace Corps volunteer found buried in a shallow grave in a Philippine mountain village was killed by blows to the head and there were signs that she had tried to ward off an attack, police said Saturday.

A bloodstained wooden pole used to pound rice was found near the home of a suspect in the death of Julia Campbell, a freelance journalist who had been teaching English in the Philippines since October 2006.

Campbell, 40, of Fairfax, Va., suffered “multiple blunt traumatic injuries of the head,” said Chief Inspector Mamerto Bernabe, who led the autopsy.

Her arms also were injured, indicating that she tried to block the blows, crime laboratory head Chief Superintendent Arturo Cacdac told The Associated Press.

Senior Superintendent Pedro Ganir, police chief of Ifugao province, said police recovered a bloodstained pole used to pound rice made of hard wood near the home of a suspect, who has gone into hiding.

Mr. Ganir said the man was the husband of a woman who sold a Coca-Cola to Campbell before she headed off on a hike in the area’s famed mountainside rice terraces, a World Heritage site.

Investigators said that a witness claimed he saw the man near the shallow grave in Banaue township where Campbell’s body was found on Wednesday, 10 days after she disappeared. The woman, however, told GMA television her husband was not in the area when Campbell disappeared.

Investigators were looking into “robbery with homicide or rape with homicide,” he said.

Soldiers searching for Campbell – a freelance journalist who had reported for The New York Times and other media organizations – found one of her feet sticking out from the shallow grave in a dry mountain creek.

Campbell had been teaching English at the Divine Word College in Albay province’s Legazpi city, southeast of Manila, since October 2006.