Police in the Philippines concluded in December 2024 that Elliot Eastman, the American YouTuber kidnapped from his home in Sibuco, had died of his wounds. They said the kidnappers threw his body into the Sulu Sea.
Armed men took him on October 17, 2024, from the house in Zamboanga del Norte where he lived with his wife. He was shot in the leg and abdomen, police said, and dragged to a boat. A witness said the men fled in a motorized banca toward the Sulu Sea. The shooting, the account says, was meant to stop him running.
No ransom demand followed. No proof of life was ever released.
The man
Eastman was 26 and came from Hinesburg, Vermont. He finished at Champlain Valley Union High School in 2016 and first travelled to the Philippines in 2023. That July he married Karisha Jala, a Sama-Sibuco native.
He went home to the United States for a short stretch of work. In May 2024 he came back and settled in Sibuco to live with her. Five months later the men arrived.
The suspects
Investigators identified several suspects. Three of them died in clashes with police. Four more had been arrested by early 2025.
