Police in the Dominican Republic are investigating the brutal slaying of an American schoolteacher found earlier this week bound and strangled to death inside her Puerto Plata apartment.
Patricia “Patty” Ann Anton, 63, who moved to the island from Michigan 15 years ago, was found Tuesday in her bed with her hands and feet tied up, according to police and multiple published reports.
Dominican National Police spokesperson Frank Felix Duran Mejia said medical examiners ruled Anton's cause of death was suffocation by strangulation, he told Fox News, but he wouldn't confirm local reports that she had been tortured.
Anton worked as a consultant-teacher at the private 3 Mariposas Montessori School for the last six years, the school wrote in a Facebook post tribute to her Wednesday.
Dominican National Police say Anton's death is being investigated as a potential robbery that turned to murder.
Anton's phone, laptop and TV were stolen and her apartment was ransacked, investigators said. Because there were no signs of forced entry, she might have known her attacker. So far no suspects have been named and no arrests have been made.
According to the Mariposa Montessori website, Anton had a bachelor's degree from Central Michigan University and more than 20 years experience teaching, consulting, writing and developing education programs and mentoring. She also worked as a legislative aide in Lansing, Michigan's capital, and volunteered in Guatemala.
Credit: 3 Mariposa Montessori School
Credit: 3 Mariposa Montessori School
The Dominican Republic faced scrutiny earlier this year after the deaths of at least nine American tourists at several hotels across the country. Autopsies later showed most of the tourists died of natural causes, but two of the cases are still being investigated.
Anton was born in Italy and holds dual U.S.-Italian citizenship. She worked at a private elementary school in Traverse City for more than a decade, according to her LinkedIn profile.
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