RED LAKE MURDERS
Cyprus serial killer’s FIFTH victim found in suitcase at abandoned mine after army officer ‘confessed to killing seven foreign women’
Authorities are calling it the most horrifying multiple-slayings case that Cyprus has seen
A SERIAL killer's fifth victim has been found stuffed in a suitcase at an abandoned mine's toxic lake in Cyprus.
The decomposing remains were found after an army officer confessed to killing seven foreign women and girls - and told authorities that he dumped the bodies of three of them at the red lake.
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Greek-Cypriot army officer Nicos Metaxas, 35, told investigators he killed five women and two girls before hiding the remains of a Filipino woman, along with a Romanian mum and daughter in the man-made lake.
It is part of an abandoned copper pyrite mine where a woman's body was found by chance last month in a flooded shaft.
That gruesome discovery launched an investigation that cops say led to the island nation's first serial killer.
It also brought allegations of police negligence, while costing both the country's justice minister and the police chief their jobs.
A suitcase with the remains of a woman was found at the bottom of the contaminated lake a week ago.
Divers are scouring the lake bottom with a sophisticated sonar device for another suitcase, Fire Service Chief Marcos Trangolas said.
Only two of the victims have so far been positively identified: 38-year-old Mary Rose Tiburcio and Arian Palanas Lozano, 28, both from the Philippines.
Their bodies were discovered in an abandoned mineshaft last month six days apart.
Police have been accused of failing to properly investigate when a victim was reported missing two years ago, allowing the suspect to keep killing.
Several of the women had been reported missing to cops.
Earlier on Sunday, a court in Nicosia was told that Metaxas had allegedly raped a woman in early 2017 after he picked her up in his car, saying he wanted to give her the photographs he took.
Criminal Investigation Department Chief Neophytos Shailos said the suspect recorded video on his cellphone.
YouTube travel vlogger, Sarah Funk, finds suitcase and two years laters discovers it probably contained a dead body linked to Cyprus killer
SUSPECT WEARS BULLETPROOF VEST
The woman, a 19-year-old foreign citizen, called the suspect's wife at the time and told her what had happened, Shailos said.
He did not elaborate on what the suspect's wife did with that information.
The couple, who have two children, are now divorced.
The court on Sunday extended the suspect's detention for another eight days.
A coroner will examine the remains found Sunday to try to identify the victim, police spokesman Andreas Angelides said.
Metaxas, who represented himself in court and wore a bulletproof vest, said he had no objections to the detention renewal.
Investigators have been speaking with everyone the suspect had contacted online since 2016, when the alleged first victims vanished: Livia Florentina Bunea, 36, from Romania; and her eight-year-old daughter, Elena Natalia Bunea.
Authorities are also looking for the body of Tiburcio's six-year-old daughter Sierra in another reservoir.
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The decomposed remains of a woman who is believed to be Ashita Khadka Bista, from Nepal, were found at the bottom of a pit in a military firing range after the suspect led investigators there.
Cyprus President Nicos Anastasiades, who on Saturday called the suspect a "serial killer," last week apologised to diplomats of the countries of the victims and vowed to bolster protections for foreign workers in Cyprus.
Critics claim the police in Cyprus did not put much energy into the missing persons reports because the victims were low-paid foreign workers.
New New York-based vlogger Sarah Funk visited the Mitsero Red Lake in Cyprus in June 2017 - and may have unwittingly filmed what might be the body of a murder victim stuffed in a suitcase for a travel video.
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