Isabella Mueller (crime writer)
On July 14, 2019, a German tourist discovered the severely decomposed body of a woman in an abandoned mine shaft not far from the village of Mitsero. The body had been washed out of the mine shaft and onto the surface by heavy rains. The body turned out to be that of 38-year-old Mary Rose Tiburcio from the Philippines, who had been reported missing since May 2018 along with her 6-year-old daughter, Sierra. Just four days later, Nikos Metaxas, a 35-year-old married father of two, was arrested. He had been communicating with the victim under the nickname “Orestes” via the online dating platform Badoo until her death. Nikos was considered a model husband who enjoyed photography in his spare time and was regarded as an ambitious military officer in the Cypriot National Guard. No one would have suspected that he was a wolf in sheep’s clothing—a cold-blooded serial killer who murdered five defenseless women and two girls within three years. During questioning about the murder of Mary Rose Tiburcio, Nikos broke down and confessed to seven murders, including that of Mary Rose’s daughter Sierra, whose body he had dumped in Lake Memi, not far from Xyliatos. Since Nikos had disposed of the bodies of three women in the toxic acid lake—Kokini Limni, also known as the Red Lake due to its reddish color—in the village of Mistero on the Mediterranean island of Cyprus, the gruesome series of murders came to be known as the “Mitsero Murders.” To recover the bodies from the lake, located in the middle of a copper mine, divers had to wear special equipment due to the lake’s chemical contamination and high acidity. In addition to Mary Rose Tiburcio, the lake also yielded the bodies of Maricar Valdez, a Filipino woman who had been missing since December 2017, and 8-year-old Elena. Elena was the daughter of 36-year-old Romanian Livia Florentina Bunea, one of Nikos’s first murder victims, whom he had killed in September 2016. Nikos always followed the same modus operandi. After abusing the women and children, he used the inside of his elbow to squeeze their throats, causing them to suffocate to death. He then either packed the bodies into suitcases or wrapped them in a rug. He disposed of them in the toxic Red Lake in Mitsero, at the shooting range near Orounta, and in Lake Memi. During the investigation, a woman claimed that she had been raped by Nikos. After the series of murders of foreign women from the Philippines, Romania, and a woman from Naples came to light, the authorities came under fire. This was because, even though they had been reported missing by their colleagues and relatives, no further investigation was conducted, as it was assumed that these so-called migrant workers had certainly returned to their home countries—even though they had left their passports behind and had not withdrawn any money from their bank accounts. In addition to accusations of racism, there was also massive criticism of the sloppy police work. As a result, not only did Police Chief Zacharias Chrysostornouand have to step down, but Justice Minister Ionas Nikolaou also resigned. Nikos Metaxas was sentenced by the Supreme Court on June 24, 2019, to seven life sentences.
