25/06/2019 10:46
A 35 year old army captain was sentenced to seven life sentences for the premeditated murder of five women and two of their children in a case that has shocked Cyprus.
The badly decomposed bodies of all his victims were retrieved from the toxic lake at Nicosia village of Mitsero, a reservoir at Xyliatos and the Orounda firing range.
Nicos Metaxas had confessed in May that since 2016, he had killed seven women, including two young girls and dumped their bodies at various locations.
According to the Assize Court ruling, the criminal acts of the accused were committed in less than two years and all his victims were foreign women who came to Cyprus to work "and instead found death in the most torturous manner ".
Metaxas, said the ruling, “did not hesitate to kill two young girls, daughters of two of the five adult women”. The court said the convict “embarked on a killing spree of defenseless women”.
The 35 year old said “Cypriot society will be wondering how one of its members reached this point," adding that he has also asked himself why but has yet to find the answer. He offered to help authorities "in search of those answers".
The ruling stated that no mitigating circumstances could be taken into account.
Three of his victims came from the Philippines, one from Nepal and one from Romania. The two children were aged six and eight.
The case resulted with the dismissal of the country’s police chief and the resignation of its Justice and Public Order Minister.
The case began to unfold when tourists discovered the washed-up body of a woman from a mine shaft that flooded due to the heavy rains at Mitsero in the Nicosia district in April.,
Metaxas was arrested a few days later and confessed to the killing as well as the murder of six more victims.
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