On Sunday, April 14 2019 a local biker with two of his buddies were on a road trip, when they stopped at the old and abandoned mine shaft in Mitseros (
https://reveal.world./story/mitsero-mine-kokkinoyia) to see the place where scenes of a movie had been filmed. The thrill-seeking men approached the flooded shaft to look down but the view was obstructed by objects, according to a biker who spoke to AlphaNews over the phone but wished to remain anonymous.
“We were there chatting and taking photos and suddenly, out of the blue, a friend grabbed a piece of rock and threw it down the well,” the man said.
The biker went on to explain they could only see through a tiny hole, and when the rock hit the water surface at about 15-20 meters below ground level they saw a layer of dirt moving and revealing an object that seemed like a plastic bag. “We found a corpse,” one of them said.
The biker also spoke about a German couple with a powerful camera. Initial reports had attributed the finding of the body to the German tourists, saying they spotted a corpse while taking pictures.
“They were inside their vehicle at the time and had started the engine to leave. We flagged them down because we knew they had a professional camera and asked them if they could lend us the camera so we could get a better zoom inside the shaft because our mobile phones were not up to the task,” the man said.
The caller said he went back to the mine shaft with the German couple, while his two friends were waiting at the spot where they had parked their motorbikes.
“It sure does look like a dead body,” the German man told the biker.
At that point, the biker told the tourist there was a way to get down there but warned him it could be dangerous because the wooden ladder was very old. The two men decided to climb down the mine shaft to get a closer look.
“We used a stick to uncover the body but due to the dirty and contaminated water, it was not clear what it was exactly,” the biker said.
“We then poked the body to turn it over and quickly realized the feet were tied together, so we called my buddies up there and told them to notify the police immediately,” he added.
So the case came to light with discovery of the bodies of two women - Marry Rose Tiburcio, 38, and Arian Palanas Lozano, 28, both from the Philippines.
Another body was discovered in a well at a firing range by Orounta. Three of the victims were stuffed into suitcases and disposed of in the Red Lake near Mitsero, so named because the toxic chemicals present in the lake from nearby mining operations gave it a red hue. The latest body, that of Tiburcio's six-year-old daughter Sierra, was found in Lake Memi near Xyliatos in June.
The discoveries triggered an investigation and, after tracking Ms Tiburcio's online messages, police arrested Metaxas on suspicion of murder. During his apprehension, Metaxas reportedly attempted to swallow a SIM card in front of police before they stopped him. After he was named as a suspect, multiple women came forward to accuse him of crimes such as rape, and he was also formally accused of evidence tampering and obstruction of justice; however, critical evidence for these charges was believed to have been destroyed or lost.
Metaxas told investigators that he had strangled two of his victims and their daughters because he suspected that the women were planning to "pimp out" their daughters, and he wanted to punish the women and "free" the children. He pleaded guilty on 24 June and received seven life sentences, the biggest sentence ever handed down in Cyprus.
Mataxas is believed to have killed five adult women - all foreign workers - and the young daughters of two of the victims. It is thought that all of his victims have now been found. Cypriot authorities are facing accusations of not fully investigating when the women were first reported missing. The case has also raised questions over the conditions that housemaids work under in Cyprus, which some critics have described as akin to modern slavery.
Criticism was made towards the negligence and incompetence of the island's police force, as many of the victims had been reported missing by relatives or friends as far back as September 2016, only to be met with indifference and a lack of progress in the investigations—President Nicos Anastasiades condemned the authorities' "sheer negligence and inefficiency", adding his belief that their actions were "definitely not guided by any racist motives". In the midst of the case, Justice Minister Ionas Nicolaou resigned and police chief Zacharias Chrysostomou was fired. As of July 2019, an investigation into the police's handling of the reports is underway. That same month, Cypriot MPs began meetings to address the fact that 37 women had been killed in Cyprus between 2000 and 2019.
