Nikos Metaxas: Suspected Cyprus serial killer investigated on additional rape charges

For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails

Sign up to our free breaking news emails

Please enter a valid email address

Please enter a valid email address

SIGN UP

I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice

A suspected serial killer in Cyprus is being investigated on additional charges of rape.

Detectives say Nikos Metaxas has confessed to killing seven foreign women and girl although officers have said fear the number of victims may be as high as 30.

The 35-year-old army captain allegedly raped a foreign woman in his car in early 2017, Neophytos Shailos, chief of Cyprus Police’s Criminal Investigation Department, told Nicosia District Court in the country's capital.

The unnamed woman had posed for Mr Metaxas as a model, he said.

The army captain is alleged to have raped her after picking her up in the vehicle, while promising to give her the photographs, He is also suspected of filming the 19-year-old’s rape on a mobile phone.

The woman called the suspect’s wife after the attack and told her what had happened.

The 35-year-old remains in police custody, with a court extending his detention by another eight days. He was arrested on 18 April.

Police searching for the remains of his alleged victims found a fifth body in a suitcase in a lake west of Nicosia, over the weekend.

Another woman’s body was also found in a submerged suitcase in the same location a week ago.

The semi-official Cyprus News Agency reported that police believed the latest body was that of a child.

Four of the victims are thought to be from the Philippines, including a mother and her six-year-old daughter.

A woman from Romania and her eight-year-old daughter and a further victim from Nepal were also killed.

Investigators have said they have two written confessions from the suspect, who met the women online.

Most worked as housekeepers on the island, and disappeared between September 2016 and July to August 2018.

The case has triggered outrage and horror in Cyprus, where the cases appear to be the worst peacetime atrocities against women in living memory.

Additional reporting by agencies