Difficult search ahead in Memi Lake

Divers head to Memi Lake to search for a little girl, one of seven victims in the serial killer case, one day after a third body was recovered from the red lake.

On Tuesday, after over a month of searching in the toxic waters of the Red Lake, divers recovered a third suitcase believed to contain the body of Maricar Valdez Arquiola. Two more bodies, a Romanian mother and daughter, were previously found in the same location, with alleged serial killer Nikos Metaxas reportedly confessing to a total of seven murders.

Metaxas vehemently denies having committed more than seven murders, while he also denied rape allegations launched against him by a young Filipina model. But foreign experts told Cyprus police they believed the alleged serial killer may have targeted more victims.

In the meantime, divers on Wednesday are moving their gear and shifting the entire recovery operation to Memi Lake, in rural Nicosia, in search for six-year-old Sierra. The case shocked public opinion from day one, when the body of her mother, Marry Rose Tiburcio from the Philippines, was discovered by chance in mid-April inside a flooded and abandoned mine shaft in Mitseros, right across from the red lake, in rural Nicosia.

Marry Rose had been missing since early May 2018 along with her daughter, whose body was dumped in Memi Lake according to the suspect’s confession.

Fire Department Operations Chief Marcos Trangolas said the search for Sierra is expected to be very difficult, citing the fact that the suspect told investigators he wrapped the little girl’s body in a sheet.

“We are not looking for an object but an actual corpse belonging to a child, that was wrapped in a sheet and dumped many months ago,” Trangolas said.

Police and professionals involved in the recovery operation are transferring their equipment from Red Lake to Memi in Xiliatos reservoir, some eight miles west of the mine shaft. Reports said search efforts in specific locations with the lake could take place as early as Thursday, with the use of a robotic camera and other devices.

The suspect is expected to appear on Thursday in court for yet another remand, the seventh in a row, with reports saying police investigators hope to keep Orestis in a police station cell and not Central Prisons until his arraignment in court.