Fears of more victims resurface in Orestis case

Police are trying to track down three more women in the serial killer case, as divers head to Memi Lake to search for a little girl one day after a third body was recovered from the red lake.

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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, who went missing in December 2017. 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.

But foreign experts told Cyprus police they believed the alleged serial killer may have targeted more victims.

Reports said police have been unable to locate the whereabouts of at least three more women, who were chatting online with the suspect known as Orestis. Police did not say whether they believe the three women were murdered, according to reports, but officials said the three foreign females have not been located so far, neither locally nor overseas.

Police spokesperson Andreas Angelides, who was interviewed on state radio on Wednesday, said investigators have seen nothing so far to suspect more murders, but he stopped short of saying they were ruling out the possibility.

Previous reports said some 30 women whose information was found on a SIM card owned by the suspect were said to have been alive and well. But cyber experts who sifted through Orestis’ online data using computer forensics discovered at least three women unaccounted for who had contact with him through the social networking platform Badoo.

Knews understands the phone numbers of the three women in question had not been stored on the suspect's SIM card. Orestis reportedly told police that he destroyed or threw away the actual phone, which might have contained off-network data stored on the actual device. During his arrest, he reportedly attempted to swallow the SIM card in front of the police but an officer managed to stop him. 

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.