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Cyprus Police Fear Serial Killer Slew Over 30, Preyed On Foreign Women

April 25, 2019

The discovery of the bodies of two Filipina women in a mine shaft on Cyprus led police to believe a 35-year-old Army Captain who confessed to the murders, may have slain more than 30 and sought out foreign women as victims, as well as killing a 6-year-old girl

Investigators received DNA confirmation that matched a slain Filipina’s body, 38-year-old Marry Rose Tiburcio whose corpse was found in an abandoned mine in Mitseros, near the capital of Nicosia, said Kathimerini Cyprus.

The body was naked, bound, wrapped in a white sheet, thrown last year inside a flooded mine shaft, where another Asian female body was also retrieved on April 20.

DNA samples were sent to the lab after a post-mortem couldn’t identify whether the second victim was 28-year-old Filipina Αrian Palanas Lozano, also from the Philippines, who was last seen on July, 21, 2018, the paper said.

Marry Rose’s confessed killer, whose name was not revealed, reportedly told investigators that he also disposed of the victim’s young daughter, 6-year-old Sierra Graze Seucalliuc, by throwing her body in a lake at Xiliatos reservoir, some eight miles west of Mitseros.

Divers using specialized cameras were scouring the lake bed and investigators said they had computer data and a drone belonging to the suspect they were using to identify sites where other missing women may have been put.

Officials said they believe that one of the bodies they might find could belong to 30-year-old Filipina Maricar Valdez Arquiola, who went missing on Dec. 13, 2017 but fear the toll could be higher after finding the confessed killer had contacts online or otherwise with more than 30 women.

The Limassol Intercultural Council called for the reopening of missing cases and  investigation into foreign women thought by authorities to have left the country with their disappearance was never solved.

The number of victims was said to be “still unknown” while private forensic pathologist Marios Matsakis said, “We may never know the total number of victims,” the report added.

The chairwoman of the Federation of Filipino Organisations of Cyprus, Ester Beatty, said Lozano was the breadwinner of her family. “She used to send money to her family in the Philippines, her mother is blind and unwell,” Beatty told the Cyprus Mail.

She said the Filipino community on the island is anxious and people are urging each other on social media to be cautious and avoid meeting people they don’t know as the two victims reportedly met the confessed killer through an online dating site.

Ray O. Bayson, volunteer leader of the Filippino community in Cyprus, told the newspaper that the deaths were tragic. “The death penalty must be applied for this unspeakable act of evil,” Bayson also said.

Louis Koutroukides, the president of Cyprus Housemaids Association, said law enforcement did not do enough to look into the disappearances of dozens of women, citing their foreign status as a reason.

Police Chief Zacharias Chrysostomou said “In this stage, we ask for your understanding as our top priority at this moment is to establish all the facts and the true extent of the crimes, including solving and prosecuting them, and we will do our best to achieve that.”

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