Nikos Metaxas, a captain in the Cyprus National Guard, killed seven people between September 2016 and the summer of 2018. Five were women who had come to Cyprus from the Philippines, Romania and Nepal to work, most of them as housekeepers. Two were the young daughters of two of the women. He met several of the women online, using the name "Orestis." He left their bodies at abandoned mine workings and other remote sites in the hills southwest of Nicosia.
Six of the seven victims had been reported missing, five of them to the police, within days or weeks of their disappearance. None of those reports led to a real investigation. The case came to light by chance on April 14, 2019, when visitors photographing an old mine shaft at Mitsero saw a body in the floodwater. Within weeks Metaxas had confessed in writing, the justice minister had resigned and the president had dismissed the chief of police. On June 24, 2019, Metaxas pleaded guilty to seven premeditated murders and five abductions and received seven life sentences, the heaviest punishment a Cypriot court had ever imposed. The case has been described in the Cypriot press as the first recorded serial killing case in the Republic of Cyprus.
Metaxas was 35 when he was arrested. The Greek Australian newspaper Neos Kosmos reported in May 2019 that his mother was Bulgarian, from Stara Zagora, and that his parents had divorced about twelve years earlier. According to the Greek news site iefimerida, he went to Athens after finishing school and trained at the Evelpidon Military Academy, the Greek army's officer school, and he had been in Greece again for military training in April and May 2018. International agencies described him as an army captain; Greek reports gave his rank variously. He lived in the Nicosia district.
He was married with two children, aged six and nine in 2019. The Cyprus Mail reported that he was separated from his wife, who lived in a village in the Limassol district; Reuters and AP described him as divorced. Acquaintances described him as a responsible father. He was also a keen photographer. Neos Kosmos reported that he had held exhibitions and appeared on television, and iefimerida reported that he had worked with online photography magazines and won an award. The court noted that he had no previous convictions.
Metaxas used the dating app Badoo under the name "Orestis." Police later traced the profile through its IP address and email and linked it to a Facebook account in the name "Orestis Apoel," which was deleted on the day the first body was found. AP reported that prosecutors said he used the online handle "Orestes35" to find many of his adult victims. The way "Orestis" described himself online, as a separated father of two whose wife lived in the Limassol district, helped investigators connect the profile to him.
When police examined his contacts, they found he had communicated online with about 30 other women. The new police chief, Kypros Michaelides, told members of parliament in May 2019 that none of them was missing. The Irish Times reported that he had also tried to approach women in parts of Nicosia where Asian women gather.
The seven victims are listed here in the order in which they disappeared. Spellings of several names vary in the sources; the forms used here are those of the Cyprus Mail unless noted.
Livia Florentina Bunea was 36 and came from Buzău in Romania. The Romanian daily Adevărul reported that she had studied at the Mihai Eminescu High School in Buzău and at the Petroleum and Gas University in Ploiești. She lived in Nicosia with her daughter, Elena Natalia Bunea, who was eight. The Irish Times reported that Elena was autistic, and a friend who had helped care for the girl told Cypriot state television that she was seriously ill. Livia's mother, in Romania, telephoned Cyprus every day to ask for news of her daughter, according to PRO TV. Livia and Elena were reported missing on September 30, 2016. Friends who entered their apartment found it as if they had just stepped out, with dishes in the kitchen and their clothes still in the furniture.
Maricar Valdez Arquiola was from the Philippines and was 30 or 31 (Cypriot reports say 30, AP says 31; AP spells her middle name Valtez). She was last seen on December 13, 2017, and was reported missing that month. Her phone was last traced to Limassol. According to the facts read out in court, Metaxas met her on Facebook and saw her as vulnerable because her husband had died. A witness told investigators that he had photographs of her temporary residence permit taken on the day she disappeared.
Asmita Khadka Bista was a 30-year-old woman from Nepal. AP gave her name as Ashita Khadka Bista. She had communicated with Metaxas under the online name "Kata Anou," and her trail went cold in early 2018. She was the one victim never reported missing to the police; her absence from work was reported only to the immigration authorities, the Cypriot government acknowledged.
Marry Rose Tiburcio was a housekeeper from the Philippines, aged 38 according to AP and 39 according to the Cyprus Mail. The Philippine Department of Foreign Affairs referred to her as Marry Rose Infante. Her daughter, Sierra, was six and attended a kindergarten in Cyprus; AP gave the girl's name as Sierra Grace, while Cypriot reports wrote Sierra Graze and gave her father's surname. Sierra's father, a Romanian man, was Marry Rose's former partner. AP reported that she had been in a relationship with Metaxas for about six months, and a friend's account of her contact with "Orestis" later became central to the investigation. The Washington Post reported that she disappeared after going to meet a man she had contacted on Badoo. Mother and daughter disappeared in early May 2018. Her roommate reported them missing, and Sierra's kindergarten also reported the girl's absence. Her phone last connected on May 6, 2018, to an antenna near Larnaca airport, CNN Greece reported.
Arian Palanas Lozano was 28 and from the Philippines. She disappeared from her home in July 2018 after arranging to meet a man who used the name Orestis on Badoo, and her employer reported her missing that month. Her phone went silent the day she vanished. Police filed her case as non-criminal.
Beyond these outlines, the sources record little about the women's lives in Cyprus. Most worked as domestic workers. AP reported that many Filipino housekeepers on the island earned about 400 euros a month and that employers often held their passports and work permits. The filmmakers behind the 2026 documentary series Pleiades traveled to the Philippines, Nepal and Romania to interview the victims' relatives.
The account of the killings comes from Metaxas's own confession and from the facts the prosecution read to the court. It is given here without graphic detail.
His first victims were Livia Bunea and her daughter, in September 2016. He told investigators that he strangled the mother and then the child. Maricar Arquiola disappeared in December 2017; police found duct tape under a bed, which the prosecution took as a sign of planning. Asmita Khadka Bista disappeared in early 2018 and died from a severe head injury. He killed Marry Rose Tiburcio and Sierra in May 2018, after collecting them on May 4 and taking them to his house, and he killed Arian Palanas Lozano at his home in July 2018. The Cyprus Mail dates the last killing to August 2018.
He gave reasons in his confession and in court. He claimed that the two mothers had exploited their daughters and that he killed them out of hatred and a desire for revenge. The prosecution told the court that this claim was false. He said he strangled the two girls in their sleep so they would not suffer, though he had earlier told police that Sierra died by accident, a claim he dropped when he pleaded guilty to her murder. He said he killed Maricar and Arian during sex, and Asmita in anger after she spat at him when he filmed their encounter. The Cyprus Mail headlined its court report with a line from his confession, that he strangled Sierra while thinking of "the Greek genocide of 1922." In court he said he had no clear answer as to why he did any of it.
He disposed of the bodies at four sites in the Nicosia district. He left Marry Rose and Arian in a flooded shaft of an abandoned copper mine at Mitsero. He put Livia, Elena and Maricar in suitcases and sank them in the "red lake" nearby, a man-made pool of toxic water at the same mining area, known in Greek as Kokkini Limni. He left Asmita in a dry well at an army firing range at Orounta. He placed Sierra in Lake Memi, a former mining lake near Xyliatos, separately from her mother so that the two would not be linked if one were found.
For two and a half years the disappearances were treated as voluntary departures.
When Livia and Elena vanished in 2016, a friend went to the police. She later said she told them the child was seriously ill and that Livia would never have packed up and left without a word, but she was never formally questioned. Police told the family and friends that they had information the pair had crossed into the Turkish Cypriot north, where the Republic's police have no jurisdiction. In October 2016 a television reporter, Yiota Papadopoulou, took up the case and was given the same explanation. "I believe that maybe, some other women could have been saved," she later told AP.
The pattern repeated. Maricar's and Arian's cases were filed as non-criminal. When Marry Rose and Sierra disappeared in May 2018, Louis Koutroukides, who represented domestic workers, tried to report it through the police hotline and was sent to a station, where officers refused the complaint because he and Marry Rose's friend were not relatives. He told AP that one officer said he was too old to concern himself with Filipino women. Her roommate told police that Marry Rose had gone to meet a man called Orestis and gave them a phone number for him, which turned out to be out of service. In August 2018 Koutroukides wrote an open letter to the justice minister, Ionas Nicolaou, published in the newspaper Politis, raising the missing Filipino women and the possibility that a serial killer was targeting them.
An independent inquiry later found that some officers had not even checked whether the missing women's phones were active, and that in one case statements from people close to a victim were taken three months after the report. Police said at the time of the arrest that local law did not let them obtain missing people's email and phone records.
On Sunday, April 14, 2019, two foreign visitors photographing an abandoned mine shaft at Mitsero, southwest of Nicosia, saw a woman's body in the water. Heavy rain had brought it to the surface. It was recovered that evening. She was bound with rope and wore heart-shaped earrings. The next day her roommate identified her as Marry Rose Tiburcio, and police began searching for Sierra.
Police first arrested Sierra's father, a 33-year-old Romanian, on April 16, and Sierra's passport was found at his home. He denied any involvement and was released three days later. On April 18 they arrested two Greek Cypriot National Guard officers, aged 30 and 35. The younger man was freed after it emerged that his photograph had been used on the Badoo profile without his knowledge. The 35-year-old was Metaxas. When police entered his apartment, iefimerida reported, he tried to swallow his phone's SIM card.
On April 20 a second woman's body was found in the same shaft. It was formally identified on May 3 as Arian Palanas Lozano.
Metaxas at first refused to cooperate. After he admitted killing Marry Rose and Arian, he began to talk. On April 25 he led police to the firing range at Orounta, where they found a third body, and that day he told investigators he had killed seven people: five women and two girls. CNN Greece, citing the Cypriot newspaper Politis, reported that he told officers he was tired and wanted to go to prison, and asked for paper to write it all down. At Lakatamia police station he wrote a 10-page confession describing the seven killings and where he had left each victim, which the lead investigator, Ioannis Yiorkadjis, presented to court on April 27. Police said by then they had taken about 250 statements; by early May the number had passed 350.
On May 5 Metaxas appeared again in court without a lawyer and agreed to a further eight days in custody. Police also accused him that day of raping a 19-year-old woman who had contacted him in 2016 after answering a modelling advertisement. He denied it.
Recovering the remaining victims took two months. The red lake at Mitsero is highly acidic, so ordinary diving equipment could not be used, and visibility at the bottom was close to zero. Fire service divers, robotic cameras and sonar were brought in. A five-member team from Scotland Yard arrived at the end of April to help, and British and Israeli experts later took part in the search for Sierra.
On April 28 divers raised the first suitcase from the red lake. The body inside was identified as Livia Bunea. On May 5 a second suitcase was recovered, holding the remains of a child: Elena Natalia. On June 4, after a six-week search, divers pulled a third suitcase from the lake, weighted with paving slabs; it held the remains of Maricar Arquiola. The police chief, Michaelides, said he had never seen such savagery in 42 years of service.
The search for Sierra in Lake Memi continued for weeks, and the authorities were preparing to drain part of the lake. On June 12, 2019, after Metaxas pointed out a new spot near two small trees, a diver found her remains at a depth of about six meters. With that, all seven victims had been found, and the police said the findings matched his confession.
Public anger grew as each body was recovered. Hundreds of people held a vigil and protest outside the presidential palace in late April 2019, and opposition parties called for the police leadership to go. The anti-racism group KISA called the killings "the tip of the iceberg of violence against migrant women in Cyprus."
On May 2, 2019, the justice minister, Ionas Nicolaou, resigned. He said he was doing so for reasons of political ethics and called for an independent investigation into gaps in procedures, while saying it was unfair to blame him personally for police lapses. The next day President Nicos Anastasiades dismissed the chief of police, Zacharias Chrysostomou, with effect from May 7, citing "the apparent negligence and dereliction of duty of the police in investigating reports of missing persons." The president said some of the crimes could have been prevented. His spokesman said he had apologized to representatives of the victims' countries.
Kypros Michaelides was sworn in as police chief and on May 7 apologized to the victims' families. He said police had failed to protect the women and that officers who had not investigated properly would be held to account. The government said it would pay for the victims' funerals and graves, and it set up a special department under the Ombudsman's office to examine up to 3,600 complaints from foreign workers against their employers.
On June 21, 2019, Metaxas was referred for trial before the Permanent Assize Court of Nicosia. He refused a lawyer and said he would represent himself. Besides the murders and abductions, he faced charges of rape, interfering with the investigation and attempting to destroy evidence. He was sent to the Central Prisons in Nicosia to await trial.
The hearing on Monday, June 24, 2019, lasted one day. Metaxas arrived in a bulletproof vest, without a lawyer, and wept as police read the charges. He pleaded guilty to 12 counts: seven of premeditated murder and five of abduction. "I have committed abhorrent crimes," he said. "I accept full responsibility for my actions and am ready to face the consequences." He apologized to the families, to the children and to the Cypriot public, said he could not undo what he had done, and asked to be examined by scientists so that his behavior could be understood.
The three-judge court, presided over by Charis Poyiatzis, sentenced him to seven terms of life imprisonment. The five sentences for the women run consecutively. The two for the girls run concurrently, because the court found that each child was killed at the same time as her mother. The judges said the premeditated nature of the killings left no room for mitigation. They described a "campaign of murder" against defenseless women, most of whom had come to Cyprus to look for work, and said he "didn't even hesitate to kill children." It was the harshest sentence a Cypriot court had passed and the first time anyone in the Republic had faced so many counts of premeditated murder. No source reports an appeal.
The police complaints authority, working with the Legal Service, appointed four independent criminal investigators in 2019 to examine how the missing-person reports had been handled. Their 445-page report was handed over on December 20, 2019. Press reports said it found some 20 officers responsible, mostly from the Criminal Investigation Department, including first responders, department heads and supervisors who had read the files without acting.
On May 5, 2020, the attorney general, Costas Clerides, ordered criminal proceedings against 15 police officers, saying some of their actions could amount to a criminal offense. They kept their posts. On June 14, 2021, his successor, Giorgos Savvides, reversed that decision. He said the evidence could not prove beyond reasonable doubt that the officers had deliberately neglected their duty. The inquiry had also found systemic problems in the force's organization, training and capability, and what it described as "an underlying racist perception by some officers." The main opposition party, AKEL, said the government was following a path of impunity.
After public protests, Savvides referred the file to the police complaints authority, which decided on July 7, 2021, that disciplinary action should be taken against 17 members of the force for breach or neglect of duty. In April 2022 the police chief, Stelios Papatheodorou, approved disciplinary proceedings, and by June 2022 police said 15 officers had been charged in writing with offenses ranging from negligence to misconduct. No source found reports the outcome of those proceedings.
The police said they had written a 23-page guide for officers handling missing-person cases and introduced training on human rights, racism and xenophobia.
On June 13, 2019, Livia and Elena Bunea were buried side by side after a Greek Orthodox service at the village church of Arediou, southwest of Nicosia, which gave the burial plot free of charge. The police and fire chiefs attended, with some of the divers who had searched for them. The remains of Marry Rose Tiburcio and Maricar Arquiola were flown home to the Philippines on July 27, 2019. Sierra was buried in Romania at her father's request. At the end of July 2019 the Philippine government was still arranging the return of Arian Palanas Lozano.
On June 10, 2019, the lawyer Yiannis Ioannou announced that Livia's husband, the father of Elena, would sue the state, the police and Metaxas for compensation, arguing that police failures had led to deaths that could have been prevented. No source found reports the result.
Metaxas has been in custody since April 2019 and was held at the Central Prisons in Nicosia from June 2019. Reports in 2021 described him as serving multiple life sentences. No report of an appeal, a transfer, a release or his death was found in searches of Cypriot and international news made for this account on October 18, 2026. The most recent coverage, in August 2026, concerned a documentary about the case and gave no new information about him.
On April 14, 2021, the second anniversary of the first discovery, women dressed in black marched to the presidential palace and then to the Legal Service, carrying seven suitcases, each with a photograph of one of the victims, in protest at the decision not to prosecute the officers. On November 10, 2024, a volunteer group in Limassol, AGAPI, unveiled a memorial bench to the victims in Armonia Park, Ayios Tychonas, with police officers among those attending.
An independent documentary series, Pleiades: Victims of a Serial Killer, directed by Andreas Sheittanis with Paris Prokopiou and Michalis Terzis, was in production from 2022. Its makers chose to center the victims and the people around them rather than Metaxas, and filmed in Nepal, the Philippines and Romania. It was first shown in Cyprus on May 16 and 17, 2026, and began streaming on the Greek public broadcaster's ERTFLIX service in August 2026.
The case drew attention to the position of migrant domestic workers in Cyprus: their isolation, on employers who keep their documents, and on whether the police take their disappearances as seriously as those of Cypriots. Anastasia Papadopoulou, a child protection campaigner, asked in 2019 whether the investigation would have had the same intensity if the missing had been a Cypriot mother and child.
Proven by his guilty pleas, and final: the premeditated murders of all seven victims and five abductions.
Charged but not admitted: the alleged 2017 rape of a 19-year-old woman, which he denied. No source found reports the fate of this charge or of the charges of interfering with the investigation and destroying evidence.
His stated motives are his own account. The prosecution told the court that his claims about the mothers were false. His earlier claim that Sierra died by accident was abandoned when he pleaded guilty to her murder.
Possible other victims: in April 2019 CNN Greece reported that authorities in the Turkish Cypriot north had asked for help over a possible link between Metaxas and the death of a Vietnamese woman found there in January 2019, and Greek authorities checked whether he had killed anyone during his stay in Greece in 2018. Neither line led to any charge in the sources found. Police said in May 2019 that they had no reasonable suspicion of other killings.
Details that vary between sources: the ages of Marry Rose Tiburcio (38 or 39) and Maricar Arquiola (30 or 31); the spellings of several names, including Valdez or Valtez, Asmita or Ashita, and Sierra Graze or Sierra Grace; whether the last killing was in July or August 2018; and whether Livia and Elena disappeared in late September or in October 2016. Some Cypriot retrospectives give July 12, 2019, as the date Sierra was found; contemporary AP and CNN Greece reports, and a Cyprus Mail report of June 10 saying she was still missing, place the discovery on June 12, 2019. Later summaries describing seven consecutive life terms are inaccurate; the court ordered five consecutive and two concurrent.
September 30, 2016: Livia Florentina Bunea, 36, and her daughter Elena Natalia, 8, are reported missing in Nicosia; police suggest they went to the north.
December 2017: Maricar Valdez Arquiola is last seen (December 13) and reported missing.
Early 2018: Asmita Khadka Bista's trail goes cold; her absence is reported only to immigration.
April to May 2018: Metaxas is in Greece for military training.
May 4 to 6, 2018: Marry Rose Tiburcio and her daughter Sierra, 6, disappear; her roommate reports them missing.
July 2018: Arian Palanas Lozano, 28, disappears after arranging to meet "Orestis."
August 2018: Louis Koutroukides writes an open letter to the justice minister about the missing Filipino women.
April 14, 2019: visitors find Marry Rose Tiburcio's body in a flooded mine shaft at Mitsero.
April 16, 2019: Sierra's father is arrested; he is released on April 19.
April 18, 2019: Metaxas and a second officer are arrested; the second officer is freed.
April 20, 2019: a second body, later identified as Arian Palanas Lozano, is found in the shaft.
April 25, 2019: Metaxas leads police to Asmita Khadka Bista's remains at Orounta and confesses to seven killings in a 10-page statement.
April 28, 2019: Livia Bunea's body is recovered in a suitcase from the red lake.
May 2, 2019: Justice Minister Ionas Nicolaou resigns.
May 3, 2019: President Anastasiades dismisses police chief Zacharias Chrysostomou.
May 5, 2019: a second suitcase, with Elena's remains, is recovered; police accuse Metaxas of a separate rape, which he denies.
May 7, 2019: new police chief Kypros Michaelides apologizes to the families.
June 4, 2019: a third suitcase, with Maricar Arquiola's remains, is recovered.
June 12, 2019: Sierra's remains are found in Lake Memi near Xyliatos.
June 13, 2019: funeral of Livia and Elena Bunea at Arediou.
June 21, 2019: Metaxas is referred to the Assize Court and remanded to the Central Prisons.
June 24, 2019: he pleads guilty to seven murders and five abductions and receives seven life sentences.
July 27, 2019: the remains of Marry Rose Tiburcio and Maricar Arquiola arrive in Manila.
December 20, 2019: the independent investigators' 445-page report is handed to the police complaints authority.
May 5, 2020: Attorney General Costas Clerides orders criminal proceedings against 15 officers.
April 14, 2021: memorial march with seven suitcases.
June 14, 2021: Attorney General Giorgos Savvides drops the criminal case against the officers.
July 7, 2021: the police complaints authority decides on disciplinary action against 17 officers.
June 2022: 15 officers face disciplinary charges.
November 10, 2024: memorial bench unveiled in Ayios Tychonas, Limassol.
May 16 and 17, 2026: the documentary series Pleiades is first shown in Cyprus.
August 2026: Pleiades begins streaming on ERTFLIX in Greece.
October 18, 2026: no report of an appeal, release or death found.