Authorities in Cyprus on Thursday uncovered a body of a woman, the third Filipina murdered by a suspected serial killer who had confessed to seven killings.
This came as police widened a probe into the murders which were done by a 35-year old Greek Cypriot army officer who admitted to killing the three Filipinas whom he had reportedly met through an online dating site.
The suspect, who is now in police custody, had even identified two of the three Filipina victims. The two were working as domestic workers in Cyprus.
He reportedly met the Filipinas through Badoo, a dating-focused social network.
The first Filipina victim, found on 14 April, has been named as 38-year-old Mary Rose Tiburcio.
She and her daughter were reported missing to police in May 2018.
A second woman was found during the search of Mitsero mine outside Nicosia, her decomposed body bound and wrapped the same way as the first victim.
Investigators have said the suspect had confessed to her killing as well and reportedly named her as a 28-year-old likewise from the Philippines.
On Monday, the Cyprus police chief said the island was faced with an “unprecedented” crime after the recovery of the bodies of two women, both believed to be Filipinas, from an abandoned mineshaft.
“The police and Cypriot society are faced with a type of crime unprecedented for Cyprus,” police chief Zacharias Chrysostomou told reporters.
Police frogmen are also searching for a missing six-year-old girl in a lake outside the capital Nicosia.
Local media have dubbed the murders as Cyprus’s “first serial killings”.
Police sources told the Agence France Presse that the suspected had confessed to the killings.
The third Filipina woman was reported missing last year.
Cypriot authorities have come under fire for failing to take action when the mother and daughter were first reported missing.
Police sources, quoted by the state-run CNA news agency, said authorities were also looking into cases involving an Asian woman as well as that of a Romanian mother and her young daughter reported missing in 2016.
The suspect, who allegedly confessed to seven killings, earlier Thursday showed investigators the spot where he had dumped a body in a well at an army firing range outside the capital Nicosia.
As the case becomes more complex, Cypriot police are requesting the aid of experts from British law enforcement.
They include a coroner, a clinical psychiatrist, a forensic specialist and investigators experienced in multiple murder cases.
The main opposition party AKEL called on the police chief and justice minister to resign over a case that has shocked society in Cyprus with its relatively low crime rates.
“Unprecedented indifference was shown simply because these people were not of Cypriot origin but came from foreign countries,” said AKEL leader Andros Kyprianou.
The case came to light after a German tourist taking photographs of the mine spotted the first body, brought to the surface of the 150-metre (500-foot) shaft which flooded after unusually heavy rains.
with a report from Agence France-Presse