Cyprus police told a court on Sunday that in addition to the seven murders of foreign women and girls confessed to by a serial killer they were investigating the rape of a teenage woman.
Nicosia district court agreed to remand the suspect in police custody for a further eight days on Sunday in light of new evidence about the rape case after a teenage Filipina woman gave a statement to the authorities.
Police said the woman, 19, came forward to file a complaint that the 35-year-old army captain raped her. Police investigator, Criminal Investigation Department (CID) chief Neophytos Shailos told the court that the suspect denied the allegations when questioned about it.
According to the young woman’s complaint, they met online in 2016 in reply to modelling job for a photo-shoot.
In early 2017, the suspect – a keen photographer – picked up the woman, on the pretext of giving her the photographs, took her to a location in Nicosia and allegedly sexually assaulted her in the car.
Shailos also told the court that the suspect video recorded the sex attack on his mobile phone, shortly afterwards the woman confided in the wife of the suspect about her ordeal.
The suspect identified in local media as 35-year-old Greek Cypriot army officer Nicos Metaxas appeared in court without a lawyer and when asked by the judge if he had any objection to his remand he replied: “I have no objections, your honour.”
Police said they were receiving a “downpour of information” about the suspect’s activities with 350 witness statements taken and another 150 to be processed.
Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades on Friday sacked the country's police chief, as shock over the murders gave way to outrage at the authorities for a botched response.
The Greek Cypriot army captain confessed to the seven killings in a crime spree that went undetected for nearly three years.
With the island reeling from what has been dubbed its first "serial killings", Cypriot authorities have been accused of failing to properly investigate the women's disappearances due to neglect and racism.
The president on Friday fired top police officer Zacharias Chrysostomou a day after Justice Minister Ionas Nicolaou announced his resignation over the case.
In a letter to Chrysostomou, Anastasiades decried "the apparent negligence and dereliction of duty of the police in investigating reports of missing persons".
The president told the police chief his services were being "terminated" and that official failing had meant the murder cases were not "solved in a timely manner".
"Some of the horrific crimes that shocked Cyprus could have been prevented," he wrote.
The killings came to light in mid-April when unusually heavy rains brought the body of 38-year-old Filipina Mary Rose Tiburcio to the surface of the disused mine shaft where it had been hidden.
That triggered a murder investigation which led to the arrest of the army captain on April 18.
Days later, authorities found the body of a second woman in the shaft, believed to be Arian Palanas Lozano, 28, also from the Philippines.
These are the only two women to be officially identified.
The suspect then guided investigators to a well near an army firing range outside the capital, where police found the body of a third victim — a woman thought to be from Nepal.
Last week, police recovered the remains of a fourth victim, stuffed in a suitcase at the bottom of a toxic man-made lake next to a disused mine southwest of the capital Nicosia.
Outrage over how authorities handled the case has prompted protests outside the presidential palace in the capital Nicosia
All the women were reported missing to the police, except the one from Nepal who was reported to immigration for being absent from her place of employment.
