Cypriot army captain Nicholas Metaxas, 35, was sentenced to several life terms in prison after pleading guilty to premeditated murder and kidnapping of seven women and girls.
A three-judge panel of Cyprus criminal court said that the accused chose defenceless women who came to Cyprus looking for work, and that he didn’t hesitate to kill children. He pleaded guilty to premeditated murder and was sentenced to seven life terms – five will run consecutively and two concurrently. Judges said there could be no mitigating circumstances as they described how he sought many of his victims on online social networks using the handle Orestes35 before having sex with them.
After killing his victims, he dumped his bodies in a toxic man-made lake near the village of Mitsero.
Reading from a prepared statement, Metaxas tearfully apologised to the families of his victims for the pain he caused them. He said he did not “have any clear answers” as to why he committed the murders and is still struggling to figure that out. “I cannot go back in time and undo what I have done,” he told a packed courtroom, surrounded by armed police.
He asked for an expert panel to do examine him and delve into the reasons for his actions, and he spoke of unspecified events in his past that he had tried to suppress. Originally, he had told investigators that he was prompted to strangle two of his victims because of “hatred” and suspicions that they prostituted their daughters. He said he choked the children s they slept so they would not have to suffer.
Prosecutors said investigations into the mothers had shown that they were caring for their children.
His victims included four Filipino women, including the daughter of one, a Nepalese woman and a Romanian woman and her daughter. Six of his victims died of strangulation and one from a head injury.