Seventh victim found in Cyprus serial killing investigation

ATHENS, June 12 (Reuters) - Police in Cyprus found a body on
Wednesday thought to be the seventh and last victim of a serial
killer who preyed on foreign women for almost three years
without detection.
Police said they had found the remains in lake Memi
southwest of the capital Nicosia, where they had been looking
for the body of the six-year-old daughter of the first victim
discovered.
"Human remains have been found and forensic pathologists are
on the scene," a police spokesman said.
A 35-year-old Greek Cypriot army captain has been in custody
since late April on suspicion of killing five adult women and
the young daughters of two of the victims.
Police say they have written confessions from the suspect,
who met the women online. Most were employed as housekeepers on
the island and disappeared between September 2016, and July to
August 2018.
The case, the worst peace-time atrocities against women in
Cyprus in memory, has triggered outrage and horror on an island
where serious crime is relatively rare.
The police chief was sacked and the justice minister
resigned following accounts of bungled investigations by police
who did not take the disappearances seriously because the women
were foreign.
Police had been scouring the lake for weeks looking for the
daughter of 38-year-old Marry Rose Tiburcio from the
Philippines, who was found dead by tourists shooting pictures at
a mining shaft in late April.
The body of Tiburcio, who disappeared with daughter Sierra
in May 2018, was the first victim to be discovered.
The funeral and burial of Livia Florentina Bunea, 38, from
Romania, and her eight-year-old daughter Elena, found dead last
month at another lake locally referred to as the Red lake, were
to be held in Cyprus on Thursday.
The Cyprus government said it would cover the costs of the
victims' funerals.