A NICOSIA serial stalker who has terrorised hundreds of women for at least 10 years now will face criminal prosecution, police chief Iacovos Papacostas said yesterday.
Speaking to the Cyprus Mail regarding the man known to women as Christos or Christodoulos, Papacostas said the authorities had gathered all complaints made against the suspect and were preparing a file to launch court proceedings.
“The police force is taking all necessary measures to ensure that this man who is very bothersome is stopped,” he assured.
The police chief said he would have more information on the proceedings tomorrow.
A police source added that the authorities would likely seek to have the man committed as he was obviously psychologically unwell.
“He’s not only annoying, but he could be dangerous. Up until now there were complaints made at different police stations but we didn’t have an all round picture of this man. A police station in Larnaca was not to know that a similar complaint had been filed at another station in Nicosia for instance,” he said.
“Now that we’ve gathered all the data against him we can go to court with it to have him removed from society, either to be committed or held in custody,” he added.
The Sunday Mail first published the story two weeks ago after an email sent out by a friend of one of his victims circulated across the island. Since the article was published numerous more people have come forward and said that they themselves or people they knew had been targeted by the man they call a “menace”.
One 30-year-old woman said he had stalked her for three years, even finding her phone number and address in the UK, where he would send her flowers.
“He even rang up one of my friends and told her we were getting married,” she said.
Andri, 28, said he had once managed to get into her father’s office and ring her from there. She’d answered the phone expecting to hear her dad’s voice and instead she said she had “Christos” crooning down the phone to her, an experience which terrified her.
Twenty-seven-year-old Marios said he, his sister and girlfriend had all been harassed by the same man.
“Where he gets all this information on his targets is beyond me. In my case I rang him up to tell him to stop hassling my girlfriend and the suddenly he had the numbers of my house in Nicosia, my holiday home, my flat in England, and my mobile. He used to ring me up at 4am and not say anything. Other times he’d call up my mum and bother her,” Marios said.
The 28-year-old said the stalker used to wait for his girlfriend outside her house at 7am and follow her to work. In his sister’s case he used to show up at her work until she had to get the security guards to throw him out.
Marios said he’d also once found his car scratched down one side and knew Christos was behind it.
“The police must be protecting him. How else is it possible that despite the complaints he gets away with it every time?”
But Papacostas categorically denied the stalker was under anyone’s protection and said the problem had been the police had not before gathered all the information on the suspect under the one file.
“He’d been to court for one or two cases in the past and would face some charges,” he said, strongly suggesting that this time things would be very different.
Papacostas also said that another problem had been that the women had not always filed a formal complaint. A number of women admitted to the Mail this had been the case and said they had later regretted it.
Nevertheless this time the authorities say the stalker will be stopped.
“Rest assured we will do everything to ensure he is taken off the streets,” the police source said.
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