Newly appointed police chief Kypros Michaelides said the force is determined and will persist until it fully solves the multiple murders case even though the search on Tuesday turned up nothing new.
His first act as the new chief was to visit the toxic lake in Mitsero, known as the red lake, where investigations continue with the use of a sonar to locate a third suitcase which as per the alleged confession of suspect Nicos Metaxas, contains the body of one of his victims. Michaelides expressed the hope that the rest of the bodies will be located within the coming days.
At the moment, he said, there is nothing worth announcing but police “will persist” until the case is fully solved. Investigations at the lake stopped for the day at around 7pm.
A few hours after he was sworn in as new police chief after the president dismissed his predecessor Zacharias Chrysostomou following a severe public outcry over insufficient investigation of the disappearances of the five missing women and two children which Metaxas reportedly admitted to killing, Michaelides went to the red lake to be briefed on the course of investigations.
Once on site, he congratulated the police and fire service members and other staff for their hard work aimed at locating the final body believed to be somewhere in the lake.
Crews on Tuesday focused on three points in the red lake that were marked the previous day in the search for a suitcase containing the body of one of Metaxas’ victims. Two bodies have already been recovered from the lake in question.
The state-of-the-art sonar will be transferred on Wednesday to lake Memi in Xyliatos to locate another body, that of six-year-old Sierra, which Metaxas allegedly dumped there after he murdered her. The body of Sierra’s mother, also a victim of Metaxas, was the first to be found dumped in the shaft of an abandoned mine in Mitsero.
Investigations will also continue at the red lake with the help of a diver and, if necessary, of a robotic camera while police are reportedly in contact with British experts and might use a ground penetrating radar to check areas in the lake covered with mud.
Reports said that the diver pulled two objects which are not related to the case out of the red lake on Tuesday, as the lake seems to have been used as a dumping ground by many.
There are still too many points to be checked, reports said while authorities will focus on Wednesday on the west and north areas of the red lake.
According to police, Metaxas has confessed to killing five women and two children, the daughters of two of the women. Authorities have so far recovered five bodies.
