Documentary on Cyprus serial killer being screened in Greece

An independent documentary examining the crimes of Cyprus’ first serial killer and the events that exposed the case is, according to a social media post on Friday, now available on Greek TV.

Told through the experiences of the victims and investigators, Pleiades Victims of the Serial Killer was directed by Andreas Seitanis with research by Paris Prokopiou and Michalis Terzis.

It follows the murders committed by Nikos Metaxas, known as Orestes, while placing the focus on the seven victims and the institutional failures that allowed the crimes to continue.

The series is available on Greece’s ERTFLIX platform.

The documentary opens with the testimony of one of the men who first spotted a body floating in the abandoned Mitsero mine in April 2019, a discovery that triggered the police investigation.

It later follows the recovery of victims from the Red Lake and Memi Lake and traces the investigation that led detectives to Metaxas through his online activity.

Rather than centring on the killer, the filmmakers said they wanted “a more humane approach to the story”.

Seitanis told the Cyprus Mail the production was “always going to be a documentary about the victims and related important topics”, arguing that fictionalising the story would have been less powerful than allowing those directly affected to tell their own stories.

Across six episodes, the series features interviews with police officers, divers, forensic experts, criminologists and relatives of the victims from the Philippines, Nepal and Romania.

It also includes testimony from the man who first discovered the body in the flooded mine and from members of Metaxas’ family and social circle.

The documentary further examines the handling of missing persons reports before the murders came to light, exploring concerns raised at the time that reports involving migrant women did not receive the same urgency as other cases.

Metaxas was arrested in April 2019 after investigators traced online communications with one of the victims.

He later confessed to murdering five migrant women and two young girls between 2016 and 2018 and in June 2019 was sentenced to seven consecutive life terms.