LAGIM: A Filipino True Crime · LAGIM Podcast

The Mitsero Killings (feat details about the new TV show, Cattleya Killer)

·50 min·3 clips

Cyprus is not where many Filipinos expected this story to begin. The host starts with that distance, and with the shock of a murder case involving Filipina migrant workers in Europe reaching a public already worn down by OFW suffering. That shock sits at the center of the episode. The killings are harrowing because of what happened, but also because the victims were kababayans whose lives ended in a place that felt almost impossibly far from home. Metaxas had confessed. Once police understood that Maricar, Livia Florentina Bonea, and Sierra were among those he had killed, the search was no longer rescue. It was recovery. The host makes that shift matter, because it is the point where official action stops carrying even the fragile hope that someone might still be alive. The lake then takes over the story. Bodies are recovered from the toxic red lake of Mitzero, with identification slowed by decomposition and by the conditions around the remains. One detail lands hard: a body had been put in a suitcase with a cement block, a plain act of concealment that does not need dressing up. The police kept searching. By April 20, a fourth body had been found, and by April 29, another body had been recovered before DNA later confirmed some identities. The failures come through as questions of capacity and readiness. The Cypriot police had to admit they were badly equipped for a case this large, and the host treats that admission as part of the damage left behind. Outside help was requested. British police agreed to send a coroner, a clinical psychiatrist, a forensic specialist, and investigators with more experience in multiple murder cases or serial killings, as the investigation drew more political attention and became harder for authorities to contain. The episode also looks outward near the end, when the host points listeners toward Katleya Killer, a new TV show releasing June 1 on Prime, with real excitement about seeing more Pinoy crime fiction on screen. The closing note stays connected to the larger question of how Pinoy crime stories are told, remembered, and watched.

As heard by us

A grim Cyprus case that ties migrant vulnerability, police failure, and a TV tie-in.

The episode moves through the Cyprus killings in order, from the shock they caused in the Philippines to the later confession and the recovery effort around Mitzero's toxic lake.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

A Cyprus murder case that ends with a Prime true-crime series you may want to track down.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

Listen to the show on

Apple Podcasts Spotify

Play clips from this episode More from LAGIM: A Filipino True Crime