YouTuber may have unknowingly filmed a suitcase with a body inside
A YouTuber inadvertently filmed what might be the body of a murder victim stuffed in a suitcase for a travel video.
The suitcase may be connected to a serial murder case rocking Cyprus politics, nearly two years after the video was filmed. The suspected killer confessed to murdering seven people just days ago, and told law enforcement officials he dumped some of his victims' bodies in suitcases into a lake that's become a destination for travel influencers.
New York-based vlogger Sarah Funk visited Cyprus' Mitsero Red Lake, a toxic, acidic body of water tinted red from now-abandoned British mining operations in June 2017.
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"This is what murder episodes are made of," Funk's partner, Luis Yanes, can be heard joking in a YouTube video she posted of their visit to the eery locale.
They climbed over barbed wire and scrambled down a steep hill to get to the lake.
"This feels like death, you know what I mean?" Funk exclaimed. Later, she quipped, "I just feel death in the air, it's so nice."
A shot of Funk squatting to photograph a boxy object in the water can be seen at roughly 2:08 in the video. The object may be one of the suitcases containing a woman's remains.
Cypriot officials believe there are three suitcases in the lake and on Saturday retrieved one of them. It's unclear if that suitcase is the same one Funk saw nearly two years ago and police have not confirmed whether they used Funk's video during the investigation. On Sunday, Cypriot military officer Nicos Metaxas confessed to murdering five women and two children over a three year period. He said he dumped three of their bodies into Mitsero Red Lake. His adult victims were domestic workers for households around Cyprus, according to the Guardian, and are thought to hail from the Philippines, India or Nepal, and Romania.
Political critics are blaming police for mishandling the case, noting that they were unmotivated to find the missing persons because they were foreigners.
The Washington Post reports that two of the suitcases have been located, but only one has been retrieved. Authorities continue to search for the third suitcase.
After news of the confession broke, Funk posted a blog post with photos of one of the suitcases and asked people to stop contacting her about it.
"This is terrible and I am devastated for the victims' families," she wrote. "It felt eerie there but I did not see anything completely out of the norm ... I don’t have any other information about the lake. This is all of the information I have, and I hope it helps."
She added that at the time, she thought the suitcase was a log.
The Guardian reports that four bodies have been found so far, but notes that the island has "scores" of unsolved cases related to missing migrant women.
Topics YouTube
