AN alleged serial killer dubbed The Woman Eater is accused of murdering his wife, her two teenage sisters and another lover then dissolving their bodies in acid.
Vasile Lavric – who has also been called Romania’s Black Widower – is said to have written letters posing as his missing victims in an effort to convince their family they were still alive.
Lavric, now 62, was arrested earlier this month and held in pre-trial custody accused of four murders stretching back 25 years in the city of Rădăuți.
He was first detained six years ago over the disappearance of his wife Nicoleta and her two teenage sisters, before the investigation was dropped.
At the time his girlfriend Aurica Bodnarescu fiercely protested his innocence and said the missing sisters were taunting them from abroad over the trouble caused by their disappearance.
Now it has emerged Aurica, mother of two of his children, also vanished without a trace earlier this year. She is feared to have met the same grisly fate as the other women.
Lavric’s first alleged murder in 1995 was of his sister-in-law Iuliana Iordache, who was just 16 at the time.
It is alleged she was having a sexual relationship with her sister’s husband who was then aged 37.
Ten years later in 2005 he allegedly killed his wife Nicoleta, 31 – who had continued to live with him for five years after surviving a hammer attack at his hands in 2000.
Two months after Nicoleta vanished, Lavric allegedly killed her other sister Ramona, 18.
Ramona had given birth to his child after an extramarital affair, according to reports in Romania.
Lavric is also alleged to have sent his mother-in-law bogus letters purporting to be from her three missing daughters.
The letters claimed they were in Germany looking for work and would send money when they could.
He was the suspected of involvement in their disappearance, but police could find no evidence they had been harmed.
In 2013 the case was passed to prosecutors in the capital Bucharest, and the following year his house was raided – but no trace of the women was found.
Lavric was held in custody for more than four months in 2014, and was also tried for attempted murder over the hammer attack on Nicoleta.
But the murder case was dropped until new evidence reportedly emerged this year – after his lover Aurica had also vanished.
Prosecutors believe he burned the women’s bodies, and then dissolved remaining bones in acid or caustic soda before dumped them in a lake.
According to reports, the murders went undetected for years partly because the mother of the three sisters, Camelia Iordache, delayed reporting them missing until her third daughter vanished.
She says she believed the letters had been posted from Germany – even though the envelopes had Romanian stamps.
A police spokesman said: “When we checked these letters supposedly from Germany, we found that they all had a postage stamp from Rădăuți.
“The woman said she had not realised it needed a German stamp if it had come from Germany.”
Lavric was arrested on December 4. Police searched his house again and also excavated several areas of his garden, according to reports.
He appeared in court on Tuesday, wearing a face mask, and complaining he had lost weight in custody.
He told reporters: “I lost 14 kilograms in 18 days. I am innocent”.
