The Court of Appeal also imposed a life sentence on the 41-year-old man who killed, dismembered and burned his 40-year-old drug-addicted girlfriend and then used her bank card to make cash withdrawals and various micro-purchases. Confirming the verdict of the trial court, the Mixed Jury Court of Appeal of Thessaloniki unanimously found him guilty of murder with intent in a calm state of mind, without recognizing any mitigating circumstances.

In contrast to the first trial, when the defendant denied murdering the 40-year-old, attributing her death to intravenous cocaine use, this time he confessed to fatally injuring her by hitting her on the head with a stick after an argument. “We talked, he started belittling me for an acquaintance I had made with a woman on Facebook,” he said in his apology and described the chilling details he then proceeded to, and had confessed in court, to “get rid of”, as he said, the body. “I decided to dismember the body and burn it. I knew at that time I was ruining my life. I was at a loss,” he said, admitting that he dismembered the lifeless body with an electric saw (jigsaw type) and cleaver, throwing its limbs into the stove.

Leaning on a cane due to mobility issues, the 41-year-old explained to the judges that he subsequently made the cash withdrawals to make it appear that the woman was alive and in this way to mislead the authorities in case they targeted him for her death. . He apologized for his actions, saying he was wrong and addressing the judges asked to give them a chance.

“His motive was money,” noted the district attorney who suggested his guilt, a proposal the judges agreed with.

The history of the crime and how it was revealed

The chilling case was revealed in May 2020, a year and a half after the woman’s disappearance, when police officers from the Prosecution of Life Crimes of the Thessaloniki Security, arrested, following an investigation, the 41-year-old, also a drug addict. The findings of the police investigation into two mobile phones used by the defendant, as well as the lifting of the banking secrecy of the deceased, played a catalytic role in the disclosure of the case. From the browsing history of the websites he visited, he was allegedly looking for the following information: “When does the decay of a dead body begin”, “what can happen to your body after you die”, etc.

The crime, according to the case file, was committed on December 28, 2018 – the day the woman was last seen – at the house where the perpetrator lived, in the “Draminos” settlement, in Filiro, Thessaloniki. The 40-year-old was attending a rehab program at OKANA with him and seemed to be making progress. As she lived alone in a privately owned apartment in Ilioupoli, no one looked for her, until six months later when the 41-year-old visited her apartment, allegedly to take care of it while she was away abroad. This impressed a neighboring police officer, with whom the unfortunate woman had social contacts, so he contacted the authorities and the investigation began.