“Malena cannot have died of liver failuresaid the head of the Forensic Service, Nikos Karakoukis, in his testimony at the trial of Roula Pispirigou, for the death of her two youngest daughters.

Mr. Karakoukis carried out a check with the medical examiner Nikos Kalogrea and in their conclusive report to the judicial authorities, they attributed the death of both Malena and Iris to suffocation. The assessment of the two leading medical examiners largely led to the indictment for the deaths of Malena and Iris against Pispirigou, already sentenced to life in prison for the murder of her first-born daughter, Tzorgina Daskalaki.

In his testimony before the MOD, the witness emphasized that the initial assessment of his colleague Christina Tsakona regarding liver failure as the cause of Malena’s death “troubled us” as, as he said, no specific findings had been identified and also that the child’s clinical picture did not was consistent with this diagnosis.

  • President: What troubled you about the liver failure that Ms. Tsakona wrote about?
  • Witness: Hepatic coma must have intervened for the liver failure…hemorrhages. He put liver failure without showing any lesions (of the liver) which is a prerequisite for liver failure. Liver failure is the generalized, complete disturbance of the architecture of the liver.
  • President: Ms. Tsakona writes about a pale and friable liver.
  • Witness: Nothing to do with it. A disturbance in the architecture of the liver is for example cirrhosis of the liver. The man then goes into hepatic coma and dies. We have a pale and friable liver in hepatitis.

Mr. Karakoukis emphasized that shortly before Malena died, she was fine, adding that “I have never encountered liver failure in one day before».

At the start of the procedure, the examination of pathologist Christos Efthimiadis was completed, who, answering a question from the defendant’s defense attorney, said that he cannot rule out, nor can he confirm, that Malena’s death is attributable to a criminal act. He repeated, however, that the histological findings are consistent with suffocation. “If someone asks us ‘do these findings go with suffocation?’ I will say, yes, they are going” said Mr. Eftychiadis.

The testimony of Mr. Karakoukis will continue on October 30.