The body of a 41-year-old pregnant woman missing since the New Year’s Day has been found inside a trunk among bushes in a remote forest area in Halkidiki, northern Greece. The woman’s partner and a friend of his have been arrested. The first victim of femicide in Greece in 2024.
The victim, Georgia, was in her third month of pregnancy and was the mother of a 13-year-old daughter from a previous marriage.
The crime was planned by both her partner and his friend.
According to preliminary police investigation, the 39-year-old partner and his 34-year-old friend stabbed the woman to death multiple times in the apartment where the couple lived in Kalamaria by Thessaloniki. They transferred the body with the friend’s car to a forest area in Halkidiki and abandoned it there.
The body was found following the friend’s confession who claimed that her partner committed the crime.
Furthermore, the two perpetrators reportedly also took 80 euros from the victim.
The motive of the murder is, so far, unknown.
Police managed to identify the perpetrators following witnesses’ statements, evaluating material from security cameras in the close and broader area, lifting privacy of mobile phones, as well as forensic material including fingerprints of the second perpetrator found in the couple’s apartment.
According to local media, the woman returned home after work, with her partner late on the New Year’s Eve. It was allegedly his friend who started to stab her with a knife.
Police suspected the victim’s partner right from the beginning as he was planning to leave Thessaloniki for Athens. To media and police, the man was expressing his concern about his missing partner claiming that she had disappeared taking 5,000 euros from their common account. He was pretending to take part into the search of her.
He has a record of domestic violence against his sister and his former wife who told state broadcaster ERT that he was often beating her in front of their two children, that she had filed lawsuits against him as well as restrain orders.
Speaking to media, a friend of the victim said that Georgia was afraid of him describing him as “very nervous.” However, she did not like to speak about her life with the father of her second child.
Femicide rose to unprecedented levels in Greece in the last few years with young and old women to have been killed by current and ex partners.
