The body of a 31-year-old man missing since early January was discovered in a swamp area near Kampos Evinochoriou by Messolonghi, western Greece on Monday afternoon.
The body was located by a specially trained police dog.
A coroner who rushed to the swamp, identified it as belonging to the missing man as the victim’s clothes matched those he wore on the day of his disappearance.
One of the locals participating in the search operation told Mega TV that the body was laying in the water with a heavy object on its back.
Some three hours after the recovery of the body, Star TV and other media reported that the young man was shot multiple times on the back and the legs with a hunting rifle.
Victim Babis was living and working abroad and was visiting his family over the Christmas holidays. He went missing on January 4.
At the time, the body was found the victim’s family was waiting outside the justice building of Messolonghi where the main suspect, a local butcher, was being interrogated, practically for the second time.
Before his disappearance, the victim had reportedly messaged the butcher seeking repayment of a loaned sum of 17,000 euros.
In his first interrogation, the butcher had claimed that he met the victim but ‘dropped him at the highway for he [the victim] wanted to go hunting.’
During his interrogations, the butcher made contradicted statements, claiming among others also “temporary memory loss due to drugs use”. Toxicological analyses did not confirm his claim, though, daily ethnos.gr reported.
However, police gained some clues about his whereabouts after analyzing material from CCTV cameras, while he was also found to have deleted messages from his mobile phone.
Monday evening the butcher was remanded custody on charges of premeditated murder. He still denied all charges.
An autopsy is to determine the exact causes of the victim’s death.
Police continues investigation as the case seems more complicated than initially thought and there is suspicion that more persons may have been directly or indirectly involved in the crime.
