A 25-year-old woman has been arrested and already confessed to the murders of four infants, two of them her own children and her younger sister. The fifth death of a toddler is under investigation due to mysterious circumstances. She reportedly confessed also to the murder of her little sister, her first murder when she was just 14 years old.
The woman, identified as Eirini Mourtzoukou, was arrested on Monday in connection with the deaths of her two own children and the child of a friend in the western city of Amaliada in Peloponnese. She has been charged with serial intentional homicide and attempted murder.
Police has also accused her of attempting to suffocate an adult female friend.
Mourtzoukou is expected to appear before a prosecutor for her officially testimony in the western city of Patra on Sunday.
Meanwhile, Mega TV revealed on Friday evening, that the woman attempted to murder another infant, child of a family friend, when she was 16 years old.
The case has drawn national attention since August 2024, when her friend’s 15-month-old child died under suspicious circumstances. Authorities later linked Mourtzoukou to a total of four infant deaths between 2021 and 2024, all involving members of her immediate circle.
These include the death of her roommate’s 6-month-old baby in 2021, the deaths of her own children – aged 19 days and two months – in 2022 and 2023, and the death of her friend’s toddler in August 2024.
Mourtzoukou had previously appeared on Greek television magazines quite often, repeatedly denying any involvement in the children’s deaths. However, she seemed always present, sometimes also alone with the children, when they died.
Mistakes and errors in the five autopsies by the coroner’s service in Patras had apparently failed to recognized the deaths “murders” and delayed the woman’s arrest and prosecution.
Mourtzoukou had blamed her troubled relation to her mother as the motive for the murders. “Every time my mother angered me, I killed a child,” the woman had allegedly told investigating authorities and police.
She will not be charged for the murder of her little sister that took place 11 years ago due to statute of limitation, media reported.
Eirini Mourtzoukou is the second case of a woman murdering children in Greece, after 33-year-old Roula Pispirikou, the so-called “Medea of Patras”, was found guilty to have murdered her three daughters, aged 3.5 years old, 9-months-old and 9 year old respectively between 2021 and 2022.
Also in the murder cases of Pispirikou, the coroners in Patras had failed to recognize signs of “foul play” in the first murder and eventually save the lives of the other two children. Pispirikou would kill her children force their father to stay with her.
Patras coroner service temporary suspended operation
Yesterday, Thursday, Justice Minister Giorgos Floridis, ordered the temporary closure of the coroner’s service in Patras and launched in investigation in the false autopsy results.
The decision has triggered citizens’ concerns in the local communities who now wonder whether they or their beloved ones have fallen victim to the service.
