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One of the most heinous crimes that had shocked the Panhellenic community is revived today at the Mixed Court of Appeal of Athens. The rape and brutal murder of 21-year-old student Eleni Topaloudi in Rhodes, in November 2018, will occupy the regular and lay judges of the appellate court.
The two young defendants in the case, the 23-year-old young man of Albanian origin and the 24-year-old man from Rhodes, will again sit in the dock in order to be tried for intentional homicide in a calm state of mind with conspiracy and for rape. In this trial too, the two convicts will be asked to answer for their involvement in the horrific crime, which they did not do in the first trial, as one of them blamed the other.
The trial court, in its judgment issued in June 2020, had sentenced the two young men to life imprisonment for the crime of manslaughter and 15 years in prison for the rape of the victimized student. Judges and jury had not granted them any extenuating circumstances at the time. Something the two defendants may now seek before the appellate court. If they succeed then the sentence imposed on them in June 2020 may be reduced.
She was thrown alive into the sea
It was 28 November 2018, when a team of the Coast Guard in Lindos, Rhodes, retrieved the lifeless body of Eleni Topaloudi from the area "Fokia" in Pefkus. The previous evening, the unfortunate student had been found in the country house maintained by the family of the accused Rhodian in the area of Pefki Lindos. According to the evidence in the case file, there the two young men raped her and when the unfortunate girl put up resistance they started punching her savagely. As soon as the 21-year-old girl told them that she would report them to the police, the two accused decided 'jointly to physically eliminate her in order to exclude any possibility of a future complaint against them'. While the girl was in a near unconscious state they began to beat her with fists and an iron on her head. They even attempted to kill her by strangulation. Then, while the 21-year-old was fighting to keep alive and begging them to take her to the hospital, the defendants carried her to the steep rocky area in the bay "Fokia" and threw her from a height of about 10 meters into the sea. According to the forensic study, the girl was still alive when she was thrown into the water and the cause of her death was drowning. "The head injury was very severe. It could have caused death. But this wound was not the final cause of Eleni Topaloudi's death. It turned out that the final cause of death was drowning. The girl was alive when she was thrown into the water. She was unconscious," the coroner Panagiotis Kotretsos, who had performed the autopsy on the victim's body, had testified at the trial in the first instance.
Contradictions, snitches and a few words of alleged remorse
During their apologies to the Mixed Jury Court, the two defendants had engaged in an incredible ping-pong of exchanging responsibilities regarding the rape and murder of the young student, each reserving for himself the role of ...accomplice in the horrendous crime. Both had claimed that they had not raped the 21-year-old student, while they had denied the brutal abuse of her and the throwing of her into the sea.
The accused Roditis was the first to apologize, who had described a brutal crime that unfolded before his eyes in his own house, but he himself had, as he had claimed, no involvement in it apart from the fact that he did not protect the girl! "I didn't rape her, I didn't kill her, I didn't do anything bad to Helen" he had said in his apology blaming everything on his co-defendant. He, according to his allegations, beat and stabbed Helen and alone threw her on the rocks, after both had previously had sexual intercourse with the girl with her consent.
Furthermore, the accused claimed that it all started when his co-accused became angry with the young student and started hitting her "with an iron on the head" because she belittled him for his manhood. "He grabbed the knife and stabbed her in the throat and told her you were a hard-ass. He'd take her into the bathroom and he'd bang her in the sink. He'd say, 'I'm going to break your neck. Then he threw her in the bathtub. He gave her a cold bath after he took off all her clothes. He picked her up and carried her down the stairs alone. I told him stop, "don't do that." I didn't help him. I told him to take her to the hospital, some mistake was made and he took her to the rocks. He hit her on the rocks. He took her down 100 yards and gave her a push and threw her down. I didn't help him...," he had said.
The second defendant in the case had claimed that he had an affair with the student and claimed that it was the Rhodesian who "started stabbing Helen and hitting her with the iron". Giving his own version of events, he claimed that both of them had had sexual intercourse with the girl, but that Roditis became furious when she told him to "get on with it". He said he "then started slapping her, hitting her, kicking her". Continuing the accused had said in his apology: "I was sitting like m@@@@@@. I didn't know who to support, the girl or my friend. Then she left and came back with a knife. He started stabbing her and threw her down with force. He grabbed the iron from beside her and started beating her. I pushed him and he said: "You sit in the corner." I was scared for my life. Then he went around the room. Helen was passed out. I went over to her and she came to. I took her to the bathroom. She wanted to look at her face in the mirror and I wouldn't let her. She got into the shower. I grabbed a sheet and threw it over her. We got downstairs and he opened the car door. Helen sat in the passenger seat." In fact, the accused had claimed that he had asked his Rhodesian co-accused to take the girl to the hospital but he, he said, did not respond. "We were heading to the hospital but I saw that she went into a dirt road and I knew she was not going to the hospital. He came out and told me: "I'm going to finish her because she's going to put me in jail." He took her on his shoulder and came back after ten minutes and said to me: Okay Albanian it's over go inside now," he had added in his apology.
Source: protothema.gr
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