The Greek society is shocked by the dramatic developments in the drama of Patras, after the arrest on Wednesday of the mother of the three unfortunate girls, Roula Pipispirigou and the prosecution of her on charges of intentional homicide of her eldest daughter, Georgina.
At the same time, the cases of the death of the other two children of the family, 3.5-year-old Malena and 6.5-month-old Iris, are being reopened in order to determine whether the little brothers and sisters of 9-year-old Georgina, who "disappeared" before her, were "lost" by a human hand and, indeed, by their mother.
If the accusation about the 33-year-old woman turns out to be true, we will undoubtedly be talking about the crime of the century, as even experienced criminologists and police officers say.
A crime that cannot even be compared - because we are talking about young children, who may have escaped from their mother's hand - with the one that happened 67 years ago, when the grandfather of the current defendant, Roula Pispirigou, murdered her grandmother in Patras.
Some similarities...
Young Sotiria Pephanis meets her husband, Panagiotis Pispirigos, when she is only 15 years old and he is 18. When their relationship becomes known, Pispirigos, described by the press of the time as a man without steady work and money, is arrested for seducing a minor and taken to Patras Prison.
According to reports of the time, reprinted by "Eleftheros Typos", there, in order to avoid a possible conviction in the Criminal Court, he marries the underage girl Sotiria on February 27, 1962, in the Transportation Department, despite the fierce opposition of her parents.
Although their married life is far from happy, they soon have a child, Andreas, father of today's Roula Pispirigou.
Panagiotis continues to have no steady job, unable to support his family financially. Moreover, he is insanely jealous of his beautiful wife, with the consequence that the couple's fights are part of their everyday life.
Finally, the young girl asks for a divorce and leaves for her parents' house, which he never accepts, with the consequence that he starts to watch her constantly, believing that, during the three months they are separated, she has many lovers.
Three months after their separation, they are confronted in court, where the case of custody of the child is heard, which Panagiotis finally takes and leaves to his sister Georgia, to raise it with his parents.
Sotiria rents a room across the street from her in-laws so that she can be close to her child but, as the press of the time describes, friction between her and her mother-in-law is a daily occurrence.
It is worth noting that just fifteen days before the murder, Panagiotis is granted an annual deferment of enlistment, citing "neuropsychic disorders" or, as the official diagnosis reads, "as suffering from post-convulsive causes with tendencies to neurotic edification."
It is a wonder how he was given custody of his child...
Death date
Just two days after their last legal confrontation, with each suing the other for adultery and libel, Panagiotis asks, on Wednesday 21 July 1965, for Soteria to go somewhere to talk, in a new attempt to reconnect.
Despite the contrary opinion of people close to her who advised her, "You'd better not go, you don't know what's happening to you", Soteria replies: "You're not bored. I'll go and maybe something good will come out of it."
Thus, she arrives at her date of death.
The couple are in a secluded location at the Resti facility in Rio, by the sea and, during their conversation, he asks her to leave her lover and return to their home. What follows is described in his shocking testimony. At one moment and while we were sitting close together and her left back was resting on her shoulder, it came to me like madness. I threw her down and gripped her tightly by the neck. I squeezed her, squeezed her harder and harder. She was writhing her body, trying to get away from me. But I was stronger. I had beaten her. Soon her body was paralyzed, her breathing stopped, her eyes glazed over. She was dead. Then I realized what I had done. I regretted it, dragged her to the reeds as I did and abandoned her in the night. Then I ran like mad."
At dawn the next day, the murderer of the young girl first goes to his brother-in-law's house and at 2.30 a.m. he surrenders to the police, saying that prior to his heinous act he had had sexual intercourse with the victim, which is never confirmed by the forensic examination.
Arriving at the spot indicated by Pispirigos, the police officers find Sotiria "half-naked, with her eyes bulging out and with the imprints of the perpetrator's hands visible on her neck", with her violent death being due to "drowning from anaemia."
According to the forensic report, the scene of the murder unfolds as follows: Pispirigos clamps Sotiria's carotid artery with his right hand, with his left hand he clamps her nose and mouth, while sitting on her chest. In her attempt to avoid the deadly embrace, the unfortunate girl only manages to inflict some cuts on the perpetrator's neck and tear his shirt.
"Apathetic until stunned"
When brought before the prosecutor of the case, Dimitris Ceva, known from important cases he handled, although he is saved from being lynched by the public and relatives of the victim only with the help of the police, he seems unresponsive.
In the detention center where the perpetrator is being held, he is described as "apathetic until stunned. He has no remorse for his crime."
During the trial that follows, Pispirigos shows no remorse while the war between the two families rages. One side accuses Sotiria's in-laws of instigating the crime, as they "hated her", while the other tries to point to the victim's behaviour as the culprit.
In fact, during the trial, Sotiria's father attacks the perpetrator's father with a knife outside the courts and is arrested.
Although the gruesome murder shocks Patras, the case soon passes into obscurity, since the country is in the midst of the hot summer of the Julian summer of 1965, while on the same day as Sotiria's death, Sotiris Petroulas is murdered in Athens...
Finally, Panagiotis Pispirigos is sentenced to life imprisonment, but is released 15 years later, in 1980, for good behaviour.
Their only 14-month-old child at the time of the murder, Andreas, when he marries and has a baby girl, gives him the name Roula, perhaps honoring his murdered mother Sotiria (Sotiroula).
She is the current Roula Pispirigou, who was prosecuted on a charge that goes beyond even the murder of her grandmother by her grandfather.
Source: in.gr
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