Athens’ Kypseli neighborhood is not a peaceful area. It is located in the densely populated, graffiti-covered center of the city, where waves of gentrification and decay have coexisted side by side. Airbnbs now occupy buildings that share walls with deserted lots, and long-term foreign residents and tourists move alongside those who have nowhere to go. On July 18, a homeless man made the discovery that would spark a two-week investigation involving police forces from two continents in one of those deserted areas—a derelict former parking lot littered with trash.
Elisabeth-Jane Ross, a 38-year-old Scottish charity worker from Edinburgh, had been in Greece for just over three weeks. Her friends said she had a strong and sincere commitment to helping people wherever she went. She first stayed with close friends in Keratsini, a suburb close to the port of Piraeus, after arriving by plane from Cyprus on June 26. The trail became more difficult to follow after she moved to a rented apartment in Exarchia, another neighborhood in central Athens, on July 10. Investigators claim that her movements in the days preceding her death were dispersed and challenging to piece together.
The fact that someone seemed to be using her cell phone after she passed away further complicated the case. Her father and other family members in Edinburgh received text messages. The messages mentioned the need for solitude and provided just enough convincing information to calm the alarm. They were later described by police as purposefully deceptive and calibrated to buy time. It’s difficult not to think about how her family in Scotland must have felt, getting messages they might have wanted to believe while something was already seriously wrong on the other side of Europe.
At first, Greek investigators found it difficult to advance. No usable DNA or fingerprints were found in the suitcase, which had been wrapped in cloth before being abandoned in the abandoned building. The case seemed to be stalling for days. Eventually, something much more commonplace—credit cards—broke it open. The suspect, a 26-year-old Afghan national, is accused of using Ross’s bank cards to take out cash from ATMs all over Athens in the days after her passing. Investigators were able to trace, cross-reference, and construct a case based on the footage captured by CCTV cameras at those machines. According to a statement issued by Greek police, he was taken in for interrogation on July 30 and confessed.
The cause of death is still a mystery. She had been dead for up to a week before being discovered in the July heat, so an early postmortem at the scene was inconclusive due to advanced decomposition. The head of the Hellenic Society of Forensic Medicine informed reporters that examination of Ross’s eyes and lungs would help determine whether he died from natural causes or something else. Toxicological tests and organ tissue analysis have been expedited. The suspect reported to the police that when he got to the Exarchia apartment, her body was already in the restroom. The forensic findings will help determine whether that account stands up to scrutiny. The charges—intentional homicide, robbery, and weapons violations—indicate that Greek prosecutors are not accepting his account at face value.
In Kypseli, flowers have grown up next to the vacant lot. Among them was a handwritten note that said, “Here lies an angel.” It’s the kind of thing that is said about people who pass away too young and unexpectedly, and it frequently has little significance. In this instance, friends in Edinburgh described Ross as someone who had spent her life traveling between nations and communities in search of places where she could be helpful, using nearly the same word on their own. Reading the stories people have shared gives me the impression that she was precisely the type of person who ends up far from home because home was never quite the point.
