True Crime with Kimbyr - Deadly First Date: She Got In His Car & Never Came Back | Eleni Topaloudi

Episode Date: September 7, 2026

📣 WANT MORE TRUE CRIME? Check out my other podcast, DARKLIVITY: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠HERE First-date disasters are one thing, and they are all too common, but deadly first dates should not be a reality; unfortunately, in this case, it was. Dating apps like Tinder, Bumble, and even Facebook Dating are connecting more people than ever before, but that means some people are connecting with killers. Sadly, with new technology come new ways for evil people to take advantage of unsuspecting victims, and today's story not only highlights the dangers of online dating but also reveals what the laws are like in countries other than the United States.Eleni Topaloudi's case stopped an entire nation in its tracks. She was a bright, warm 21-year-old university student, living away from her family on the beautiful island of Rhodes and chasing the future she'd always dreamed of. Like so many young people today, she wanted to connect with new people. But the person on the other side of that screen was not who he seemed. One November night, Eleni agreed to meet up, and she never made it home. In this episode of True Crime with Kimbyr, we trace the full Eleni Topaloudi case: who she was, the online encounter that turned fatal, and the fight for justice that captured the world's attention.🔎 COME FIND ME: Personal IG https://www.instagram.com/kimbyrleigha/🚧 True Crime IG: https://www.instagram.com/truecrimewithkimbyr🔗 Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/KimbyrleighaYouTube/📥 Sponsorship Inquiries: [e-mail]🚨 This video is for educational purposes & documentary purposes ONLY. All info is gathered ONLINE from multiple sources, and though each case is thoroughly researched, not all info is always 100% valid. Please do your own research. 👩🏻‍🎓 ABOUT ME: I'm Kimbyrleigha; thanks in advance for reading this. I think it's important to know someone's background and education because it helps explain how they view situations and why they may hold a particular point of view. I hold a bachelor's degree in Psychology and Sociology. I graduated from law school in 2010 and have a Juris Doctor (law degree). I'm also currently in school studying Medicolegal Investigation. COPYRIGHT DISCLAIMER: I do my best to ensure that everything in these videos complies with the legal Fair Use Standards. I never intend to violate anyone’s copyright. If you own the rights to something that was unintentionally used in this video and would like it removed, addressed, or licensed for a fee, please reach out to me first, and I will get back to you ASAP. [e-mail]

Imagine taking a morning walk along a beautiful cliffside beach. The water is sparkling, the breeze blowing through your hair, birds are chirping, and there's just this peacefulness that washes over you. But this is a familiar walk. You know this beach. You live nearby. You almost memorize its cliffs and its rock formations and the jetties as the water crashes over them. And because you're so familiar with the way things look,

when something's out of place, it catches your eye. And on the morning of November 28, 2018, that's exactly what happened. A couple was taking their morning stroll when they spotted something large and out of place in the shallows among the jagged rocks of their local beach. It looked strange, and it made them stop in their tracks. But as they tried to strain their eyes to figure out what it was, the waves would wash over it again and again. So they tried to put it in the back of the back of the tracks.

their minds and they kept walking. But when they arrived home, they couldn't stop thinking about the mysterious object below their cliffside home. So the husband took out his binoculars, he fixed them on the location of the object and focused in on those rocks. It didn't take long for him to recognize something else familiar to him. The form of a human body, lifeless, unclothed, and at the mercy of the current in the icy waters of O'Keeha Beach in Greece. Visit BetMGM Casino and check out the newest exclusive. The Price is Right Fortune Pick. BetMDM and GameSense remind you to play responsibly.

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Hi everyone, welcome back to my channel and if you've never been here before, I'm Kimberlea. It's nice to finally meet you. A lot of the facts of this case have been misinterpreted and even misreported, at least here in the United States, from the articles that I've read and videos that I've watched, mostly concentrating on just the horrific murder and not much else. So I was determined to get the story as close to exactly what happened as possible and tell you everything I can find about the victim and her family. And I think because it's international and how to translate a lot of things, that could be why

there were so many misconceptions and things wrong from what I read in the U.S. Our laws punish those who break them, but it took a long time to get here. And other countries, unfortunately, are far behind, and that scares me. Why? Well, because we see all these beautiful pictures of people traveling all over the world. We've all seen them on Instagram, those perfectly posed tan bodies on the sands of beautiful foreign beaches or sipping a latte at a cozy international coffee shop, the spectacular buildings and gorgeous views abroad. Places like the one we're talking about today is highlighted all the time,

and that's Greece. I have never been to Greece, and I can't say that I've ever even thought about going there, until I saw influencers taking this oh so popular photos in Santorini, and you know the ones I'm talking about. The photo shoots high above the white buildings with the blue domes to match the vividly blue water below. Google influencers in Santorini and you could scroll forever. And there isn't any denying how breathtaking that few really is. Who wouldn't want to visit? Well, after you hear this story, maybe you won't. This isn't meant to be an anti-travel or anti-Greece specific video, but it will definitely open your eyes to a lot of things that I think the pretty pictures leave

out, the ugly side of such a beautiful destination. The human, side or I should say inhuman side. Sure the landscape is as they say to die for, but what if you were truly paying with your life by being there? This case and many others like it make me realize how little many Americans including myself truly understand how different our countries are, especially our laws or maybe their laws and lack thereof. So to Greece we go virtually anyway to the white sandy beaches, the crystal clear waters of the Aegean Sea. It's a place where you can see ancient ruins right alongside modern cities.

But beyond the idyllic scenery, there are deep social issues that usually don't make it onto Instagram feeds. In recent years, Greece has been grappling with the impact of widespread misogyny, which is a Greek word, by the way, that translates to hatred for women. And Greece is also dealing with xenophobia, another word of Greek origin, that means stranger-fearing, as we know it, prejudice against people from other places, other countries. These are not new issues, but a few recent cases have brought them into the spotlight again. Now Greece and other countries around the world are forced to confront uncomfortable truths about women and minorities and how they're

treated. So that was my preface, and as lengthy as it may have been, first of all, thank you for sitting through that, but it's never going to be talked about enough. And change has to happen. This case highlights that fact, and I'm going to be talking about the brutal murder of a young Greek university student whose whole life was ahead of her. And sadly, her story didn't end with her final breath, or even the criminal investigation that followed. Instead, her case exposed the darker side of Greek society and the evil minds of her killers and the truths that those in power would rather hide than confront. They'd rather blame the victim than admit how deeply their problem is. go. So I want to take you back to that early November morning in 2018 when the married couple was walking along the cliffside beach, and they saw the mysterious object below in the shallow water.

You know from the beginning of this video that after getting binoculars, the husband realized he was looking at the body of a human being. It was 7.30 a.m. when he rushed to call the authorities, and due to the fact that they were dealing with a deceased victim in a body of water, the Coast Guard Thomas Zovas was assigned to this case. This area of the beach was almost like its own little bay, a cove below the rocky cliff, an indent along the coast of the island of Rodesh, or roads, as we would say here in the United States.

So that's how I'm going to pronounce it, roads, surrounded by the Mediterranean Sea. This beach itself isn't a touristy area. It's isolated. And what's more is that the spot where the body was located was really hard to reach. It was below a 30-foot drop, so 10 meters down in a part of the beach where there was no land access. The Coast Guard knew he'd need professional divers to come out and to come quickly because this was a dire situation. It was just merely by chance that this body hadn't been

pulled out to the vast Mediterranean Sea by the current. And at any moment, it could become dislodged from the rocks as it was being cradled by three of them. and it could disappear forever. Look on this map and how vast this body of water is. Anything that made it beyond that bay would float away and make its way to the North Atlantic and never be seen again. So they had to act fast.

The waves were strong and with every crash, the chance of that body slipping under and being pulled away from shore was greater and greater. I'm blurring this photo, but I am going to show you things in this video because it is so important for you to understand how horrendous the story is. I'm blurring this out, but you can make out the light skin on the silhouette of this body, and there there were three boulders stopping it from floating away.

Coast Guard official Thomas Zovis could see from his vantage point that it appeared to be the naked body of a woman. Here's a blurred video clip of the waves and how rough they were crashing around those rocks and the body in between them. Soon, professional diet survivors, Basilis Mantikos, and Costa's Balafas, came to the location and immediately, they were shocked by the mere fact that the body was still there. Kostas said in a quote in a video later that I have translated, since all my research was in Greek, he said, quote, by coincidence we had arrived early in the conditions were such that we were able to find her by chance. If the weather took her out of the embrace of the bay, we would have never found her. The southern wind

kept her in the harbor." In cases like this, the divers will always take rope and a floating stretcher with them, and when they get to a body, they wrap the rope under both of the arms and across the chest securely and then pull the body onto the stretcher

to get them to shore. So that was their initial plan. But they were in a rush, so they couldn't take the stretcher. Their first priority was making sure the body didn't disappear, so they only brought the rope, which they called a makeshift solution.

The water was mur, and it was rough and they had to swim quite a distance around 400 feet to the rocks. Costas made it to the body first and Vesilis threw him the rope, which he ended up, unfortunately, having to tie around the victim's legs near her ankles in a hurry just to make sure they weren't going to lose her. And it was a her. It was clear as they got close. She was unclothed except for a bra. She was face down in the water. Her skin was very pale, almost blue from how cold it was. And her long dark hair contrasted against the white wave crests. When Costas got closer, he realized the woman was tall, almost six feet tall, and he and Veselis were worried about how they were going to get her

to shore. But first, Costas turned the woman over, and when the men who had seen their fair share of deceased individuals saw this woman's face, they were in shock. They both said they were speechless. It actually physically took their breath away. She was so badly beaten. She was unrecognizable. They quickly realized that this was not an accidental fall from a cruise ship or even the cliffs above. She had been murdered. They couldn't spend too much time making

any other observations in that moment because they had to get her to shore, where officers could assist them in transporting her body to the mord for an autopsy, including identification, since there were no personal effects with the victim in the water. Now this next part might sound insensitive,

but please be aware that the equipment available isn't as advanced as you might have expected in this situation. There were no helicopters, no stretcher, no jet skis in a basket to move her to the sandy beach, just two men and a rope. And as bad as it might sound, they dragged her through the water by that rope tied to her ankles as they swam to shore. Now, I did watch a video of this, and it made my stomach queasy, just knowing that she was being dragged like that through the water and even up to the beach by her

legs, but they recovered her body and that's the most important thing. And of course, I can't show you the entire video, but I took screenshots, blurred of course. So you can understand this part because it was heavily misreported elsewhere that the victim was found with her ankles tied together. And that is incorrect. I actually know that's incorrect, not just from this video interview with the divers that I found on YouTube and translated, but there are Greek articles that makes it very clear as well as a press conference by the Coast Guard himself. But I also have an unblurred photograph of the victim floating in the water before she was recovered, and her legs are not tied together. But to make my point, here's a blurred photo for reference, because this comes up again

when the Coast Guard and the officials take photos of her on shore. Remember that she's already tied by her ankles when she's pulled onto the beach. This is where I think the misconception started. someone saw the photos I'm about to show you next and they concluded that her lakes had been tied by whoever killed her. But as soon as the victim arrived on that sandy beach, officials placed her on a stretcher. Visit BetMDMDM Casino and check out the newest exclusive.

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Spotify Ads Manager makes it easy to create your first audio ad in minutes for free. Sign up today, launch a campaign, and start reaching your audience. At which point, they saw a distinguishing feature on the back of her right calf, a tattoo of a rose, And since they wanted to identify her as soon as possible, they took a picture of it. And that's all they had to go on. Since her face was so badly beaten, there would have been no way for a loved one or even a friend to tell who she was. After documenting the tattoo, she was covered in a blue tarp and transported up a tall set of stone stairs to a dirt road above the cliff. The Coast Guard Special Operations team was leading this case, and Officer Zovas

was determined to find out what happened to this young girl and who was responsible. So he began contacting local tattoo shops hoping that one of the artists would recognize their own work, and sure enough, one of them did. And he had a record of the transaction, which wasn't too long ago, just a few months. He gave the officer the customer's information. Her name was Aleni Tupaludi. And it didn't take them long to find out she was a 21-year-old fourth-year-old, fourth-year student at the University of Aegean. It was located on the same island of Rhodes. Part of the Dedecanese Islands, they make contact with the school on November 30.

and the school informs Officer Zovas that Alenna's parents called in that same day inquiring about their daughter. She hadn't made it to class the last few days. And now we know why. Aleni and her family were not locals of roads. They were from a much smaller town in Greece called VV Motico, a long 14-hour drive away. The officers got in touch with the local police department in her small town and explained that he was looking for the family of Aleni Toboludi. That last name was very familiar with the Vivimodical police because Eleni's father, Janice, he was actually the deputy mayor in town, and him and his wife, Kula, had actually reported Eleni missing on the same morning. They had been concerned that they hadn't heard from her in a number of days.

The local police reached out to Janice and Kula that night and asked them a question that confirmed their worst fears. They asked, does your daughter have a tattoo on her leg? A black rose? and they knew that she did. Janice raced to the police station, and they showed him a picture, probably the same one or similar to the one I showed you, of the back of Eleni's legs as she lay it on that stretcher

with a rope around her ankles. He knew it was his daughter and that she was no longer alive. This dark moment would become even darker when the truth was completely uncovered. Yonis and his brother take the very next flight that they could find, and they arrive in roads on December 1st to make. make an in-person identification. It was their beloved daughter, Eleni. And of course, as you can imagine, her loved ones, their world came crashing down. It was one of their biggest fears since she left for college from such a small town to a touristy island like roads. But how could this nightmare be real?

Aleni Topoludi was born on the 15th of January in 1997 in the town called Vivi Modico in Greece. Now I'm doing my very best with the Greek pronunciations here, so please forgive me if they're not perfect. Eleni is actually a derivative of the name Helen, named after her grandmother and great-grandmother, and she was the first child to her parents who have already introduced you to, Janice and Kula, and she was her mother's world. And I'm not just saying that to be cliche, because it's true. We hear phrases like that all the time to describe the love that a mother has for their child. But I can tell you, I did a lot of research, and this bond was very deep. Kula longed for a child for so many years, and she didn't get pregnant until she was in her 30s, 34, to be exact.

Her and her husband were, of course, very happy together, but they couldn't wait to have children. Finally, she gave birth to Aleni, and from the moment she found out she was pregnant, she would sing lullabies right to her stomach with Eleni inside. She would play classical music and read her ancient Greek literature, which Kula had been obsessed with since she was a teenager. She had been a student of classic Greek literature herself and hoped to pass that love onto Aleni. Kulo was a kindergarten teacher and Janice was also a teacher, so they of course love to learn and they wanted to enrich their child's life with the arts and the love of family. From the moment that Eleni came home from the hospital and was in the arms of her mother's sister, her aunt Litsa, who she would often confuse for her mother when she was a baby to her very first bath.

Her whole family took part in welcoming her to their family. Kula would dress baby Eleni in the cutest little outfits, along with headbands and socks with bows on them. She looked like a real-life baby doll. And those outfits continued through her toddler and preschool stages. And for special occasions, Kula would put Eleni in dresses with matching coats and even tights and a necklace. On her second birthday, the family dressed up and lit two candles on a cake for Eleni,

her proud parents smiling behind her as all three of them. held hands. One picture of Kula, Eleni, and her grandmother shows baby Eleni putting yellow flowers on top of her head, and it looks like a flower crown. This picture of Kula and Eleni in her preschool class is adorable, and it's evidence of how happy and proud Kula was to be a mother, and what a blessing Aleni was. She was into the arts from a young age, playing an angel in her kindergarten play, and as she grew, so did her bond with her family. Eleni was a happy, loving, and she was a happy, child who was always smiling. Kula said they were the happiest people in the world, their little family of three. They had everything they could have ever wanted, except maybe another

child. And soon they'd get one. Little Eleni was so excited when her mom became pregnant with her little brother Petros. Eleni was nine years old when he was born, and she lovingly kissed her mama's belly to show the love she already had for him when her mom was pregnant. On Petros' second birthday, the family of four now posed for a picture with his cake this time. And Eleni's smiling at the camera, despite her left arm being in a cast and I'm sure it was from playing a little too hard. She was an active little girl, very free-spirited and full of life. There was zero crime. Zero in their small town.

So she was free to run and play outside with Little Petros. But as her parents hoped, as Eleni was growing up, education was of course a big part of her life. she loved to learn, always trying to improve her English, German, and Arabic. Yes, three languages. Eleni's father traveled to Jordan to teach Arabic and had taken many foreign language courses, so he inspired Eleni to do the same from a young age. But as teachers, Aleni's parents didn't just buy her books in hopes that she would be inspired to learn, and said they took her to see the arts in person. They took her to trips to Athens a number of times, too many to count, and to the Athens Polotechnik to leave flowers in memory of the people who resisted and fought for democracy.

And to the Acropolis, a number of different plays at theaters, and a bunch of museums, including one in Parthenon. Even visited the Starbos Neocros Foundation, and they did the same with their son Petros, and by the time he was in high school, he had gone at least three different times. Eleni also had strong values, which her parents instilled in her. They taught her to trust people, to love others, not to mock anyone, or be a bully, and to see the glass of life half full instead of half empty, to respect those around her, especially those who had less. Her mother said she would take a butt of food out of her own mouth and give it to someone else if they didn't have any. Eleni also learned that not everyone would think and act like she did,

and it was okay to be different, and to respect other people's thoughts, and to try to be friends with those who may not be aligned exactly with the way that she believed, and I think all of those are very amazing qualities to have. But on the other hand, Aleni was also aware that the world can be an ugly place, and not not everyone has the best intentions. Eleni's goal was to bridge the gap, to be the peacemaker, and eventually this led to her a dream of becoming a diplomat, to officially represent her country's interest in other nations, and work to build strong relationships, negotiate, and promote understanding between different governments overseas.

She even traveled to Jordan with her father and worked there free of charge to teach Arabic. She had really big goals. But I'm sure you can imagine that that meant she would have to leave the comfort and safety of her small town. Eleni had never been away from her family before. Being close-knit is a huge part of Greek culture, and they placed great importance on traditions, religious celebrations, and community gatherings. Eleni's room still had her dolls and stuffed animals lying on the shelves of a bookshelf, and there was just an air of innocence about her, even though she was old enough to be on her own. After Eleni graduated high school, she told her parents, she wanted to be a girl. to experience more of what Greece had to offer. They weren't so keen on her plans and they

tried to even convince her otherwise by warning her about the dangers of a big city. But Eleni was determined to live life on her own terms. So in 2015, she packed up all of her belongings and moved to the island of Rhodes to attend the University of the Aegean, studying in the Department of Mediterranean Studies, which their website explains stands out as the only department of Mediterranean studies in Greece and one of the few in the world. Studies included the historical relationship between Greece and the Mediterranean area and the developments in the European Union and the international community. Its focus was on archaeology, linguistics, and international relations. This was Aleni's first step to lending her dream job, and she took her studies very seriously. Her parents,

of course, wanted to see her succeed, so they agreed to pay for her student housing, which was located in the city center. Rhodes is absolutely breathtaking. It is a very breathtaking. It is a It's known for its beach resorts, ancient ruins, and old medieval streets, among many other things. Just Google the area and you will see how extraordinary it really is. The water is at least three different shades of blue, and the buildings on top of the mountains with their unique architecture, and the town bustling with people. It was like night and day for someone like Eleni. She had to take a 14-hour road trip just to get there and then get on a boat to reach the island itself. But Rhodes has 10 times the population of Aleni's hometown, and that's when it's not peak

tourist season. When that time rolls around every year in the summer, the population is 100 times the city of Vivimodico, where everyone knew and loved her family. Here, Aleni was a stranger, just like everybody else, someone who blended in among the pandemonium of people from all over the world, all tightly squeezing in to this island. It was an exciting time for 18-year-old Eleni. There were so many new opportunities, but the first was to explore. Walking through the streets felt like stepping back in time.

The paths were surrounded by ancient walls, cobblestone alleys, and historical sites, along with secret hidden beach coves, which only the locals knew about. Eleni took many pictures showcasing the town that she would call her home for the next four years, sharing some of those pictures to Facebook, usually not showing her face. but instead her fashionable outfits against the beautiful backdrop of these gorgeous architectural nature. But it wasn't the old town which appealed to Heleney. For her, it was the modern side of the island.

Rose is filled with vibrant cafes, restaurants and shops that cater to both locals and tourists. It's one of those picture-perfect places where you can sip on a cocktail looking over the blue waterfronts while boats sway gently in the marinas and people gather to enjoy Mediterranean cuisine. The nightlife was also a highlight, with bars and clubs offering good music, dancing, and fun well into the night. The drinking age is 18 in Greece, so Eleni could enjoy all that the town had to offer. Roads couldn't have been more different than Vivimodico, which is one of the reasons Eleni chose it. She immediately knew she had made the right choice and moving to the island. It had the perfect balance of being laid back and then had plenty of things to do. It didn't take her long to make new

friends either and together they explored roads. With Eleni's lovable personality, her good moral compass and lighthearted and kind nature, she made friends fast and had a lot of them. It's also easy when you're in college because you meet people that are close in age and also studying the exact same topics. And soon, Eleni was going out all the time with a large group of girlfriends and for the first couple years, her focus was on spending time with friends and doing well in class. By day, she would go on school trips dressed up professionally and attend conferences, but by night, she would unwind, dressed to impress, to wearing her black-framed glasses, so sort of retaining a touch of professionalism.

The typical college student, just enjoying her time on her own, before she gets into her career and has to buckle down and get more serious. By the time she hit 20, she was ready to explore the more romantic side of the city. So Eleni began going on dates. and even though she wasn't necessarily looking to find the one, she was open to love if it came along. She was also focusing on her health, getting in shape, and even trading her bigger, rounder glasses for smaller, more square frames to show off more of her beautiful face. Sometimes even slipping them on the top of her head for pictures or not wearing them at all.

She was a beautiful young woman with long, dark brown hair and deep brown eyes, and she stood out in a crowd because of her height. She was close to six feet tall. In this picture with two men from her school, she's almost as tall as a taller one on the left and appears that Eleni isn't even standing up straight. She towered over most women, and that alone can be quite striking,

like a runway model is. She would be noticed when she walked into a room. But now, I sadly have to take you back. Visit BetMDM Casino and check out the newest exclusive, the price is right fortune pick. BetMDM and GameSense remind you to play responsibly. 19 plus to wager.

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Her father lets them know they speak to her every day, if not multiple times a day, and she's very close to her mother. They talk constantly. Yannis also explained that they visit Eleni in Rhodes every summer. They pay for all of her expenses, and she gets extra money from her grandparents for getting good grades in school. She had already purchased plane tickets and was supposed to be flying back home on December 11th to visit for the holidays. But now, that would not be happening. Yonis lets the officials know that their family is very close, and they didn't see anything peculiar leading up to what happened. The last time Eleni's father and mother spoke to her was the evening of Monday, November 26th. Eleni was calling to check in with her mom who recently had a surgery on her

leg. She was worried about her. She wanted to know how she was healing, because the last time they spoke, Cola had told her she was in pain, but she let Eleni know she was okay. There was no need to worry. She said everything would be fine. They had a normal conversation. But then the next day, on Tuesday, November 27th, Eleni's mom called her like she usually did, and this time, she doesn't get a response. As a matter of fact, the phone actually said subscriber unavailable.

You know when you sometimes get the message that either a person's out of the coverage zone or their phone can even be disconnected. This was that robotic voice on the other end, just saying, subscriber unavailable. And Kula thought that that was a little bit odd. She wasn't too worried about her 21-year-old daughter at this point. She knows she's very busy. She has a social life.

She's in college. And she was expecting her to just call back and say that she was fine. However, when 24 hours went by and they still hadn't heard from her, her mom started to panic. This time the phone was going straight. to voicemail. And Kula is leaving a bunch of messages one after the other. She's desperately trying to get in touch with her daughter, and she starts to get really scared. And that's when she goes to her husband and says, Janice, we have to do something. Eleni calls me 10 times a day, and now there's

just nothing. They were so far away from her. They really felt like they had no control over this situation, and even to find out what happened and why she's not answering. So they asked one of their friends who lived in Rhodes if he could go over to their daughter's apartment and knock on her door to find out what's going on. He does. And she doesn't answer. That's when he takes it one step further and he goes down to the university office. And that's when he finds out she hadn't been in class the last couple days. And that's highly unusual for Eleni. The university was sort of like, you know what? Don't worry about it. If there's something bad that happened, we would be the first to know. So if you don't hear anything from us, everything's okay. She'll probably turn back up.

But this wasn't good enough for her parents. And they decided to report her to the the police department in Roads, as well as their local police department in Vivi Motico. I've already explained to you that that same night is the night that get the phone call with them having to identify her tattoo. But now officers know she was alive on Monday the 26. So it seems like something could have happened to her on the 27th because she didn't reach out to her family. By this time, crime scene investigators had already been to the area above the cove where Eleni's body was found and they made some very significant discoveries along the cliffside. There were items scattered throughout the rocks and brush leading over the side of that steep drop.

They found things like a sock, a foam pad, and some other things that were out of place. It appeared as though somebody had dumped those items off the side of this cliff. And it becomes very obvious at this point that Eleni had also been dumped over the side of this cliff, which is about 32 feet high. There's some kind of thin foam pad, like I said, right here. And then there's also what looks like it could be a pillowcase of it. some kind. Maybe it's even a sheet. It's white with pink accents. For a moment, I thought I even saw Eleni's black framed glasses between the foam pad in that pillowcase, but it was actually my eyes

just playing tricks on me. When I zoomed in, it was just seaweed. At this point, they haven't found anything belonging to Eleni, but these items were all collected for analysis. It's December 1st. Eleni's father is still with the Port Authority officers. He has the opportunity to go to his daughter's apartment along with the forensic team. And they actually, take photographs. But they haven't conducted any kind of investigation at her apartment before this point. They're just going over to document everything the way it was when they walked in. Now I do have some of these photos and I thought that they were very interesting. Not only to showcase what kind of person Aleni was and what she cared about, but what she was doing before she disappeared and was later found

floating and then icy water. It's a small studio apartment in the town center. On one side was a bed and it was still made. It has a bright orange, yellow, and red bedspread on it. She also has a futon opened into the position of a couch with some blankets, pillows, and covers on top. She has a tapestry nail to the wall above her bed. She's also taken pictures in this area that I saw her post on Facebook. On the other side of the room, she has a vanity mirror with a dresser, and as you can see, if you're watching, there are a lot of girly things here. Lotions, perfumes, spray bottles, hair products, brushes, clothing, lotion, just the typical items that you would see on a woman's dresser. I also noticed little butterflies stuck to the mirror and the word dream above her bed on the wall.

This just shows you parts of her personality. She also has some scarves that were draped on her mirror as well as some necklaces hanging down. Further from her dresser, there's a desk that contains a tiny desk lamp, her books, her laptop, and the things she would need for college, along with an ashtray and a half-smoked cigarette. There were two cookies on a plate and a couple drinking glasses on the desk as well. It looks like she was just sitting there before she left. Even though the laptop is now closed in this photo, apparently it had been open, which made it seem as though maybe she had been corresponding with someone or doing schoolwork. She had a tiny kitchenette and from the looks of it, it's tidy, but appears to have a dish and a glass with a spoon inside the sink.

If you put this all together, it really looks like she finished dinner, sat down a little her laptop, smoking a cigarette, and having a couple cookies with a drink. And it's almost as though it looks like maybe something interrupted her. Because she was the type of person to clean up after herself. Everything else is pretty tidy. Even though, of course, we know she's a typical college student, she's got a lot of shoes on the floor and some clothes hanging here and there and chairs. But for the most part, everything is pretty organized. What really stood out to her dad, knowing what he knew about his own daughter, there was a half-eaten apple still in her mini-refriger. and a half a stick of gum on her counter.

This really looked like she was enjoying a regular weeknight in, but something pulled her away. But the biggest indication that she was kind of in the middle of her normal routine before something got in the way was her laundry. She had a small balcony outside of her apartment where she would wash and dry her clothing. She would use this red basin, which was sitting outside, and you can still see her clothes are hanging there to dry.

Her father said that some of the clothes were still inside the wash. so to him, this meant she expected to come right back if she had willingly gone anywhere. The fact that some of the clothes were hanging to dry and others were still being washed in the bucket meant to him that his daughter's intention was to continue with her chores. So what happened? The hardest part for Eleni's dad was knowing that he was looking at all of his precious daughter's possessions, things that she collected and cherished, clothes that still smelled like her, and the last thing she wore or touched.

He couldn't bear to leave them behind. He wanted so badly to collect everything and take it with him. He wanted to collect her memories, even her cigarette butts, the apple, the gum, and even strands of hair that were near her sink. He didn't want any more of her to be gone forever. And I was tearing up reading this as a parent. It is just horrible for anyone to have to go through. Eleni's mother was in disbelief.

She was inconsolable. she couldn't accept it and didn't understand why or how this could have happened. We're going to come back to the way the scene looked after the investigation gets underway, and they really start to identify suspicious things or interesting things in her apartment. But as of now, they're stumped as to where Eleni went before she was killed. But they're going to start talking to friends and people who knew her and were close to her. And that is when one of her friends reveals that they were actually hanging out with Eleni at her apartment the night of Tuesday, November 27th, from about 830 to 9.30 p.m.

And as they were leaving, she got on the phone with another friend. I'm going to call her Nora, just for clarity. Nora and Nelene were very close. They were like best friends, and they were on the phone from about 9.30 p.m. for almost two hours till about 11.15 p.m. And this was something Nora said was completely normal for them. They would just hang out together via phone, do chores, talk about their day, their plans. and speaking of plans, Nora tells the investigators that while Eleni was on the phone with her,

she was talking about a guy she met about a week earlier named Alex. Aleni thought he was really cute. He seemed sweet and they'd been exchanging Facebook messages with one another. He was going to be in town and kind of out of the blue asked Eleni if she wanted to walk through the city center and grab a bite to eat. There were a lot of cute restaurants in this area. And although it was close to midnight, and that seems a bit late, many Greek restaurants stay open pretty late. It's actually customary to eat dinner around 10 p.m. in many regions of Europe,

particularly in the southern countries like Spain, Italy, and Greece. It's common for people to dine late in the evening, typically because it's pretty warm throughout the day, which makes cooler evening hours more enjoyable for socializing and enjoying a meal. Eleni mentioned planning to meet Alex at a steakhouse nearby. I looked, and sure enough, many restaurants were open until about 11.45 p.m. Nora says that while she was still on the phone, there was a knock on Aleni's door. And Aleni told Nora that it must be Alex, and they were going to leave to go eat. Then they hung up. But she said that wasn't the last time she was in contact with Eleni. About an hour or so later, at exactly 107 a.m. She gets a text that says, call me in an hour.

No, most women know exactly what a text like this means. It usually means, hey, I'm a text. I may or may not be having a good time right now, but I'm going to give myself a way out in case I want to leave early. It was already 1 o'clock in the morning when Nora was getting this text and unfortunately, she fell asleep. So she never got a chance to call Eleni in an hour. And when she woke up the next morning, she realized that Eleni hadn't called her back, so she figured that everything must have been wonderful. She had a great time with Alex. Since that was the last person, Eleni said she was supposed to be with that night.

Well, now at this point, the investigators decide to pull up any kind of CCTV footage from around her apartment that they could find. She does live in a pretty busy area in the center of roads. And luckily, they end up being able to pick up the front section of where her apartment is, and they're scrubbing through the footage. They finally stumble upon a person that look like a Lenny, and she's with a guy. It's a few minutes after midnight. The timestamps on this video are actually incorrect. It was not 2 a.m. It was more like 12 a.m.

You can see Eleni in a long-sleeve white shirt coming out from her building, and she is with who they presume is this Alex guy. They embrace, and it appears as though he gives her a kiss on the head. Then they're walking side by side until they're out of frame. The investigators backtrack. They go further back in the video and they see the guy coming up to where Aleni's apartment is, kind of wandering around like he's looking for maybe the correct building. Maybe he's calling her at this point to let her know that he's there.

And then she comes out to join him. If you're watching, what would you think at this point as an investigator? To me, they look friendly enough. So it makes you wonder what happened next? Where did they go? And how did Eleni end up dead? Well, from another vantage point, they're able to see vehicles that are coming and going from this area.

And since it is late at night, there wasn't as much traffic as usual. So they take note of all the cars and their license plan numbers. As they looked up the owners of each car, they ruled them out one by one by their alibi. or the fact they did not fit this Alex person's description. They weren't even sure if his name was really Alex at this point. All they knew was that it was the guy she last was seen walking with. And that's when they get a hit on a white truck. They see leaving that vicinity not too long after Eleni was seen on that footage. It's an older kind of worn out mini truck. Now these are not very popular here in the United States, but it's important that you know what this truck looks

like for context. They're kind of like a truck front. And then they have more. of a shallow bed in the back, not like a pickup truck. It's not deep. I'm showing an example on the screen, but there's only enough room for two people in the truck cab, and this particular truck had a cover on top of the back storage area. The footage is poor as usual, and they can't make out who is inside the front. But they run the license plate, and it comes up as belonging to a business that's owned by a well-known Greek family on the island with the last name Kokoras. The Kokora's family was said to be wealthy, connected, and owned half of Pefcos, which is an area of roads. The family owned three or four health shops, a number of restaurants, including a Chinese restaurant, cafes, and even a small hotel.

So, of course, investigators are curious as to why someone driving this business truck would be picking up a money. But they had narrowed it down. This had to be the vehicle that she left in. As more CCTV footage is being turned over, one gas station in the direction of the beach where Eleni's body was eventually found shows the same white mini truck right outside of roads, heading towards the town of Lindos at 1235 a.m. So at that point in time, Aleni had been traveling for over 30 minutes with this person who picked her up. Once again, the footage is grainy. You can't see inside the truck to know for sure that Eleni's even inside,

but the likelihood is high. And this is the direction of Pefkos, where the Kokoris family has property. and family members who live there. As a matter of fact, one of the Kokoris family members was the one who used his binoculars to confirm what he saw that morning that they found Aleni's body on shore. So this starts to look very suspicious. Is this family somehow involved?

Why was their truck being used? Why did one of their family members locate the body? Investigators get in touch with the business owner, Mr. Kokoris. And it's almost like he was expecting this call because he immediately lets them know that someone was borrowing the company truck the night. A 19-year-old guy named Alexander Luca. Now, Mr. Koukhoris made sure to point out that this guy was an Albanian. He's an Albanian immigrant, not a Greek.

And here is where the xenophobia and blatant discrimination comes in. From the beginning of this investigation, there's already a sense that the stranger, someone not from Greece, who doesn't belong there, and is not one of them, has killed this young girl. Mr. Cocorus provides investigators with Alex's address. He lives in a kind of run-down area on roads close to the university where Eleni goes to school. With the confirmation of his name, investigators cross-check it against Alenna's Facebook, and sure enough, they are friends on there. I'm sure if you're like me, you're curious, and you like to know what things and people look like.

I wondered what this Alex guy looked like because we heard Aleni liked him, he was cute, he was sweet. But the best description I can give you, especially if you're only listening, is he was the typical Abercrombie model, light-skinned, light eyes, light brown hair, toned, muscular tan physique. He loved to show off, especially his six-pack. He posted a lot of selfies and photos of himself posing to accentuate his body. He's a thirst trap, so to speak, as they say. It definitely appeared he prioritized working out and partying, the typical college-age guy. And at first glance, this guy does not really seem intimidating or evil. Not by looking at him. You don't really think he could have carried out such a horrific crime.

And I realize that I haven't even gotten into the details yet of what actually happened to Eleni. So I think this is a good time to pause as part of the investigation and tell you about her autopsy. Coroner, Mr. Pana Yotis-Chotrescos, who himself was shocked by what he saw and described what was done to Aleni as extreme inhumane behavior, added that there was no trace of humanity in these actions. And he revealed that although she had fallen from the rocks and sustained significant injuries because of that, Eleni's body showed clear signs of trauma, which occurred before she fell. I shouldn't even say fell, but you'll hear what I mean. These injuries included severe bruising and marks around her neck. Some indicated that she was manually strangled since there were actually marks from fingertips on her neck.

There were also what's called cervical effusion present, and this is a big thing. build of a fluid in the spinal cord, and it was specifically in her neck region. This is typical in strangulation cases. She also sustained blunt force trauma to her head and her body. She was hit over and over again, again and the injuries to her head were so severe that her skull had fractured, and she had a brain hemorrhage. There were slashes and stab wounds to her neck, and the top of her left ear was cut off. If all that wasn't shocking enough, one of the most shock. One of the most shock aspects of her death was actually the cause. The report revealed that even though she could have died from her injuries that she sustained from the stab wounds and the head injuries and the brain bleed,

Eleni had water in her lungs. This meant that she had been alive when she was thrown off of the cliff. In her final moments, she had been paralyzed, unable to move and save herself. In the end, she drowned in the shallow waters, all alone, in pain, as she was paralyzed. As a while she was in her life, each one of those waves crashed over her. And that to me is so unbelievably horrendous and disgusting. The medical examiner also estimated that Eleni's time of death was somewhere between 8 o'clock p.m. on November 27th and 6 a.m. on November 28th. But we know that she was still alive at midnight on the 28th. So that means within six hours after she left her apartment with Alex, she had been murdered. But at this point, there's no way for them to know how long she would have been sitting in that water just suffering before she took her final breath.

The fact that her body had been in the water for as long as it was meant, it was hard for them determined if she had been forced into a sex act. But the fact that she was unclothed except for her braw, led the medical examiner and the detectives to believe that this entire murder was sexually motivated. 19-year-old Alex was apprehended at his apartment, and he was then detained, and they began questioning him about his involvement in Eleni's murder. At first, of course, he said he had nothing to do with it, that he liked Eleni, he was excited for their dates, and he would never hurt her. He has no idea what happened after the time they were together, but admits he did pick her up and they went out to eat. He was like, look, you can look at her Facebook messages.

She wanted to hang out with me. I don't know what happened. And it was true. They had exchanged a number of messages over the course of about a week. In those early messages, Alex talked about his interests and how he spent a lot of time volunteering for various charities on the island, and he also complimented Eleni's appearance. He told her she was beautiful and exotic. In those messages, he came across as an all-round good guy. Eleni was immediately attracted Alex. He seemed kind, he was charitable, and clearly he took care

of himself. His Facebook profile had pictures of him running at marathons, working out and having fun. Eleni and Alexander kept in touch for the next few days via messenger. Eleni talked about school and how she wanted to travel in the future, and Alex even said that he wanted to join her. A week after that first message, they agreed to take their connection offline and made in real life. All in all, it seemed like a typical conversation

between two consenting young adults excited to get to know each other better. But investigators know there's no footage of a lenny coming back to her apartment. So they know that Alex must be lying about not knowing what happened, and it takes a while to subpoena things like social media records, phone records, and obtain even more CCTV footage throughout the city to gather more evidence, and at the cliffside, all of which the authorities were already trying

to do. So they were really hoping that if they came down really hard on Alex, he would break. And especially when we're talking about a foreigner in Albanian over there in Greece, they're not very kind to people that are not from Greece. So they were going to come down hard on him no matter what. And sure enough, he breaks. But still, he breaks. But still, he's. He doesn't admit any wrongdoing, but instead he actually reveals that the real killer was his 21-year-old friend, Manolas Kakaris, that he met at the gym a few months before this. And if that name sounds familiar, I've already told you about the Kokoras family. The wealthy, powerful, well-known Greek family who practically owned half the island?

Yeah. Well, this is one of Mr. Kokoris' sons. Alex's version of the events that unfolded that night are horrifying. He starts by saying that his intention was to grab some food nearby Aleni's apartment, and then she was just supposed to go back home. But they walked around for a little bit, and by the time they got to the Steakhouse, it was closing. That's when he said he suggested to Aleni that she'd come back to his friend's vacation home where he was staying, and they could grab some food on the way at a fast food place,

and they could eat on the rooftop, they could drink, hang out together, and then maybe even take a walk on the beach. Eleni agreed, and they drove to Manolis's family beach house in Lindo's, where Manolos and Alex were staying. Now, this account adds up so far with the CCTV footage. They have the footage from the apartment with Alex, and then they also have the footage of the truck leaving the apartment, and then showing back up near a gas station right near Lindoz. Alex explained that once they got to Manolos's family's beach house, he and Eleni were in the kitchen grabbing drinks.

They had vodka and mixers. Then they went to the living room to eat. afterward he and Eleni were just hanging out. They were on the rooftop, they began kissing, and this is when he claimed Manolis walked up to them and saw them making out. So Alex decided to take Aleni somewhere more private into one of the bedrooms where they continued to kiss. And eventually he said he was lifting Eleni onto the bed and they were starting to get a little more intimate when all of a sudden a drunken Manolus stormed into the bedroom, unclothed from the waist down, and clearly ready for action.

Use your imagination or don't, because this is just disgusting. That's when Alex claims that Manolis said to Eleni something to the effect of this is my house, he brought you here and I get to F you. Of course, he used the real F word. Visit BetMGM Casino and check out the newest exclusive. The Price is Right Fortune Pick.

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Cadillac Optic was the number one selling luxury EV in Canada for 2025. Find your rhythm across a seamless 33-inch display and an immersive 19-speaker AKG surround audio system. This city demands agility and optic delivers with precision to make every drive extraordinary. Let's take the Cadillac. Find out more at Cadillac canada.ca. Luxury sales claim based on S&P Global Mobility Canadian New Vehicle Total Registrations for calendar year 2025 for the Cadillac definition of luxury. Well, Aleni was not okay with this and she began to try to leave, at which point, Manola stands in her way and said, if I don't get to F you, then you're not leaving. The words were way worse. It was something like, if you don't sit on my bleep, then you can't leave. Alex

explained that he was very intoxicated and he can't recall the details perfectly, but Eleni wasn't going to give in. Alex said she tried to get away and Manolis pushed her onto the bed, and then he got on top of her and he punched her in the face. Alex was shocked and scared, and at this point, Aleni is disoriented from the strike and she calls out for help, but Alex admitted he didn't intervene at this point. He said that Manolas was so angry, he was scared of him. And he told Eleni something like, Now you'll see what happens since she was resisting. He went into the kitchen and he came back with a knife and he waved it in Aleni's face. All the while, he's trying to take off her clothes and

he's trying to force himself on her. As he continued doing this and threatening her, Eleni was screaming for help. When Manolas then grabbed her by the neck and slammed her head against one of the walls. Alex said he yelled for him to stop, and that's when Manolus grabbed an electric iron coming after Eleni again. At that point, Alex said he pushed Manolus, and Manolus swung the iron at Alex, but it grazed him and struck Eleni in the head. Manolus raised the iron again and swung it at her head once more, and that's when she fell to the floor and stopped moving. Manolus told Alex that he took a nitrate supplement when he was working out, and that made him go into a frenzy. I had to look this up. I wasn't sure what it was. It is a strength and energy booster. And remember, Manolus's family owns

health shops that would certainly carry a product like this. Alex said that Aleni was bleeding from her nose and her temple, and he was in total shock at what his friend just did. He then told Manolus not to hurt him. And then he ran and picked up Aleni. He brought her into the bathroom to clean her up, and at this point she was regaining consciousness. Alex said she asked him to look at her face in the mirror, but he didn't want her to see herself, so he didn't let her. He then placed her in the shower to rinse her off, and afterward he gave her a sheet to cover herself because his intention was to take her to the hospital and he didn't want her to be cold. He took her back to the main living area, and when she saw Manolis, she told him she was going to call the police. Well, this enraged

Manolas. Alex said Manolas threatened to hurt him if he didn't help him hold a Lenny down. Alex said he wanted to get her to the truck to get her help. But Manolus seemed to agree at that point and they carried her to the mini truck. They got her into the passenger seat with Manolus driving and Alex squeezing in next to her. Alex noticed that they were not going in the direction of town, that they weren't going to the hospital. And instead, he said Manolus told him, let's just finish this. he drove seven minutes away and stopped at the top of a cliff. Then he grabbed Eleni from the truck, tossed her over his shoulder, and she was barely conscious. But her last words, according to Alex, was that her father would find them.

And that is so heartbreaking. They knew that she was alive when she was thrown off the edge of that cliff. Alex said after Manolas was finished, dropping Eleni's body, which he claimed Manolas threw on the ground, and then kicked over the edge. He came back and said to Alex, I got rid of her because she would have put me in jail. He said, well, Albanian, it's over. Let's go. Alex said the Manolis threatened to kill him and his family if he didn't help him clean up the evidence. So they drove back to the house and they cleaned up.

And then they returned to the cliff and threw all the evidence off the side, Eleni's clothing, her purse, and the bloody clothes. Wow. I mean, all of this sounds horrible, but plausible. The investigators were able to obtain security footage from a camera on a house in the area of the beach, and sure enough, it captured the white truck at 2.26 a.m. driving in the direction of that cliffside, and it returned to the area of the beach house around 242. So this means it only took them 16 minutes to discard of her body. a human being that was still alive. And then 45 minutes later, the white truck is seen again on the same footage,

and this time they were discarding all of the evidence. Alex even agreed to show the investigators where they dumped all these items. They were then able to collect Eleni's personal belongings. They retrieved her black purse, which you can actually see her wearing in the CCTV footage of her coming out of the apartment. Now it was wet and full of sand. There was the key to her apartment on a key ring, a torn cardigan, women's underwear torn on one side, a woman's shirt, a broken electric iron,

a Lenny's school identification card, a couple dirty sponges, a pair of men's underwear, a pair of sports shoes, and a kitchen knife. I've been showing a few of these pictures on the screen. They were found in a different area than where the investigators had found the other items on the cliff side. And these items didn't make it into the water because the cliff wasn't just vertical. There were additional ledges and brush and rocks that kept the items from falling down. But it was dark when these guys were there. So they probably didn't know that. Alex seemed to be cooperative.

So now it was Manolus's turn. The investigators wanted to speak with him. And they also wanted to search the vacation home where Alex claimed the attack took place. I want to start there. Alex led investigators to the Kokoris Beach House. I'm not sure if they needed search warrants in Greece because it seems like they go right in these places. But Alex said the two of them cleaned up. Well, it truly looked like they never cleaned a day in their life and maybe they hadn't

because this place was a mess. And it was obvious a violent struggle had happened there. They found blood all over the hallway in the kitchen on the ceiling, the walls, the staircase, the bathroom. More blood was found on the tile of the base of the bathtub, on the shower curtain, on the wall, and a lot of the blood was smeared as though they tried to clean it. and there were even smears across the kitchen ceiling. They attempted to remove that as well unsuccessfully.

In the kitchen, you can see cleaning supplies on the counter, a bleach bottle, several washcloths near the sink. On the kitchen table sat three yellow coffee cups. One was almost full of a clear liquid. A vodka bottle with maybe three quarters of vodka still left in it. A pill bottle. A lighter, an energy drink. Another couple taller coffee mugs,

among a bunch of other items. And then in that same room, there were two dirty twin-sized mattresses on the floor in front of a TV. There were no pillows on these mattresses and hardly any blankets except for one dirty white one and a dirty pillowcase. A pair of sandals sat at the end of the mattress closest to the wall. You may or may not already get a sense that these mattresses were not set up for sleeping. They were strategically placed in front of this TV for a reason that I will get to soon. But you may be able to guess. There was a very obvious blood smears in the bathroom wall,

as well as a dirty mop in a bucket next to the toilet. It's almost as though they never thought that anyone would even come in here because they hardly tried to cover up this crime at all. And it's probably because they thought that Eleni's body would make it out to the sea by the strong current and winds and never to be found. The forensic team collected everything of interest, including two sponges, two towels, abacca tobacco, another kitchen knife, which was bent, two open condoms, one which appeared to be more used than the

other, and most of all, the base to an iron, which was missing. The iron was already found at the side of the cliff. So they're putting it all together, and this is pretty obvious. Eleni was harmed here, and now they go to speak to Manolis and get his version of the events that unfolded that night. and it was very different from what Alex said. Of course it was. First of all, the fact that Manolis was Greek and Alex was an immigrant from Albania seemed to be the crux of his reasoning as to why he was, of course, innocent. It was all this terrible, unhinged person from another country

who he claimed he hardly knew and only met six months before this at a kickboxing class that killed Eleni. He claimed he'd only hung out with Alex a few times, a couple times to get coffee and a few times with some girls. But Manola says, I have a girlfriend. Her name is Ornella. We were together for six months and you can check with her. She have only good things to say about me.

Manola said before that he dated another girl named Annabella who had gone off to England. And he had no trouble getting women. This was, of course, to prove that he wouldn't have tried forcing Eleni into a sex act, claiming why would he need to? He was rich, good-looking, a nice body, beach house to take girls? Women were always wanting to be with him, according to him. Instead, he claimed it was Alex. Alex was poor.

He couldn't get women. He didn't drive nice cars. He didn't have nice things. Manolus said he just had him around basically to be his assistant, which is what Alex's purpose was, according to Manolas, on the night in question. He claimed he was the one who knew Eleni. He had invited Eleni to come to his beach house, and that Alex was merely his designated driver. He instructed him to drive to Aleni's apartment and fetch her, and that he was there.

He was in the back of the truck. Now, wait a minute. I was a little perplexed by this. Where? And I've actually read articles that mention this. He was in the back. He was in the back seat. First of all, no back seat.

Okay, no back seat. And then you mean to tell me that this not so small dude is inside the shallow bed and back where there's a cover that has clearly seemed completely down in the video clip of the truck leaving roads and in the other clip of it coming up to Lindos at the gas station. So of course, when he's questioned about this, he changes his story. And he says, oh, no, no, wait, I was actually inside the front with Alex and Eleni. And I found that to be laughable. But, I mean, it could be true.

Who knows? Manolis claimed that at first Eleni was kind of like, ooh, why is this other guy here? speaking of Alex. And that's when Manolis explained, oh, he's just my driver. But we already know that Eleni never mentioned Manolus to her friend, only Alex. And the messages between them really were about them agreeing to meet that night and talking for a week. But Manolus claimed he'd already been dating Eleni for a while. Seems to be a lie right away. It doesn't make sense. But he continued, He said they stopped at a kebab shop on the way to his beach house, and he made Alex get out to go get them. But unfortunately, they weren't open.

And that's convenient. Because if they found CCTV footage and they saw Alex walk up, then it would look like the story is true. But Manolis's version is that the three of them arrive at 10 p.m. We already know that's incorrect. It was not 10 p.m. It was past 1230. He said that as soon as they got in, he poured him and Aleni some vodka and that Alex was and drinking. Manolas claimed he took Eleni to one of his bedrooms, and they had intercourse.

When they were finished, he left the room to pour two more cups of vodka, and that's when he heard something happening. Eleni was talking to Alex. She said something to insult his manhood, and Manola said he saw Alex get up and punch her in the face. Manola said he didn't intervene because, according to him, he was in a panic. He was afraid of Alex. He said Alex punched her in the jaw, and then she fell to the ground and fainted. Then, Alex put her in a headlock and she went unconscious. And that's when he says Alex hit her on the head in a way that could have killed her. He was shocked and he was frozen in fear, so he did nothing to stop it.

And then when Alex grabbed the iron, Manola said he couldn't watch, he went into another room, not wanting to see what Alex was going to do. He claims he never actually saw him hit her with it, but he heard Melanie screaming for help. But all Manolus could do was sit there and pull out his hair and devastation. That's quite the story, and it's not over yet. He continued saying that he didn't call for help because he was trembling with fear. And then he saw Alex go to the kitchen and grab a knife with a plastic handle, and he said that she was going to pay for this dearly.

That's a translation. All of this is, by the way, but I think you get the idea. Manola said he never stopped Alex because he was too much in shock. But he did see him stab Eleni in the neck. He was telling Alex to stop, since she was already unconscious, but instead, Alex yelled to him that he actually needed another knife. And I'm assuming since that one had bent. Remember, we saw it in the evidence photo?

Then Manola said that Alex took Eleni to the bathroom, hit her head on the sink, and yelled, I will cut your neck. Then he threw her in the bathtub, removed all of her clothes, and he poured cold water on her. Manolis claimed he kept telling him, don't do this.

But he just sat there, looking at all the blood. It was everywhere. On the walls left and right, on the ceiling, on the bed? And then he watched as Alex wrap Delennie and bedsheets and carried her out of the house. He has no idea where they went,

because he stayed behind. He said that his grandmother was staying on the floor below them and that she will tell them that they were smiling and having a good time with the girl. He never heard her. It was all Alex. Wow. What would you have believed as an investigator?

Regardless, both men are arrested because according to them, both of them are involved. And until it can be proven which aversion is true, they had to detain them both. And on December 5th, it's announced that the authorities have two men in custody for Eleni's murder, and this starts a media storm. There were so many accusations being made mostly that it couldn't be the Greek boy. It must be the Albanian. That's the whole stranger-danger xenophobia part of this case.

So many were quick to judge the so-called outsider. The local news was very quick to make it seem like Manolis, the Greek, was an unwilling participant who was influenced by the violent and dangerous foreigner. And Manolus's family was also going with this narrative, and they quickly obtained an attorney for their 21-year-old son. Alex was also represented, and both of the men claimed they were not guilty at their arraignment just days later, pinning the crime on one another. They were jailed together at first, in the same cell just waiting for the next part of this

case to happen, but they refused to speak to one another. Alex was vocal about how he felt about Manolis telling the media all the things that they did. He said, I don't care what the Greek says. I have a lawyer, which insinuated he was telling the truth and that his lawyer would uncover that. In the beginning, when Alex gave the authorities Manolus his name, they actually did go to his house. And whoever answered the door told them, he's not here. He's working at his father's carpentry shop. So they went there and they started speaking with his mother. But she stopped talking them as soon as Manolas's father arrived and then none of them wanted to cooperate. But they did end putting enough pressure on them to reveal where Manolus was. This family had so much money and influence

that Manolas didn't have to play by the same roles that everyone else did. He was used to getting his way and when he didn't, he would simply throw money at the problem until he did. When they ran a background on check on him. They found out that he had previous charges for theft and for physical violence. None of his crimes have resulted in anything more than a fine, which his family were more than happy to pay for to make it disappear. And to contradict Manolis' story, Alex claimed that Eleni had no idea who Manolus even was, and that when they arrived at the beach house, all Manolos did was brag about himself to Eleni, talking about how rich he was, that that truck she came in didn't even belong to Alex. It was his. He told about that.

houses his family owned, which included a property that looked over the water in Pfecki. But then in turn, to the investigators and the media, Manola said other things to say. Other really messed up statements, including one, where he claimed that when Alex tried to stab Eleni, it wasn't working and it wasn't killing her because, and I hate to even repeat this, but I will because it's just the truth. He said it was because she was too fat. Wow. And she was not fat. That really bothered me. Like, why would you even say that about someone who is now deceased. Later that day, after the arrests, a large crowd gathered at Fokia Beach, where Eleni's body had been found, and they lit candles in her memory. They set those candles out on shore,

and they said prayers for her, and that justice would be done. It was impossible to know which version of these stories was the truth, but the investigators know that either way, Eleni texted her friend at 107 a.m. to say call her in an hour because something felt off. It must have. That would have been close to when she arrived at the beach house, so maybe as soon as she realized there were two men there that night, she panicked. And there's a reason why. Because something terrible had happened to Eleni just one year before her murder. While this investigation is going on, friends of hers are coming forward with some shocking allegations, ones that would cause even more of an uproar in the media and a media circus. It would lead to the biggest

protest for women's rights the town had ever seen. Eleni's friends explained that one night back in November of 2017, Eleni was out at a nightclub with friends when she began talking to a guy and they were hitting it off. He invited her to come hang out at his place nearby and she agreed. When she arrived, there were two other guys at this apartment and at first everything was okay. They were drinking together, they were hanging out, but soon Eleni began to feel sick. It turned out that someone had slipped something into her drink, and soon she was completely out of it. She could vaguely remember being videotaped while these three men forced her to carry out unspeakable acts on them. She was helpless as they took turns violating

her, and she was lucky to make it out alive because of how violent they were treating her. The next day, when she was back at her apartment and finally feeling better, she was mentally broken. She didn't know what to do, but she couldn't keep what happened to herself. So she confided in her close. She was close friends and they encouraged her to go to the police and report it. But just before she did, one of the perpetrators messaged her on Facebook and told her that everything was recorded on a video, and if she went to the authorities, they would release it publicly and essentially, everyone would call her terrible names. No one would ever want to be with her because she was a loose woman. They said it in other words. They were blackmailing her, her dignity in exchange for her

silence? Which one is she going to choose? Eleni could have stayed silent, but she decided that it wasn't a deal she was willing to make. If she gave those men the power to hold that video over her, she would never be free from them. It was around the same time in Greece that force intercourse was finally being recognized as a real crime with consequences. I know. And the law still didn't consider whether it was consensual or not. And what I mean by this is that forced intercourse occurred as far as they were concerned when someone was coerced by, you know, physical violence or a threat of immediate danger, whether or not they consented didn't matter. Even if they were saying no, it didn't matter. But if they weren't harmed into it, it wasn't considered a crime. The law

didn't recognize married men who forced their wives in intercourse either. That wasn't a crime. And what was worse, as if the unmarried perpetrator agreed to marry their victim, they wouldn't be punished for their crime. What? I was thinking, in what world does that even make sense? You get violated and then you would even think about marrying the person who did it to you so they won't get charged with a crime? So backwards, I don't get it. But it was actually a step from where Greece was prior to 2017.

So Eleni, thinking that she would be helped by the law and the authorities, she bravely went to the police department and roads, and she told them what happened. That must have been so difficult to do. This fact alone gives you insight into the kind of person. Aleni Woods. Even though her attackers might release the video of her, she had a strong sense of what was right and wrong, and she wanted to protect other women. Eleni gave the police the name of the guy she had met that night and everything she could possibly remember about the two other men, explaining that she was told that everything had been recorded and they were threatening

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Find out more at Cadillac Canada.ca. Luxury sales claim based on S&P Global Mobility Canadian New Vehicle Total Registrations for calendar year 2025 for the Cadillac definition of luxury. They said it wasn't worth their effort to investigate it since a week had already gone by. That's right. She can't possibly be reporting something that happened so long ago. Really? So a woman's body can be completely violated. And if just a week goes by, that's too bad? I don't think so. It's like they were referring to food that had an expiration date. This is a person's body. It's a person's dignity that was stolen from them. A young person

who's coming there for help. And the videotape? Well, when she mentioned it, the cops wanted to see it to believe it. Wow. And they added that if the men had recorded it, then she had to have done something to make them think she wanted to have relations with them. In other words, it was a Lenny's fault that she had been treated the way she was by these men. Essentially, she was a tease that she was asking for it. By going home with this guy to begin with, the authorities completely dismissed Aleni's report. They didn't even take a statement in the incident book, which is required for any complaint regardless of whether it leads to an investigation or not. It was as though they were telling Aleni that what

happened to her didn't matter, that her pain and her trauma were insignificant, and it didn't deserve to be acknowledged. Like it never even happened in the first place. Greece is a profoundly patriarchal society where men hold the majority of the power, dating back to ancient Greece, as far back as the bronze age and the dawn of the Greek mythology in about 3,000 to 1100 BC, with men being at the top of the social hierarchy, and violence against women was normalized as a way to maintain male control. We can see this just by looking at Greek art, most of which I can't even show here on YouTube, but it glamorized and normalized men forcing themselves on women and promoting the

R-word culture. Patriarchy and Greek imposes gender roles that dictate how women should act, how they should speak, where they should go, who they should go with. The word itself, patriarchy, comes from the Greek language, which means the rule of the father, and it implies men make the rules. This is highly ingrained into the minds of the Greek people, and unfortunately, it is a very hard mindset to break. And some may argue that men don't want to change things. Aleni's experience was horrific, and the way the officials responded to her pain was equally appalling. But tragically, this was just the beginning of Aleni's mistreatment.

But in that moment, she felt like she had to deal with her trauma on her own. She became withdrawn and quiet, and the bright spark that she had that once defined her seemed to fade. She felt an overwhelming sense of shame and guilt about what happened. So much so, she couldn't bring herself to tell her parents. She knew that if she did, it would confirm there were fears about the dangers of living away from home in a big city, and they would insist that she came back. But Eleni didn't want to leave roads.

She wanted to continue her studies and regain her. control of her life, so she chose to suffer in silence, keeping her pain hidden from those who loved her the most. Thankfully, Eleni had a very strong and supportive group of friends, and they did their best to be there for her. And slowly with time, there were signs that she might be finding her way back to herself. She began to go out more, and there was hope that eventually she could heal and move forward. And it was in November of 2018, exactly one year later, when she finally felt she was ready to forward and start dating again. What terrible irony that her first date was with the devil. But neither of these men, Alex nor Manolis, looked like monsters. They usually don't. If they did,

no woman would be tricked into trusting them. Instead, they looked like the boy next door, presenting themselves as kind, charismatic good guys. So the fact that this had happened to her meant that if she did notice that it wasn't just Alex there at that house that night, she would have been on guard right away. And as the investigation progressed, it was uncovered that the three men who violated Eleni in 2007 were a 19-year-old, a 22-year-old, and a 23-year-old, and their names were never released to the media. But they actually knew Manolis and Alex.

And not only that, one of the men was friends with Manolus. And this caused investigators to wonder if Manolus and Alex were aware of what these men had done to Eleni and if they knew about that video and possibly even watched it. Because this connection did not seem like a coincidence. How did Alex begin messaging Eleni to begin with? They thought it was highly unlikely he just searched aimlessly on Facebook. Instead, it appeared almost planned. If Alex and Manolus knew that these three men had been able to force her before,

Maybe they imagined they could do the same. One of the men actually lived right on the same street that Alex lived on. It wasn't a big area at all. And the apartment she was taken to that night in 2017 was right next to where Alex lived. That is very suspicious. At this point, the media has come out with this story and women are marching in the streets. They're holding up signs that say things like they're killing us, showing that femicide is real and should be recognized.

We still have issues here in America of domestic killing. and even femicides, where we as women are hunted, violated, and killed just for being women and discarded after being used for men's pleasure. There was so much publicity about this case. Many people in power wanted the noise to stop before more information was uncovered. Corruption was rampant. There were people high up that were trying to get the lead investigator, Officer Zovas, pulled from this case after he was threatened to drop it and he refused. They thought that he was doing too much in their perspective, but luckily this man couldn't be bribed. Then, Greek prosecutor Aristotelio Danga entered the case. She was determined to get justice for Eleni

and her family. And the fact that the prosecutor was a woman made a huge difference. Just one look at what happened on Aleni's own Facebook profile following the news shows how backwards some people's thinking is about women who are victims of sexual violence. Coincidentally, on November 24th, just days before she was killed, Eleni had changed her cover photo to a picture of a storefront with a sign on the door that read, if you're a racist, sexist, homophobic, or an a-hole, don't come in. Now, who knows why she posted this at the time, but there were some nasty comments from people after she was killed who claimed that she brought this upon herself. One person was calling her an immigrant outsider, even though we know she's from Greece. But for whatever

reason he claimed she was from Syria. And on the picture of her commenting about how much she loved living in Rhodes, this nasty person said it was a journey with no return for her. And then you put emojis with laughing faces. While the public came to her rescue, they acted like their own detectives trying to track down who this person was that was hiding behind a Facebook profile. It even made it into the news. One article said that these commenters were saying such nasty things they were so bad it would make Hitler blush. Now, I don't know about that. But I did try to translate some of them, and I don't know if it's translating exactly, because the first comment says, go feed the worms, you filthy scrotum. But clearly it's meant to insult Eleni, who is now deceased

by saying that she's food for the bugs in her grave. And that's messed up. Others said, that's what you get for hanging out with an Albanian. So much victim blaming. Even comments that asked, she went out with two guys to begin with, that she must have wanted them. People came to her defense, and they even reported the users to the cybercrimes division. This opened up arguments about why the authorities hadn't looked into Alex and Manolis's phones and their Facebook accounts, but they were trying at this point. Both of the phones were now missing, and they never found Eleni's phone, so it proved to be very challenging. I noticed that even back in 2015, Aleni was skeptical about people, and this was before her attack by those three guys.

She wrote a note on her phone and posted it to Facebook. It said, translated, quote, count people in the end. At the beginning, everyone seems good, end quote. She actually composed that note back on August 22nd of 2015, but posted it to her Facebook, April 13th of 2016. It's basically saying that everyone puts on a front when you first meet them, and you have to wait to see their true colors. It's just sad that Eleni didn't have time to tell who were a killer or killers truly were. Investigators were getting a clear picture, though.

Even though he had been clouded by Manolis' family's influence, that it was so strong they painted him as the victim. His family commissioned articles, news stories, and all kinds of positive PR to present him as the unwilling participant in Eleni's murder. They made him out to be devastated by what happened. In Greece, Albanians are often viewed with deep suspicion and prejudice. Manolus knew this all too well. And even though he had once called Alexander his best friend, he was more than happy to use his friend's foreign status to get him off the hook. Now, that's not to say that Alex didn't deserve their criticism.

I'll get to him in a moment. He was by no means, a good guy. But he wasn't a worse guy or a more responsible guy just because he was Albanian. In the media, at least, Alex took the full. force of the blame, whereas Manolis was portrayed as naive and innocent, the local who got caught up in something terrible. But he was a good guy from a good family, and he should be viewed more positively than Alex, whose mother was just a maid and fathered just a construction worker. Alex had no college education and only cared about his looks, according to all these articles.

But investigators uncovered so much more about Manolus. People were coming forward. gladly. They had known him since childhood, and they said he was always a troubled kid. Even as a child in elementary school, his parents, who we know have a lot of money, enrolled him in the best private schools and roads. But at the age of 10, he beat a child in school so badly. Instead of him getting in trouble, the management just changed him to a new class. But things only got worse from there. Manolis grabbed a pair of scissors threatening a child and eventually cutting off their hair. At that point, the school kicked him out. So his parents, they tried to enroll him in a second private school on the island, but luckily

the school rejected him because of his background. Over the years, there were many fights that broke out between Manolis and other kids, and each time his parents would just conclude it wasn't their child's fault, always making excuses for him and just moving him to a new school. Seven different schools. Every time Manolus's father would claim his son was being targeted because of who he was. Almost as though he was saying that the kids were just jealous of him. When he graduated high school

but didn't hold down a job, his parents actually let him work at their businesses, but he hardly worked. And yet he still got paid. He would ride around town on tricked out motorcycles and bully people who he looked down on,

always showing off his muscles. His parents allowed him to have the equivalent of $500 every two weeks, and this wasn't a new thing. He would show up with a lot of money at his high school and he would just defiantly be like flaunting in front of the teachers and students. It was clear that Manolis believed because he had money, he was better than other people. Back in 2014, Manolus was once again expelled from school because of a fight that he got in with

another student. He was fighting him with his fists but also with a nightstick or a baton. This time the police were called and one of the professors who witnessed the fights spoke to the media and the police. Well, Manolus' father tracked the professor down. He cursed at him, threatened him that if the professor spoke to anyone about what happened again, he would see what would happen to him. So perhaps violence runs in the family. Then investigators pulled up a case that just happened in June of 2018, only five months prior to Alani's murder.

A world champion jiu-jitsu fighter sued Manolis and his family for injuries that he sustained when Manolos was doing tricks on his motorcycle and collided with the professional athletes' vehicle head-on when his bike went into oncoming traffic. The 29-year-old jiu-jitsu fighter could no longer compete because of his injuries, and he took legal action against the reckless 21-year-old. Yikes. So this dude was bad news, but as I mentioned, Alex was too. His facade began to crack as well. When a 19-year-old special needs student came forward to the police with her father, this changed the investigator's perspective on Alex and his story. The media actually never released her name, so for clarity, I'm going to call the 19-year-old girl Emma. And in reports, she was described as being 67%

intellectually affected, and I'm not sure what all that entails, but she did attend a special need school. Emma told the investigators that who she knows as 19-year-old Alex would come up and hang out in front of her special need school with other guys, and they would try to talk to the girls there. That made me sick to my stomach. He was talking to my stomach. He was targeting these vulnerable members of society that's sickening. She said she wasn't friends with any of the guys, but she was acquaintances with them. She would talk to them here and there, and then on December 1st, so just three days after Eleni's murder, Emma was approached by Alex and another 24-year-old guy. They convinced her to give them her phone number, and later that evening they called her and they

invited her to come take a drive with them and listen to some music together. After agreeing, they picked her up in a vehicle that Alex was driving, and they began driving to a remote area at the tip of roads where there was an aquarium. Now I looked this up on the map and I'm sure by night this area looks very different. By day, there's a beach with a lot of people hanging out, but at night I would imagine this being very desolate. She said the three of them started walking to where the bathrooms are located and once they were in a hidden place, they began to force themselves on her, making her have intercourse with them as well as other indecent acts. She couldn't fight against them. She wasn't strong enough, and Alex even slapped her across the face. But at one point, she began to

scream and fight harder, and for a moment they reduced the resistance and she was able to make her escape. But this poor teen, she faced post-traumatic shock, and she even met with a psychiatrist who reported that the girl's behavior had changed after what these men had done to her. And unfortunately, the girl did not have the courage to report this incident immediately. What prompted to do so was the fact that Alex's picture showed up in the media in relation to Eleni's murder, and she knew that she had to come forward. After this, arrest warrants were issued against both the 24-year-old man that was not in custody yet, and charges were added to Alex's record. When confronted with this new evidence, Alex cried, and he said that it was unfair. Instead of taking ownership,

he claimed that who we are calling Emma was dating the 24-year-old friend of his, and she mentioned that she was attracted to Alex, so they planned a three-way together, and it was 100% consented to. The investigators wanted to know how he could possibly be turned on enough, merely three days after what he claimed to witness Manolus due to Aleni to want to be involved in this act with Emma, consensually or not. And I thought that was a great question. I mean, wow, if he was truly affected by what he saw, by what Manolis did to Eleni. Why would he want to try to engage in something so similar to days afterward? He was a predator. That's clear. Alex maintained his innocence, though, saying that he tried to help Aleni, and that after what happened her, he never even went

out of his apartment. He's like, I didn't go out at all. Alex claimed that Emma was lying. All she wanted was money. That's why she was making up the story, so that the media would get onto it, so that she could sue him for money and get financial gain. He explained that Emma's family was poor and that they probably convinced her to come forward and make up lies. Alex added that he knows what's going on behind the scenes, that he's being discriminated against, and he even said he was afraid for his life. He was already being bullied in jail, and now with this news coming out, he's going to be in for it. And he was right about that. Once Alex was jailed and he was moved to a different cell than Manolis, he was in serious danger for his own life. Greek police,

prison guards and inmates are known for not being very kind to foreign prisoners. It wasn't looking good for Alex or Menolus. But that wasn't all. Another woman came forward. I'm going to call her Katia. And this time she claimed that Alex and Manolus worked as a team to attempt to violate her. This time, it was one week before Eleni's murder. Katia said that both men reached out to her on Facebook Messenger at random.

First, it was Manolus. They exchanged a few messages and he asked her to meet him. in person, but she refused. Later, she was then contacted by Alex. Now he caught her eye, so they began chatting, and soon he suggested coming out to a campsite for a party. And at the time, Katia said that Alex didn't appear to be dangerous. She said, quote, he seemed like an okay person to me, end quote. But on the night she was supposed to go with Alex, he explained he was coming with a friend of his, but that his friend would be driving his own car. Either way, it didn't matter because Katu's phone died before she could actually meet up with them, thankfully.

She added that at the time, it didn't seem strange at all that Alex was going to pick her up with a friend until a friend of her saw the news on TV and called her to let her know, the guy she was planning to go on a date with, and the one she refused to talk to on Facebook were both arrested. She was shocked. She started thinking about the fact that she could have died that night. So she came forward. It was now clear to investigators that Manolus and Alex had been running a scheme where Alex was the bait. He was the objectively more good-looking of the two men, and Manolis would bribe him with money and nice things to do his bidding.

But of course we find out that Alex began doing the same on his own with other friends of his, probably after knowing it worked a number of times. So now neither one of their stories made sense. It seemed like they were both involved and purposely pinning it on one another. Knowing everything we know, including how Eleni had already been, been through everything she had in 2017, I highly doubt if both of these men would have come to pick her up that night in that truck that she would have gotten in, especially in such close quarters.

And we know from the video that no one was in the back bed part. So it truly appears, like times before, that Alex used his good looks and his fake charm to convince Eleni to come back with him to the beach house, whether or not he said that it was his or his friends, who knows? We don't know for sure if she even knew how far she was going to be driven that night. because just after she arrived, she sent her friend that message. That's when she probably realized she and Alex weren't alone, but perhaps at first she still wanted to give Alex a chance,

despite what happened to her a year before. I mean, what are the chances that would have happened again? But when you're living in a place like this, maybe those chances are high. And that makes me sad. These men plan this. It's true that this area of the beach was so isolated, only local would have known where it was. So that would indicate the Manolis was the one who threw Aleni from the cliff.

However, the medical examiner mentioned that Eleni almost six feet tall and 154 pounds, plus in a semi-conscious state, it would have not been easy to move her. They had to bring her down a flight of stairs into this truck off of a cliff. And that it was not going to be easy for just one person in his expert opinion, he believed that the two men needed to carry her. Soon after this news came out, Alex was being taken to a hospital. He had been attacked by seven other inmates. He claimed they came screaming at him for being a killer and the R-word,

but he kept denying it and saying he didn't do it. But they took off his pants and his underwear, and the gang forced him into intercourse. Yeah. And it was proven to be true by a video of the incident that surfaced online, and I watched it. Definitely not going to be showing that here. But I will show you a still screenshot of Alex

cornered on a cot in his cell, clearly at the mercy of shirtless inmates who are kicking him and taking off his clothes as he tried to defend himself. The forensic physician concluded that the wounds he sustained and where they were down below, he was in fact forced into what he claimed. And I don't know what to say about that. One of the inmates that was involved was later questioned about it and he said that Alex got the minimum of what he deserved, that apparently they had knives ready to use on him, saying that what he did by not protecting a woman, a Greek woman, and letting her trust him only to be killed at either his hands or even his Greek friend's hands was not acceptable. So they took off his clothes and they did what they had to do to humiliate him for doing the same to Eleni.

This inmate added that he should have been paraded naked around the entire prison, but he deserved much worse. And by the way in Greece, the media cannot release pictures of the accused faces. So any time an article or a video was posted, their faces were always blurred out but the victim was not. And I've seen this before in cases I've done internationally, and I honestly think that they should show their face, but I guess innocent until proven guilty, and they don't want to, like, mar them because maybe if they're not guilty, they have to live with the fact that they were plastered all over. But Alex was then transferred to a new prison after this attack. And in the weeks after Eleni's murder, Greek police formed a special department for cases of domestic

killings. Days after the department was set up, Citizens Protection Minister made statement saying, quote, violence against women can happen to any family and any woman. Silence is tolerance, and tolerance feeds violence. Victims are not to blame for the silence. We are going to give them their voice back, end quote. Feminist activists were not backing down. They were following this case very closely, making sure the investigation was progressing and constantly rallying loudly to put pressure on the authorities, to bring Eleni's killers to justice, which is one of the biggest reasons this case didn't end up like so many that came before. And also, it was just by chance that the

prosecutor was a woman who actually took the time to look into the evidence critically and was in support of females' rights. It was clear that neither of these men's statements added up to the story that the evidence was telling. If either one of them wanted to, they could have stopped what was happening to Eleni. Each of them had a cell phone. They could have called the police or gone for help or stopped the attack by telling the grandmother that was downstairs. Remember that fact? But they didn't. And that led the prosecutor to believe that they had both attacked her together

and thrown her off the cliff together. And that meant they were equally culpable for her death. But there is an additional even more disturbing aspect of this case. The Manola's family didn't stop at blaming Alexander. And when they couldn't defend their son's actions with all the evidence that was coming out, they decided to go with a new tactic and blame Eleni herself, which highlights the misogyny in the great culture. This was going to be Manolis's defense. That's right, that Eleni was sleeping around with multiple men and she was

meeting people at random online, opening herself up to dangerous situations. She hadn't learned her lesson the first time a year before. Yikes. You would think that this is a bad idea to go with this as your defense, but soon both defendants were doubling down on this perspective, probably hoping that it would get them off the hook for what they had done to Eleni. They changed their stories again. They had to. There was too much evidence that showed not only did at least one of them have intercourse with her, and I'll explain that in a moment, but the electronic evidence was also damning.

Once the cell phone data reports came back, the investigators could see that a few hours after they dispose of Eleni off that cliff. 21-year-old Manolis sends a message to a well-known lawyer on the island. It was at 10, 11 in the morning, and they talk on the phone, and apparently he's asking them what he should do. 19-year-old Alex also made phone calls to a close friend. They talked at 812, 845, 1107, and 112. Why do you think he was making so many phone calls? I could guess.

But then the next night, at around 9.31 p.m. November 29th, Manolis went online and read the news that someone had found Aleni's body at sea but just an hour later at 1027 p.m. Guess what he's doing? He's Googling a song called Mama I'm a Criminal by a band called Audion. I hope I'm pronouncing that right. I looked up the lyrics and they're exactly what you would probably assume they're about. The singer confessing to their mother that they're a criminal and how he puts people's names on granite, meaning gravestones.

I think Eminem sampled the intro of the song back in 2022 and put out his own version. but Manolis was looking up the Greek version and listening to it. If that's not proof of guilt, there's plenty more where that came from. He was acting like nothing happened. He went further. He began talking to more women on Facebook, trying to get them to meet up with him. And when one wasn't interested and responded negatively to him, harassing her over and over again, I might add, he just moved on to four other girls on Messenger.

There was one girl. He was calling and calling and pressuring her, to hang out with him. This is literally hours after he just dropped a woman off of a cliff. When she said she didn't want to go saying, I don't want to, he said, but I do. Disgusting. There were also a bunch of text messages between Manolis and his friends about going for a walk, working out at the gym. But what was even more telling was at the time the crime against Eleni occurred, there was evidence on Manolus' device that showed he was searching for adult content, adult movies, if you will. He was Googling and looking on YouTube at 2 o'clock in the morning while

Eleni was at his beach house. However, there was no communication found between Manolis and Eleni. But the investigators did locate those messages from her and Alex. After the murder, Alex went to her profile two separate times, and that kind of made me feel sick. I also mentioned proof that at least one of these men had intercourse with her while a used condom was found at the house, which had Eleni's DNA on the outside, but there was no male DNA collected inside due to them not finishing. Now, when you think about Alex's story, his starts to look like it might be closer to what happened. He said he was on the bed with Eleni, they were doing something, and then Manolis walked in. So keep that in mind, among other things.

But when the truck was examined, blood stains were also found on the passenger side, the passenger door, the left tire, and some was smeared like it had been wiped. And when tested, both Eleni's and Manolus's DNA were found in the passenger seat of the truck, and Alex's DNA was found on the mop in the home. Monolus's DNA was also found in samples from the bathroom, as well as the trunk lid in the back of the truck. Fingerprints of both perpetrators were found on the vodka bottle, on glasses and mugs and a box of oranges inside the kitchen. And one of Oleni's fingerprints was found on a box of chocolates. So now their story turns into,

Okay, we admit we both hooked up with her, but it was her idea, adding that she liked it rough, and she wasn't mentally stable. So not only did they murder Eleni in real life, but they were trying to destroy her reputation after her death. And it's completely legal for the defense team to take this position, and it's certainly not the first or the last time the strategy has been used in a Greek court. Many cases like Eleni never even make its trial. most perpetrators of this kind of violence are never even charged with a crime. And if you need

any more evidence about the attitudes of Greek men towards women, wait until you hear this. Manolos' defense team petitioned the court to allow an all-male jury because he said, quote, women couldn't be trusted to be impartial, end quote. The fact that that's even a possibility in their minds and even in a court clearly demonstrates how women in Greece are viewed. But of course, of request was denied. The murder trial began in May of 2020 in the middle of COVID, and both Alexander and Manolis pleaded not guilty. This trial went on for five months. There were delays because of what was happening in the world, but it had been nearly two years, two years of heartache and pain for everyone who loved Eleni. Her parents had to lay her to rest to say goodbye

to their beloved daughter, their only daughter, who could never be replaced. Eleni's father said that when they had to transport her coffin by plane from roads back to their hometown, he kept thinking, the captain should go higher so that her body may meet her soul and come back to life. And that made me sad. The funeral procession went all throughout the streets of Vivi Motico. All the townspeople and friends of Eleni and her family followed the Mercedes-Benzhou as it made its way to the funeral parlor, Eleni's parents sobbed as they carried the line at the back of the hearse. It was gut-wrenching to see their sadness.

Everyone in black with umbrellas shielding them from the light rain as they showed their support and honored the memory of the 21-year-old girl gone too soon. But after Eleni was finally home and at her final resting place inside her white coffin in a beautiful grave in a cemetery, her parents were not standing by idly. They were constantly in the media. They remind me a lot of the parents of Kaylee Gonzalez in the Idaho Student Massacre,

who continued to grant the media interviews and refused to let society forget about the crime that stole their daughter and her friends. Eleni's parents never stopped giving their opinions about the killers and what they had done and the ripple effects it had. Her mother said, quote, I feel the loss. I understand that I will never see her again, and that hurts a lot. a daily pain, unbearable and tyrannical. I can't handle it. I accept that I lost my child in this heinous barbaric way." And she said that she replays the night her daughter was killed in her mind, retracing the path the truck drove and reconstructing the crime in her mind from the evidence. She said, quote, I identify with her pain, with her screams. I have a lot of unanswered questions

because for 3.5 hours they could have saved her, and they did nothing, end quote. She went on to say that they didn't take into account that Eleni has parents. They weren't just killing her. They were killing everyone who loved her, adding, quote, my life is ruined. I have no more life. I'm a living but dead person. I just live with memories in my house and with candles to remember my daughter, end quote. Eleni's father said, there was rarely a night since Eleni was murdered that they

could sleep. He thinks about the horror his daughter went through, her torment, and it torments him every night. Images of her final moments replay in his head, sometimes it makes him wonder if they raised her to be too kind. And that hurt my heart. But on the other hand, he made the point that it's not as though you can pinpoint who in your child's life is evil or bad just by looking at them. He said, you can't say, look at that person you're with. They might be a murderer, because There are people all around us wearing disguises, acting like well-intentioned people, but underneath, they're dark with cruel intentions. Instead of wondering if they raised Eleni wrong for being too loving and giving everyone a chance, they turned their anger on the parents of the monsters who took

her life. Yes. And you may not agree with this, but remember, this family is going through so much pain. But Janus pointed out that these men murdered a woman who did nothing to them. But Manolus, He had so many chances to do the right thing in his life, and growing up he chose a bad path, and his parents swept his issues under the rug. Janus made the point that Manolus' parents knew he was violent. They knew, yet they didn't take him to get help from a specialist. Instead, they continue to enable him. I think the best point that Janus made was that being a father or a mother isn't about creating the child in the womb. It's about what you do during their life, how you guide them,

what you teach them. It's not just that you're a mother or just a father because you got someone pregnant or you gave birth to a child. It's a difficult role that requires hard work to shape them into a loving person. It's not about throwing money at them and hoping they'll figure it out or at least get out of their parents home and not be their burden anymore like what they did with Manolus. All this is very deep and I felt really sad for this family. I read so many of a Lenny's mother's Facebook post about her pain and the way she described it so vividly. I can't fully understand it, but I can empathize with the loss that she felt. There's nothing she could have done to save her daughter. And then so many secrets were uncovered as they awaited trial. So many

women came forward with stories about Manolis and about other men like him, and there was proof of a tragic trend in roads, where during the summer these men target tourists to force them in a terrible acts, and when the winter rolls around, they target students, and they lower them back to places like the beach house, force them to watch graphic adult content, and then act out the same things on them. I told you, those mattresses weren't meant for sleeping. They were set in front of that TV where Manolus and Alex would play violent sexual videos while their victims awaited their fate.

Whether it was to get the guys in the mood, scare the women, or a combo, it's just abhorrent. The investigators even found a private secret Facebook group that was really popular with men on the island where they would post nude photos and videos of girls that they had been intimate with and they would share these with other people. The interrogations in this case alone went on for over a year. And then during that over five-month trial, both men put their true natures on display. They smiled at one another. They laughed during the proceedings and they even taunted the media waiting outside the courtroom.

They were photographed on more than one occasion flipping the finger to the camera as they walk between the courthouse and the prison. Well, Eleni's mother made sure to let everyone know how they made her feel. Many times people had to hold her back when she saw those monsters. She would scream at them things like, killers, you've ruined our lives and my child's life. And I have to look at you. When inside the courtroom having to breathe the same air as these men who were responsible

for taking Eleni's last breath, her mother would scream at it. them. One time she's like, I will kill you with my own hands, you murderers. I will take your life. Of course, her husband had to restrain her. Many times she had to be led out of the courtroom to calm down. And honestly, I don't blame her. The perpetrator's family weren't silent either. Alex's father said to the media, quote, condolences to the family. I say it and I mean it. I'm also a father and I'm in the same pain, end quote. He said that he didn't raise a monster and I do understand that he's also essentially losing a son when he's behind bars, but it's not the same. And Manolis's family was not silent either. His mom told reporters that he called her crying,

saying, Mom, I couldn't kill that girl. I was trying to close my ears, so I wouldn't hear her scream. And then Manolis's mom talked about how her family was going through such a difficult time and that she will stand next to her child. And she could also feel the pain of a Lenny's mother. She went on to say that words don't matter, only the truth matters, and hopefully it will come out at trial. She said she wished that none of them were in this position. And I don't really know what to say about that because your son created this whole situation. One thing that's different in Greece compared to the United States is that Greece, an attorney, can actually request a cross-examination of the defendant in court, whereas here,

it's a defendant's choice to testify, and then they can be cross-examined. But in Greece, if the judge grants the prosecution's request, they must answer questions that directly challenge their version of events and try to establish inconsistencies with any of the evidence that was presented. And I found that to be very interesting. And in this case, the judge did grant their request, and both defendants would be subjected to intense questioning. Because even their defense attorney said that they sometimes confess their actions,

sometimes they denied them, and in general, they had so far contradictory positions, about what exactly happened. By this time, Manolus had changed his version of the story to say that Eleni agreed to have relations with both of the men at the same time. And then afterward, the reason why Alex hit her with the iron and started to beat her was because she told him that Manolus was better in bed. Manolus never admitted to any part of the crime. He claimed he didn't help Eleni because, according to him,

Alex threatened to hurt him and he was a martial arts champion. So he was scared. And Alex stuck to his same exact story, that Eleni was there to be with him, and Manola tried to force himself on her, and she refused. So Manola beat her. Another change in the story that I forgot to mention is remember when Manola said, oh, Alex just left, I have no idea what happened. Well, the investigators lied to him and said they had video and they knew he was lying,

and he confessed that he was actually at the cliffside, but he said that, of course, Alex threw her over the cliff. Anytime either one of these guys were talking about what happened, they were talking like it was an ordinary part of their day. It was like they didn't understand the gravity of the situation and neither one apologized. Also uncovered were prints from Alex's left palm on the ironing board.

Now this became a big deal, but I'm going to say, I don't think it's that big of a deal. So what they were saying, we know that an iron is usually near an ironing board. But what the defense were saying was that now we know it had to be Alex they used the iron because he grabbed it with his right hand

while holding the ironing board down with his left. And of course, we can take that as being the truth. But we don't know if he grabbed it from Manolis. We don't know if he used the iron on a different occasion because he'd been staying there. That doesn't prove he was the one who struck her with it. But Manalas's defense attorney was definitely running with that theory. Even though it was Manolus who had been violent in his past and even presently in prison, he would scream at prison officers and tell them that if he saw them on the outside, he would

F them up. He was so cruel and threatening to one of the officers that he developed high blood pressure and had to be transferred away from Manolis's unit. I feel like a broken record, but it was also uncovered that the Bonola's family allegedly tried to delete information from his phone when he was in jail before it was finally confiscated. And although incriminating searches, which I told you about, were deleted from the device, they were still found on the data extraction, even as Facebook was deleted following the murder. And while in prison, his parents paid a doctor to prescribe him with antidepressants to make him appear more calm, and so it was harder for him to appear as aggressive.

The charging documents in the case against both of these men were finally complete, and it stated in summary that both men conspired to force Eleni into relations, and that Manolus used Alex to lure her to his summer house, where they took turns torturing and forcing themselves on her while strangling and punching her into submission, even threatening her with a knife to get her to submit to even more indecent acts. And when she refused, both defendants who were into martial arts and working out, punched her with force in the face, and as a result, she became dizzy and momentarily lost consciousness.

Regaining consciousness after a while, Eleni declared to the defendants her intention to report them to the police, thus igniting their anger, and at the same time, they're concerned that they would be arrested and face criminal penalties for their behavior. They then decided jointly to get rid of her, as she begged for her life and to be taken to the hospital. Instead, they used an iron to beat her until again she was semi-conscious. Then they took her to an isolated area that only Manolis would have been familiar with and both lifted the body in her semi-conscious state and threw it from a height of about 30 feet into the sea.

That was what they were charged for. That was the entire charging document. The trial began two days before Eleni's birthday and rallies were held outside the courthouse every day. Eleven witnesses testified, including Coast Guard officers Zovas, the residents who spotted at Eleni's body in the water, the friend of Eleni's that I referred to as Nora, who spoke to her last, Manolis's grandmother, who was supposedly in the lower level of the beach house that night, both of the accused and their parents, Alex's sister, and the medical examiner, and of course,

a few other officers. I'm not going to go over what both defendants said, because you already know the story, I'm not going to go over the medical examiner's report, but when the medical examiner was testifying, he was asked a question at the very end about whether there was proof that Villeney was forced into intercourse and the medical examiner said something pretty intense. He said regardless of intercourse, there is no consent in death. So whatever consent there was, there's no way it could have covered what happened next. And that was so true.

One of the Coast Guard officers, Mr. Malami, he testified that when he was interviewing Manolis at first, he knew Manolis had a sister and he also had a sister. So he said to him, imagine this happened to your own sister. Why did you do it? And Manolus replied with, quote, it was very stupid. God will punish us, end quote. Both defendants were also questioned, and there were many outbursts during their testimony. When Manola said that Aleni consented, her father yelled and asked, are you ashamed? What consent are you talking about? You rushed her with a knife to her neck. And if it wasn't Aleni, it would have been another girl. The defendant's stories were the same as I already told you. But when Alex took the stand, he was sobbing uncontrollably, saying that I didn't kill her. I helped her. I bathed her. She told me to take me to the hospital. I will say that his reactions were more human than Manolus's reactions. He was much more arrogant. But all of this could be an act. When Manolus's father took the stand, he painted him as a boy who had drug problems and was easily influenced by friends. And he said he believed his son,

that Eleni wanted it and that it was consented to, which of course caused an uproar in the courtroom. And Alex's sister took the stand, and she echoed the same in his regard, that there was no way he forced Eleni, but we know he forced other girls, if that's true, the ones who came forward. And in her testimony, she painted Alex as the one that was influenced by Manolis. She said their relationship was different than any other of his friends. Her brother treated Manolus like an idol because he had so much money. She also claimed that Alex told her that he was so excited to meet Eleni, but when she asked him the next day how their date was, he started crying, but he wouldn't tell her why. Later, when she learned about the incident from the TV, she asked him again

what happened, and he started crying. He apologized to her, and she asked, why are you apologizing? He answered, because I betrayed your love. And that if he wasn't under the influence of fear, he would have protected Eleni. He couldn't react in the moment because he was trapped in his fears, and he didn't defend her. As for Manolis's grandma, she was. She testified that she was home that night on the first floor in the three-story townhouse and that she was in the bathroom and she could hear a car come up and then voices of her grandson calling to Alex. She also heard the voice of a girl, but she said she heard the laughter, but she did not hear anything else that night. She just went to sleep, but she wished she would have

been listening. When it was Eleni's mother's turn on the stand, she highlighted all that she had lost and how she wants the maximum punishment for the accused. She said, quote, for two lifetimes, they will not see the light of the sun for me to be justified. I will kill them if they're not put in prison for life. I will do the work for Eleni. Eleni was the most beautiful thing I had in my life. I was happy when I gave birth to her, and they ruined my life. I want them to be sentenced with the highest penalty.

Two humanoid monsters were found to take my daughter's life, end quote. The defense was brutal. At one point they claimed Eleni couldn't have been forced into anything because her bra, was still on when she was found. Yeah, they were like what man would leave on a woman's bra if they were forcing her into intercourse? What? But yeah, that was really one of their arguments. But I do want to point out her other garments were completely ripped. The defense also said that Eleni was playing truth or dare with the men and completing their dares with consent, which included intercourse. But the most powerful moment was when the prosecutor made her closing

arguments which I wish I could read in their entirety like verbatim but they were four hours long I can't even believe that they were four hours long and it was very moving but again I know you like long videos anyway I'm going to highlight the most important parts of what she said and this was translated by a journalist online and she began with all this time the truth has been told in a thousand different ways the truth will now be heard one final time from my lips in summation what is closest to the truth, and the truth that her family needs to hear is that Elena was led as an innocent lamb to the slaughter. Let justice prevail, even if hell breaks loose and the world is shaken to its roots. Justice can see quite clearly in the dark when it wants to. From the start of this trial,

the defendants resorted to all sorts of procedural tricks to obscure the facts of this case. The two men pretended to be angry at one another. No intelligent person believes that there's a rift in their relationship simply because one blames the other. During the trial recess, they laugh. They're in complete alignment. This is a game, one of them blaming the other to create confusion. The natural reaction for one charge with such a crime is not this. Two people with such crimes, if they were in disagreement, they would tear each other to shreds.

But here they are, simply sticking to a predetermined strategy. In this way, they want to blur their responsibilities. The lawyers are in on this game. They're not trying to fool the judges. they want to fool the jury to create doubt. Alex's first statement is the one that comes closest to the truth. Once the lawyers enter the scene, lies and deceit abound. So that's what she said in the beginning as she opened,

and now I'm just going to make a few points that she made. I'm just reading it verbatim as it was translated. The prosecutor at this point does something unheard of, especially for women and an officer of the court. She accuses the defense of hiding the truth, and she said these lawyers did their back, to hide the truth. She added that the lawyers for the defense were trying to fool the jury right from the start and not to believe anything they said. And she also said not to believe

the defendants that they didn't have any remorse. And how Officer Zovas solved this case and he put all the evidence together. But certain people in power tried to silence him. A certain prominent citizen of the island of Rhodes used all sorts of backhanded methods to stop Officer Zovas. She said, I come from Rhodes. I know a few things. Alexander was the He's not wealthy. Manolus is the rich boy from Rhodes. Alexander is the attractive boy with an angelic face. He was the front man to attract girls and take them to the other who had money. And at that particular moment, Aleni was fragile. She had already been targeted, and they targeted her, an unsuspecting victim. She wanted to make a point that even though it had been said

by various witnesses that Aleni was dating Alex or wanted to be with Alex and went on her own and willingly, she said, that doesn't matter. Even if you're in a relationship, even if you're married, she said, a woman has a right to say no. And by the way, a year before this case went to trial in 2019, Greece finally recognized consent as a part of whether an act is forced or not. That was a huge deal because remember, before it didn't matter unless you were injured. Well, that changed and now you had to get consent.

Even if you were married, the prosecutor also explained that Aleni had no idea she was going to be going all the way to Lindos that night. That was evident by the way she left her apartment. and I wanted to get back to that really quickly. There was so much that showed she was in the middle of doing her chores, her everyday routine. And she told her friend she was just going to get a bite with Alex. She did not have any plans for anything else as these defendants claim. You think she would have told her friends like, oh, I'm going back to this beach house with a couple guys.

No. The prosecutor brought up another point. She said, if she wanted to do something further, if she wanted to hook up with Alex, Why wouldn't she just do that in her apartment? She didn't have to go somewhere else to do that. They could have done it in the privacy of her own place, not driven an hour away. And the reason she texted her friend,

according to the prosecution, is that she gets there and realizes she's in an isolated place with these two guys that she does not know. But then according to the defendants, they drank a lot. Well, if that was the case, why did they find a bottle

that was pretty much to the top? I mean, it was like three quarters of the way full. And if she was watching adult movies, the prosecutor said, what makes you think she wanted to be part of that, as they claimed? She wouldn't have done anything if it meant saving her life. She found herself in the lair of monsters. She was innocent. The prosecutor went on to say that there were two knives because there were two criminals. They wanted to render her motionless by strangling her, and she fought back for three hours. When she doesn't die, that triggers their anger, and they worry that if she

survives, she's going to turn them in. So they finish her off. They take her to the bathroom because there's so much blood that won't stop. And every so often, she's regaining consciousness. She even asked them to take her to the hospital. This whole house is full of blood. Even on the ceiling, they found DNA. Then they wrapped her in a sheet to hide her body and they dragged her down the stairs one in front of the other. The body was heavy. She was in a semi-conscious state. The stairs were full of blood. And then they tossed her in the sea. She ended by saying, that Eleni was a girl with dreams and goals who had incredible strength in a house of terror and she was a symbol for other girls to be strong. They treated her like she was nothing. When she

was done speaking, Aleni's father approached her with flowers and said that they were on behalf of Aleni and the prosecutor was weeping hysterically. And the whole courtroom was clapping at this point and this is not allowed in U.S. courts. So it kind of took me by surprise. I was like, wow, I can't believe they just let people kind of have outbursts, speak back to each other during the course of the trial. But wow, her statement was so powerful. And remember, it was four hours. I only gave you a highlight of what she said, but it caused waves. Because she was a servant of justice, but she was also a woman fighting against things that males have done in violence.

She was a hero to many women, but she was actually reported to the Lawyers Association for so-called stepping over her boundaries when she accused the defense of lying and hiding the truth. so a government deputy actually scolded her in public on social media and requested a disciplinary review. In the end, she maintained her position. And as for the two monsters, they were found guilty in a unanimous decision by the jury. And this would be a life sentence for both of them. There were no mitigating factors. Even though the defense did try to bring some, the judge denied their ability to do so. In Greece, the life sentence is actually a minimum of 10 years.

So Alexander was also given five extra because of what he did to that other girl. So his was a minimum of 25 years before eligible for parole. And since Eleni's tragic death, her family has been actively campaigning for the recognition of Femmicide as a distinct legal category in Greece. I stumbled upon a now-discontinued art exhibition that hoped to shed light on Femmicide, and Aleni was part of it. This very unique project was called She's Gone, and I'd never seen anything like it before, and I'm so sad that it wasn't continued. The creators were two artists, Israeli women, Karen Goldstein, and Adi Levy. They would reach out to families of victims to ask for articles of clothing that they once wore proudly.

Then they would hang them up from the ceilings of museums, and they'd display them. And it was very powerful seeing those clothes that were once worn without their bodies in them any longer. Eleni's parents said that they wanted so badly for Helene to be featured, but their souls were bleeding when they had to choose which garment they would give away. Aleni's mom said they were crying over each piece of her clothing until they decided on which ones. She said, quote, this process was very difficult to know that once these clothes covered your child's body,

and now this child is gone, and that the clothes will be shown in an exhibition about murdered women. We didn't want anything to leave the house, but we had to participate in this effort that is being made. The choice was very difficult, because in every garment there is a life story. There were dreams. And now there's a cry of despair, frustration, and anger.

There's no tomorrow or hope. We too had all these dreams for our child to do the things she dreamed of. She was deprived of all of her dreams. They took her from my arms in one night, end quote. I virtually walked one of these exhibitions online. That one didn't include Eleni's garments. Hers were actually an event in Greece. But I'll show you what the clothing her parents chose looked like in a moment.

But I see the outfits from so many other women who were murdered, and I read each of the tags that were on the clothing with a summary of their stories. It was very sad and moving. Here's Eleni's outfit. It was a professional suit signifying her dream of being a diplomat. It consisted of a long-sleeve white shirt with ruffled sleeves, a black blazer and black pants. There was even a necklace included. Aleni's murder was the first case in Greece where famicide was used to describe the motive of the attack. It indicated a turning point in how the country and its citizens responded to gender-based violence.

Eleni was the 18th person murdered in Greece in a gender-motivated crime in 2018 alone. Femmicide is recognized as a distinct crime in several countries around the world. Places like Mexico, Argentina, Chile, and Italy have laws that specifically address the killing of women because of their gender. Every single year since her murder, Eleni's parents go to her graveside on her birthday with a cake and celebrate with her. I was tearing up looking at this because of the pictures that I found of her as a child with a cake. It's just sad. It's hard not to be affected by these photos of them as they age over the years, probably faster because of what happened. In 2021, the mayor of Aleni's hometown named a street after her and put up a beautiful monument.

Many people gathered around when it went up and spoke kind words about Eleni and her family. Even famous people spoke out. A Greek rock musician, singer and songwriter, fever. is the liver orus i'm probably saying that wrong which translated as fear of delusion he released the song entitled eleni in 2022 to honor her memory i always link all my sources below so you can do your own research but i will call out the link to this song specifically so you can listen to it of course it isn't greek but the lyrics are also available to translate online and i will put them below as well if i can but the first few lines give you no idea he sings i'm thinking of aleni topolati

what if a song would have a purpose to rise in the nets that dress drowned her, to fall on the sea that threw her. It's chilling and it's poetic. Eleni's murder has had millions of ripple effects, and I hope it has more now that I've shared the details with you. I hope we can take away a lot from this case, but I want to end with her mother's words that she shared on Facebook in a post about her precious daughter. She said, my Eleni, my baby, my little girl, my child, my soul, hard of my soul, in my heart, my little one. For nine months you were inside my body. Nine months. How many thoughts, how many dreams I made for us, they get lost in the expectations. I dreamed of you coming into my

life to see your little face, to embrace your little body in awe, to breathe your breath. And I prayed and promised myself that everything would go well with your arrival. I dreamed that my arms would be filled with a new life. I dreamed of singing you. little songs, lulling you and teaching you different things about life and people. You came and lit up the whole world. I was the luckiest and happy mom in the world. I sat for hours and hours watching you in my brain recording your every smile, every expression on your face. When sometimes a cough or a fever bothered you, I cried and prayed in the mother of God that you would overcome it, that I wouldn't get something to because then what would happen? I dreamed that you were.

would walk, talk, and do everything. I dreamed you would run to me and hug me. I dreamed of you saying your first words and calling me mom. I would get lost in the magic of that word. My little Lenny, as you grew older, so did my anxiety. The time had come for you to dare and spread your wings. Cut yourself off from your parents for a while. Go to kindergarten. At first it was difficult. Then everything became easy. I wanted to go with you and hold you. Your little hand. getting lost in mind. You grew up and you tried your best. You put a lot of effort in your exams and we were always by your side in every one of your wishes and you finally found your path in life. But it didn't have a beautiful destination because some monsters got in the way

of your life and they didn't let you enjoy everything you work for. Let my child's soul rejoice. I did not dream of superb things. I did not have big and dangerous plans, only achievable goals. I never dreamed of money, lots of wealth, honors, glory, medals, and greatness, only joy and satisfaction and love. This is what I dreamed for, for you. I dreamed to have children, that they would live to a very old age. Maya Lenny, that you would have lived your whole life happy. This is what I dreamed of. And they got in your way those monsters to satiate their gluttony. Until they go through what you went through, there will not be justice. Let it happen. I'm waiting. Her words beautiful. And I personally want to say to Aleni's family, I am so truly sorry. From one parent

to another, I hurt for you. And I know Eleni dreamed of traveling the world and representing Greece on an international stage. And while she never got that chance to achieve that in her life, this story has been heard and talked about far beyond her homeland. And I hope that this video will reach thousands more. And while it's not the path she envisioned, her death has sparked conversations across multiple languages and countries. That is an achievement she would have been proud of, in spite of its tragic foundation. Thank you so much for being here for... Don't you wish you could just hit skip on the worst parts of your life? You know, the same way you can skip an ad? I get it. I'm Siaia and I live in Ice Cove. I've made some questionable decisions

that didn't end up the way I planned. And today, I'm still figuring it out. Somehow things usually get worse before they get better. Apparently, that's how I roll. So bundle up and come along for the bumpy ride. Stream a new episode of North of North Tuesdays on CBC Gem. For Lenny's Story.