A woman from Greece, who was given a life sentence last year for murdering her nine-year-old daughter, has now been handed two more life sentences for taking the lives of her other two children, Malena, aged 3, and Iris, a mere six months old.
On Tuesday, March 18, the Athens court determined that Roula Pispirigou had smothered her baby daughters Malena and Irida in 2019 and 2021, in what turned out to be futile efforts to stop her husband from continually leaving her.
After a trial lasting 12 months before reaching a verdict, the 35-year-old from Patra received two additional life sentences in prison when the judges agreed with the prosecutor’s stance, which contended that Pispirigou “was methodical and calculating,” and motivated by an unhealthy obsession with the children’s father, Manos Daskalakis.
“She suffocated her children so that she could keep her husband close,” stated the prosecutor, Vassiliki Dimopoulou.
Malena was k!lled in 2019 while hospitalized for leukemia treatment, Iris was smothered in her bed in 2021, and Georgina also passed away in a hospital, where she had been admitted following a “cardiac arrest,” in 2022.
Dimopoulou further criticized the forensic examiners who looked into the girls’ deaths, accusing them of negligence and claiming that their “failures” enabled Pispirigou to escape justice for years.
“They lacked a sense of responsibility and failed to conduct a thorough and serious investigation into the causes of de@th of three young children. Their work was sloppy and indifferent,” the prosecutor remarked.
Pispirgou’s appeal against the conviction for murdering Georgina is set to take place on May 5.
A Gentle Reminder: Every obstacle is a stepping stone, every morning; a chance to go again, and those little steps take you closer to your dream.
Nnamdi Okoli