Greek woman bags life jail for killing three daughters

Police officers escort to court Roula Pispirigou (C), a 35-year-old woman prosecuted for having killed her three daughters in three years, in Athens on March 29, 2024. – Thee court ajourned to deliberate on sentencing and unanimously declared on March 29, 2024 Roula Pispirigou guilty for the death of her 9-year-old daughter Georgina Daskalaki, following a marathon 14-month trial. Roula Pispirgou is also accused in the suffocating death of her two other daughters, Malena (3.5 years old) and Iris (6 months old), in 2019 and 2021. (Photo by Aris MESSINIS / AFP)

A Greek court on Friday imposed a life jail term against a woman found guilty of murdering her nine-year-old daughter and is also suspected of killing two other daughters.

The cases against 35-year-old Roula Pispirigou have caused nationwide outrage and soul-searching.

Death threats against Pispirigou had prompted the government to issue calls for calm. Shortly after her arrest riot police were deployed outside the court after a crowd gathered to yell abuse at her.

An Athens court found Pispirigou guilty of voluntary homicide with premeditation over the death of nine-year-old Georgina.

In detention for two years, Pispirigou is also awaiting judgment over the suspected murders of daughters Malena, three-and-a-half when she died in 2019, and Iris, aged just six months when she died in 2021.

Pispirigou was found to have poisoned Georgina on January 29, 2022, with ketamine, a substance generally used as an anaesthetic in veterinary surgery but also in some treatments for depression.

When she died, Georgina was in hospital, having been admitted on several occasions over the previous 10 months after convulsions had left her tetraplegic.

The court found that her mother had tried to kill her on at least one of the previous hospital stays. Malena had been declared as suffering from acute liver failure. The cause of death for Iris had initially been registered as heart failure.

However, tests following the death of Georgina showed they had been asphyxiated.

Greek media have dubbed Pispirigou, a trained nurse, a “modern-day Medea” after a figure in Greek mythology who murders her sons after their father leaves her for another woman.

Pispirigou, who is from western Greece, steadfastly pleaded her innocence throughout the trial which began in January last year.

Meanwhile, a jury in New Zealand found a South African woman, Lauren Anne Dickason, guilty in August 2023 of murdering her three young daughters, saying she faced a life sentence for each killing.

Another mother confessed in 2020 to killing her three young daughters in an apartment in Vienna, Austrian police said after her arrest. Punch