UK NEWS

BRAVE ELENI FOUGHT WITH HER ATTACKER

Restaurant manager Eleni Pachou

Thursday June 5,2008

By Julie-Anne Barnes

THE killer of restaurant manager Eleni Pachou may have lain in wait for diners to leave before stabbing her to death and making off with thousands of pounds.

Eleni, 25, was stabbed as she locked up the Di Maggio’s pizzeria in Ruthven Lane, off Byres Road, in the west end of Glasgow last Thursday night.

Her bloodsoaked body was found in the kitchen by cleaners the next morning and a substantial sum was missing from the till.

Police, who believe the motive for the attack was robbery, said she had fought for her life, but met a “violent” death.

Yesterday, Eleni’s heartbroken father Yiannis, 65, and brother Spiros, said they cannot take her body home to Greece to be buried until the killer is found.

This was a very evil person with no regard for human life

Detective Chief Inspector Michael Feighan

They said the delay was the “most terrible of punishments” for a Greek family.

Spiros, 27, a student at Strathclyde University in Glasgow, said he and his father, who had travelled from his home near Athens, could not grieve until Eleni was laid to rest.

He said: “All I can say to this person, who deepened our family and friends in grief, is to come forward with the truth and allow my family to mourn.

“Greeks had a vision of an afterlife where the dead would wait by the bank of a river to be ferried to the realm of the dead.

“The living feared that, when they died, they might be left standing on the other side of the river waiting to cross because their body was unburied. All we ask is to mourn, nothing more.”

The student made his emotional appeal as detectives revealed they have yet to recover the murder weapon, and could only say a “bladed weapon” was used.

Detective Chief Inspector Michael Feighan, of Strathclyde Police, said: “This was a very evil person with no regard for human life. There are indications that Eleni fought for her life.”

Detectives are still anxious to contact the mystery person Eleni spoke to on her mobile phone shortly before her death.