ATHENS – A life jail sentence given a vascular surgeon who was convicted of killing a female patient in Thessaloniki and then throwing her body off a clif was upheld by a mixed jury court.

Neither he nor the victim were named, but Kathimerini said the court found the 43-year-old man was guilty of “homicide with possible intent, committed by omission,” without recognizing any mitigating factors.

The woman, 36, a mother of three, had gone to Ippokrateio Hospital for a scheduled surgery to remove varicose veins and the paper said the case file indicated the surgeon took her to an abandoned section and drugged her.

The anesthetics appear to have caused respiratory problems, resulting in her death and instead of calling for help, the surgeon put her body in the trunk of his car and drove her to the region of Halkidiki and threw her body off a cliff, where she was found after a few days.

It wasn’t said how he was able to get her body into his car without being noticed but the report said police suspected him immediately as he was the last one to see her.

Police said that they tracked many phones calls and messages between the two and that her DNA was found in the trunk and that his cell phone’s GPS recorded the route he took to get rid of the body.

In the first trial, her husband testified that his wife was an unusually attractive woman and that the doctor had shown a lot of interest in her, but she kept seeing him as a patient. The doctor said her death was a “medical error” and not intentional despite all the circumstances involved.

The Administrative Court of Appeal in Thessaloniki awarded compensation to the relatives for mental distress amounting to 700,000 euros ($736,491) but it wasn’t said if the doctor would be able to pay it.