ATHENS – The trial of two men accused of raping and murdering a university student on the island of Rhodes and throwing her body in the sea began Jan. 13, with the victim’s father testifying the defendant’s parents should be prosecuted for not stopping their aggressive behavior.
In keeping with Greek privacy laws, the defendants weren’t named but the victim has been, Eleni Topaloudi, who was 21 when she was killed, with one of the suspects saying she agreed to sex and was only an accessory to her killing.
The second suspect, a 20-year-old Albanian national, rejected both charges as he faces a second rape trial on charge fo sexually assaulting a 19-year-old disabled woman on the island as well.
Topaloudi’s body was found in the sea by the Coast Guard and evidence collected during the initial investigation led to the arrest of two suspect. Coast Guard officials said she was punched in the face and hit on the head with an iron then taken to a beach and tossed into the sea alive to drown.
A public prosecutor charged the two suspects with first-degree murder and rape of the victim, in a crime that shocked the country, especially on Rhodes, with a report the men tortured her too.
The suspects allegedly lured the young student to a holiday house belonging to the family of the 21-year-old then attacked her when she refused their sexual advances, The Greek City Times of Sydney reported earlier.
The Albanian man showed Coast Guard officers the location where they afterwards threw away the victim’s clothes and other belongings, along with the electric iron used to hit her, delivering a damaging blow.
The two defendants described in detail what happened in the holiday house and the last moments of the victim’s life, with officers shocked by the calmness of the 19-year-old Albanian, as he described the way the two men tortured Eleni, the paper said.
The Albanian said they hit and punched her, adding that it was the Greek man that hit her over the head with the iron, making her fall to the floor and then put naked into a car and driving to the beach to toss her away.
The Albanian man said Eleni was alive before they threw her into the water and she desperately pleaded with them to take her to the hospital and not to let her die, with her last words being “My Dad will come after you both.”