Her case shocked the whole of Greece: a 35-year-old woman who is said to have killed her three daughters has been sentenced to life in prison. The responsible court in Athens found the defendant guilty on Friday of the “premeditated murder” of her nine-year-old daughter Georgina in January 2022. The verdicts are still pending regarding the deaths of Georgina’s two sisters in the previous years.
Roula Pispirigou is accused of killing her three daughters between 2019 and 2022. The investigation against the 35-year-old was triggered by Georgina’s death. The mother is said to have killed her nine-year-old daughter with the anesthetic ketamine, which is primarily used in veterinary medicine. At the time, Georgina was paralyzed in hospital after suffering seizures.
Subsequently, police also opened an investigation into the deaths of Pispirigou’s three-year-old daughter Malena in 2019 and her six-month-old daughter Iris in 2021. It became apparent that the two girls had suffocated.
The case made waves in Greece. The accused, a trained nurse, was dubbed the “modern Medea” in the Greek media – after the figure from Greek mythology who, among other things, killed her own children. There were calls for murder against Pispirigou, and the Greek government called for calm.
