Greek police are intensifying the Elisabeth Jane Ross Kypseli suitcase investigation after the 38-year-old was found dead in Athens on 18 July. The case has drawn the entire homicide division, while investigators still have no clear account of how she died or who last saw her alive.
Elisabeth-Jane Ross in Athens
Ross arrived in Athens from Edinburgh on 26 June and stayed with the son of a Greek friend in Keratsini until 15 July. She told him she would spend a few days with friends from the US in Kypseli, and police now say those Americans have not been identified or found.
Konstantina Dimoglidou said, “We’ve had the entire homicide division of the Greek FBI working night and day on the case”. She added, “We’re in contact with other police forces. We’re going to solve this.”
CCTV, DNA and the suitcase
Police said the body of the Briton was identified through fingerprints that matched biometric data in the US, and pathologists said she had probably been dead for several days before the discovery. Initial examination of Ross’s remains was inconclusive, and police found no evident injuries or sign of struggle on her body.
That combination has kept the inquiry focused on the suitcase itself and the hours before it was found. Police intensified their search of CCTV footage after DNA analysis of the suitcase did not produce evidence linked to a suspect, and they said the suitcase was not at the scene more than 48 hours before 18 July.
Evelpidon Street witnesses
Near Evelpidon Street, Manos Andreou said the sight of the sealed-off area still lingers. “Whenever I pass by I think of that poor woman,” he said. He also said, “Until the area was closed off, I used to go in there and let her run around it, so it’s all been a bit of a shock. They say they’re looking at camera footage, they say they’re making progress, but can you see any cameras anywhere on this street?”
Andreou’s account captures the practical problem now facing police: the route from Ross’s last known movements in Keratsini to the suitcase in Kypseli has to be rebuilt from partial witness accounts, footage and forensic traces. Other members of Ross’s social network in Athens have already been interviewed at length and are not considered suspects.
The next step sits with the same line of inquiry that has defined the case from the start: the missing Americans, the CCTV review and the forensic gap around how Ross died. For readers near Evelpidon Street and elsewhere in Athens, the unanswered point is not the location of the discovery, but the chain of events that ended there.
