Roula Pispirigou, a Greek woman already sentenced to life in prison for the murder of her nine-year-old daughter, has been handed two additional life sentences for the deaths of her two other daughters.
The case, which has captured widespread attention in Greece, reached a new chapter with this latest ruling.
The Athens court found Pispirigou guilty of suffocating her infant daughters, Malena and Irida, in 2019 and 2021. The court concluded that she committed these murders in a calculated attempt to keep her marriage intact, despite her husband’s repeated abandonment.
Eva Ambazi, the lawyer representing Pispirigou’s husband, Manos Daskalakis, stated that the trial had dispelled any doubts about her guilt, as Pispirigou was found to have acted in a calm state of mind during the killings.
Despite the verdict, Pispirigou, 36, maintains her innocence and intends to appeal. In her final words to the court, she vowed to “fight to the end to win justice” for her daughters.
In March 2024, a separate court convicted Pispirigou of murdering her older daughter, Georgina, in 2022. This conviction led to a re-examination of the deaths of Malena and Irida, revealing that they, too, had been suffocated, which prompted the new trial.
Trial prosecutor Vassiliki Dimopoulou stated that Pispirigou had murdered her children “to keep her marriage going,” highlighting the methodical and premeditated nature of the crimes.
Pispirigou, a trained nurse from Patras, had earlier been convicted of poisoning her daughter Georgina with ketamine, a veterinary anaesthetic, during her repeated hospital admissions.
The cause of death for Malena, aged three and a half, and Irida, just six months old, had initially been misreported as acute liver failure and heart failure, respectively. However, posthumous tests revealed they were both victims of asphyxiation.
Greek media have labelled Pispirigou a “modern-day Medea,” referencing the Greek mythological figure who killed her children after her husband left her for another woman.
