The cries and yells of four-year-old Ani Borisova from her father’s basement on Michail Voda Street, central Athens, during Greek Orthodox Easter could be heard by neighbors but nobody called the police. The little girl had been dumped there by her mother Didi, aged 25, who went to Germany with a boyfriend. The father, a Bulgarian national aged 27, addicted to heroin and angered by his partner’s disappearance would beat the little girl on a daily basis.
People heard shrieks from the basement and the violence was no secret, but nobody intervened. Later, the mother, also a Bulgarian national, returned and reported the child’s disappearance to the police. The father, Savvas, was interviewed but was let go due to lack of evidence. He told police that the child’s mother loved Ani more than him raising alarm bells. Later, genetic evidence was gathered linking the father to the child’s murder though the body has yet to be found.
The father is described as a cynical, cold, ruthless person. After murdering his own child, he cut up the body, cooked it in a pot with rice and slowly disposed of it in different trash cans around Athens, according to the father’s roommate Nicky, also a Bulgarian national.
Nicky, the father’s friend, lived with the man and his child for a short while before leaving them to go to Bulgaria. He said that the father would beat the child on a daily basis.
“I woke up after using drugs and I saw Ani dead on the couch. She was sick, but I didn’t know what was wrong. I thought that if I told her mother then she would leave me for good so I decided to make her disappear,” said the father, who denied having killed her with his own hands.
He told his partner that the child had disappeared when she returned from her boyfriend’s home in Germany. They both went to Bulgaria and returned to Athens when the woman began to wonder where her child was.
On April 21, the couple went to the “Smile of the Child” organization but did not state Ani’s disappearance. Three days later they went to the police at Omonia Square and declared their child missing. Every day, they would share a different version of their child’s disappearance ranging from having left the child with another Bulgarian national to the child having strolled away on its own.
When a woman and another child that looked like was found in Nikaia, the mother insisted that the little girl was hers even though it was later proven that the child was not Ani. “We knew that something was amiss, but we couldn’t imagine that the father himself would cut up the body and boil it to make the traces disappear,” say the police.
Late on Monday night the mother was arrested for exposing a minor to danger. The police are certain that she had nothing to do with the actual crime but it is still unknown if she was an accessory following the disappearance. Her behavior was different to what is usually expected of a mother who has lost her child during questioning. The police are still investigating her role in the crime and whether she lied to the police and journalists knowing that her child was dead.
