Crowds gathered outside the prosecutor’s office in central Athens to await the appearance of the father who allegedly killed, cut, boiled and disposed of his 4-year-old daughter before reporting her missing. Many in the crowd yelled as the child’s confessed murderer and mother showed up to provide an initial statement.

Details of the heinous crime have shaken public opinion with stories of daily beatings that little Ani was subjected to by her Bulgarian father, a reputed drug addict, 27, after her mother, 25, left her in his care to go to Germany.

The father is currently apologizing at the prosecutor’s officer whereas the mother asked for an extension and will testify on Thursday.

Both parents are currently with the prosecutor and testifying following false reports and different versions as to how their child went missing.

The cries and yells of four-year-old Ani Borisova from her father’s basement on Michail Voda St, in inner city Athens, during Orthodox Easter could be heard by neighbors but nobody called the police. The little girl had been left there by her mother Didi, who went to Germany with a boyfriend. The father, Savvas, who police claim is addicted to heroin, was angered by his partner’s disappearance and 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 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. The couple are described as members of the Roma community in Bulgaria.

“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.

On April 21, the couple went to the “Smile of the Child” organization but did not declare 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.