Grigoris Leon, president of the Hellenic Forensic Society, spoke to Giorgos Eugenidis to Direct for protothema.gr Regarding Irini Mourtzoukou’s confession, the forensic experts involved in the case, and what happened to little Panagiotis.

Leon explained that Irini Mourtzoukou liked the publicity and thought she was very smart, and described her environment as “morbid”. He said she made the mistake of describing the infants’ final moments, with the key description being the death of little Panagiotakis. In the deaths of the other children, he emphasized their breathing, which, he pointed out, says a lot about how they died.

“She told us everything through what he experienced on television,” Leon noted, revealing that Mourtzoukou acted like a star, even asking him for a selfie during a break in a TV show.

At the same time, he emphasized that Mourtzoukou still refuses to confess to the murder of little Panagiotakis, even though it is, as he said, “100% certain” that he died just like the other children. He also pointed out that the coroner’s report found no identifiable cause of death.

Leon spoke of serious forensic missteps in the investigation, stressing that there is a fundamental problem within Greece’s forensic services. “You cannot rule out suffocation when the findings are consistent with it,” he said, adding that it should not take five child deaths for the authorities to recognize a pattern.

However, he noted as a positive step that the Ministry of Justice has since replaced the heads of the forensic departments.