Staff at the Athens clinic where the singer Giorgos Mazonakis died have told the investigating magistrate that the doctors running it ordered them to agree a “common line”, telling them: “We should all have a common line, we are all responsible.”

Almost a month after the death of Mazonakis, 54, during a plasmapheresis session (a procedure that separates and removes blood plasma) at the clinic on Karneadou Street in Kolonaki, the testimony of those present is allowing investigators to piece together what happened on 9 September. The husband-and-wife doctors, Dr Ioanna Gaka and Dr Ilias Theodoropoulos, are in pretrial detention on charges of homicide with possible intent by omission, which they deny.

The accounts identify the people who were in the building during the singer’s final moments, and what they did. They also show that help was called far too late, as all the evidence indicates.

Histological tests that will help establish how Mazonakis died are due to be completed shortly. Toxicology results, which normally take around a month, are expected any day.

Theodoropoulos was the first to break ranks. Although he has said “I adore my wife”, he moved quickly to claim he had no involvement with Mazonakis, and in effect did not know the singer would be at the clinic that day. He says he was called in to help only after the man had collapsed.

Gaka changes lawyers twice

The gap between the two defendants appears to be widening by the day. After being jointly represented in the early stages, Gaka has changed lawyer twice in recent days. The office of Nikos Alexandris announced that it was not possible to represent her in the circumstances. A statement relayed by the office of her new lawyer, Petros Pantazis, hints at the cause of the rift.

“The accused doctor, Ms I.G., states that she has instructed our office to handle her criminal defence in the case of the tragic death of G. Mazonakis,” it reads. “To avoid any misunderstanding, Ms I.G. clarifies that she never approved the public appearances of her previous lawyer, nor was she informed of them in advance. The ‘defence arguments’ made publicly on the substance of the case, without even copies of the case file having been obtained, do not represent her. Her defence, with absolute institutional commitment to the secrecy of the investigation and to the rights of the parties, the accused and those supporting the prosecution, will set out its legal and factual arguments only before the judicial authorities, avoiding any public comment or confrontation.”

Pantazis is now Gaka’s third lawyer.

Doctors angered by public interest

Public interest in what happened that afternoon has barely eased, and this is reported to anger both doctors. Every new detail that emerges makes it harder for them to apply for their detention to be lifted, even on condition of electronic monitoring and house arrest.

The death has also opened a wider investigation into quacks in the health sector, who use impressive-sounding scientific language of dubious substance to sell hope at a high price and to feed an equally costly desire to stay young.

Theodoropoulos’s lawyers, Nikos and Tellos Agapinos, have meanwhile set out the outline of his defence. They said their client “is waiting in silence and with respect for the investigation to gather evidence, without unnecessary television discussions”.

“The investigative steps taken so far have shown that the doctor was informed of the incident only when he was called, at around 4.15pm, to provide emergency medical assistance, six to seven minutes before EKAB, was called (4.21pm). The ambulance arrived at 4.26pm and found him performing CPR,” the statement said.

“That is his only connection with the incident under investigation. As the testimony of all the witnesses has shown, and as the lifting of telephone confidentiality will also show, he never communicated with the deceased, never examined him, never proposed any treatment, never provided any service or treatment, and never even met him.”

The facts according to Theodoropoulos

The lawyers say Theodoropoulos left for a meal when Mazonakis arrived at the clinic, citing restaurant video footage that has been made public. They say he returned shortly before 3pm and lay down on the sofa in his office, far from the examination room where Mazonakis was, which they argue shows he had no idea of any emergency. His patient arrived at 3.30pm, they add, and found the clinic perfectly calm, with nothing “urgent” taking place.

According to their account, that patient has told investigators he was being examined until about six minutes before the EKAB call at 4.21pm. At 4.06pm he received a text message confirming an electronic prescription for a gastroscopy on a set date and time. About six minutes before the EKAB call, while the doctor was prescribing a second, cardiological, test, Theodoropoulos was called to his wife’s examination room. The patient says he heard the EKAB call about six minutes later, and saw the ambulance arriving as he left, at 4.26pm.

The lawyers also sought to distinguish their client from Gaka, noting that his degrees come from the University of Athens, whereas Gaka has qualifications from Hawaii and is a doctor with no specialism. “We must point out that the doctor is 58, has three children, and all his degrees without exception, up to doctorate level, are from the Athens Medical School, and from no other university,” they said. He specialised in internal medicine and has held a licence to practise for 33 years, with a clean disciplinary record.

The Mazonakis family dispute his version. Their lawyer, Haralambos Lykoudis, asks how Theodoropoulos could possibly have been asleep while so many people were at the clinic and so many calls were being made after Mazonakis collapsed. Staff were seeking guidance from an anaesthetist and trying to get the defibrillator to work, he notes, when it had never even had its battery fitted since it was bought.

“I didn’t fit” in the ambulance

It emerged in recent days that, besides the two doctors and five employees, the clinic held a woman undergoing plasmapheresis in the neighbouring room, Theodoropoulos’s patient, and a daughter and her friend. That makes 11 people in all, not counting the singer.

Each witness is adding a piece to the picture. The case file is also being supplemented with data from the lifting of telephone confidentiality, which the prosecutor has ordered for specific mobile phones. It also includes files that Gaka rushed to delete from her phone. One was the photograph of Mazonakis on the plasmapheresis machine, which was recovered very soon after his death and which she had sent to the hypnotherapist Nasos Komianos. Investigators also found that shortly after 7pm she had deleted a video of the singer on the machine, which she kept at her clinic unlawfully.

She appears to have tried to wipe the material shortly before going to the police station on 9 September. The order to keep to a “common line”, delivered with the implied threat to staff that “everyone was responsible” for the tragic outcome, came with a refusal by both Gaka and Theodoropoulos to accompany Mazonakis in the EKAB ambulance to Elpis Hospital. Gaka’s explanation, that “there was no room for me”, is regarded as laughable, and everything the couple did before walking into the police station points to an attempt to conceal evidence and responsibility.

The judicial inquiry is now at a critical crossroads, with the toxicology results expected daily. The staff testimony already makes clear that Gaka gave Mazonakis sedation, probably because he was agitated when he arrived, as she has described herself. Despite that, and despite a colon cleanse (colon hydrotherapy) she had carried out on him only a day earlier, Gaka went ahead with the plasmapheresis as planned. Exactly what was administered will be established by the toxicology tests.

According to reports, the anaesthetist whom the clinic phoned at the critical moment has testified that she was asked what the antidote to propofol, a sedative, was. She told them there is none.