Matsakis makes a name for himself down under

FORMER state pathologist and Diko deputy Marios Matsakis is earning a worldwide reputation which has him travelling far and wide to conduct post mortems.

Matsakis has just returned from Australia where he conducted an exhumation and post mortem on a 15-year-old Australian boy whose family believed he need not have died.

The Cypriot pathologist’s findings appear to back up the opinion of the boy’s parents and could lead to a major court case in Australia.

Matsakis told The Sunday Mail the teenager had gone on a hiking trip organised by his college in a valley around 100 miles outside of Sydney where he got lost and subsequently fell into a creek.

The boy’s body was not discovered until the next day and a post mortem concluded that he drowned.

But Matsakis said the family was not satisfied and accused the police and the school of negligence by delaying the search for their son. “The believed, number one, that the hike should never have gone ahead because of the conditions, and number two, that the rescue did not take place until the next day,” Matsakis said.

The family decided to consult the Cypriot forensic pathologist after hearing about him through another case he conducted in Australia.

“I gave my opinion based on the findings of the first post mortem and as a result a request was made at the inquest for a second post mortem,” Matsakis said.

He said the coroner adjourned the inquest and gave him the authority to perform the second autopsy which he carried out on Wednesday.

Matsakis said his findings were that the boy died mainly due to hypothermia and then drowned, a discovery he said raises a lot of issues. He will submit his final report to the inquest which is due to resume on August 28.

In addition to the current case Matsakis said the inquest in his first Australian case resumes next month. He is also involved in two murder cases in Israel.

Matsakis is often called on by Cypriot families to attend post mortems being carried out by state pathologists.

The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.