No love lost between man and wife he was accused of killing (Update)

By Constantinos Psillides
PAPHOS Criminal court has found Evripides Christou, 84, not guilty of the murder of his wife Aliki Christoforou, 78, at their home in Kritou Terra earlier this year.
The pensioner who has been in custody since his wife’s death last July, is to be immediately released after the court ruled the prosecution had not made its case beyond a reasonable doubt.
Aliki Christoforou was found dead in her yard on July 23, covered with a blanket. She had an injury on the forehead thought to have been caused by a blow from a heavy object.
At the time, Christou went to hospital with injuries to his face. He claimed that he, his wife and her sister had been attacked by thieves the previous night, but he had not reported the incident to the police.
Georgia Christoforou who lives in the US but had been staying in Cyprus for the last four years also sustained injuries but claimed she fell.
But after she was arrested, Christoforou told police her brother-in-law hit both women with his walking stick. She also told police that her sister was alive after the beating and that she had complained of headaches.
According to the court decision, Christou’s abusive behaviour towards his wife was well documented and a neighbour had heard shouting from the cottage only a day before the death.
The neighbour told the court he heard Christou tell his wife “to go to hell”, adding that he heard two more voices, identifying them beyond any doubt to be that of the victim and her sister. The neighbour also said the victim had confided in him that she and her husband fought over money. She was mad at him for selling a herd goats for €5,500 and keeping all the money. She also said he had tricked her into signing a plot of land over to him.
A second witness – woman from the area – who used to drive the couple to town, testified that they often fought while in her car. In one instance, according to the court decision, the defendant had threatened to throw his wife out of the vehicle.
The second witness said that the dead woman’s sister never contradicted the defendant and that the two women never quarrelled and did seem to care for each other.
A civil lawyer for the sisters told the court that on July 15, a week before the murder, the two women visited his office alone and asked him to draft their wills. The lawyer noted that Aliki was furious at her husband over the land she claimed he stole, even going as far as wanting to report it to the police. Her sister talked her out of going to the police, the lawyer told the court, out of fear of what the people would say.
According to the lawyer, Aliki wanted to cut her husband out of her will. When she was told that she would have to divorce him, she immediately wanted to file for a divorce but was again dissuaded by her sister, again out of fear of gossip.
In their wills the sisters left their belongings to each other, as well as donating land to the Church, said the lawyer.
Perhaps the biggest lapse in the investigation came four days after the crime, when a man contacted authorities to report that he overheard people at a local bakery talking about mugging three old people who used to sleep in the open outside a cottage in Kritou Terra. The man was brought in for questioning and admitted that he was persuaded by two other individuals to drive them where the trio was sleeping. There, he said, they beat the couple and another woman and left. The man even took police officers at a site near his home where he showed them a pipe he claims the two other people used to beat up the trio.
Police investigators dismissed his statement, with the chief investigator claiming that it was full of inconsistencies. He cited as an example the fact that the man claimed that he drove to the area in a green BMW, which was later found to have been impounded a day before the alleged crime. The man’s statement was dismissed despite admitting later that he lied about the car because he hadn’t paid the road tax and didn’t want to get in more trouble, offering this time that he drove a Mitsubishi Lancer. Testifying in court, the chief investigator added that even if he was telling the truth, injuries the woman sustained on July 20 couldn’t possibly be the cause of death.
The judge criticised the police for dismissing the testimony, wondering why they didn’t further explore that line of enquiry since his testimony was linked to such a serious crime, along with the fact that his car was seen in the area by eyewitnesses and that phone data place him near the village at the time.
Also contributing to the acquittal was the fact that Georgia Christoforou, the sister, was deemed unfit to testify in court. Despite the legal services dropping the murder charges against her and initially putting her on the witness list, a psychiatric evaluation found Georgia suffering from mild dementia, upset by her sister’s death and her two-month imprisonment. According to the evaluation, the woman lied about her age, her occupation, exhibited signs of short-term memory loss and at a times appeared to be confused as to her surroundings.
The final element of doubt was a testimony given by a Greek forensic expert on the alleged murder weapon – the old man’s cane. Despite identifying as cause of death a subarachnoid haemorrhage resulting from a blow to the head with a blunt object, police investigators failed to prove that the defendant’s cane –which was presented as the murder weapon- was used in the crime. The forensic expert testified that the blow came from blunt force trauma by a person with limited muscular strength, but no traces of the victim’s DNA were found on the cane. A second expert testified that no DNA traces would be discovered had the cane been washed or dragged through the dirt, telling the court that he couldn’t be absolutely sure if the cane presented was used to commit the crime.
The court ordered that Christou is to be released immediately.