A Greek woman sentenced to life imprisonment last year for the murder of her nine-year-old daughter has been handed two additional life sentences for killing her two other children, Malena, 3, and Iris, who was just six months old.
On Tuesday, March 18, a court in Athens found that Roula Pispirigou suffocated her infant daughters in 2019 and 2021 in failed attempts to stop her husband from repeatedly abandoning her.
After a 12-month trial, the 35-year-old from Patra was given two more life terms after judges supported the prosecutor’s argument that Pispirigou was “methodical and calculating,” driven by an obsessive fixation on her husband, Manos Daskalakis. Prosecutor Vassiliki Dimopoulou stated, “She suffocated her children to keep her husband close.”
Malena died in 2019 while being treated for leukemia, while Iris was suffocated in her bed in 2021. The third child, Georgina, died in a hospital in 2022 after suffering “cardiac arrest.”
Dimopoulou also criticized the forensic investigators who examined the girls’ deaths, accusing them of negligence. “They lacked responsibility and failed to conduct a thorough investigation into the causes of death of three young children. Their work was sloppy and indifferent,” the prosecutor said.
Pispirigou’s appeal against her conviction for murdering Georgina is scheduled for May 5.