The shooting of Vangelis Zambunis with 97 bullets at a gas station in Neos Kosmos brought back memories of the murder of the love of his life, Katerina Anagnostaki, known as “Katerina Bella Mafia“.
A charismatic and very beautiful woman with an excellent education, who has always been attracted to criminal romance and the people who were associated with it. She lived in a passionate affair with the late Zambunis for a long time before they parted amicably. However, even after breaking up, they often communicated.
Katerina Anagnostaki was one of the first victims of the “blood cycle”, and her murder occurred when she thought that she was done with the Greek mafia once and for all, as she was determined to devote herself to her daughter.
Love with the Godfather
Katerina Bella Mafiaas she was known, spent the carefree summer of 2018 with her daughter and was often joined by her then-partner.
The 33-year-old woman, who loved the good life, weapons and tattoos, was from Crete, the scion of a wealthy family from the northern suburbs of Athens, and grew up surrounded by luxury and pleasure. She was still young and believed that, thanks to her name, connections and social status, she would always be out of danger and protected.
At the age of 20, she met one of the “godfathers” of the Athens mafia and stayed with him for a long time. It turned out to be Vangelis Zambunis, who fell in love with her and gradually placed her in another world.
When V. Zambunis was threatened with arrest, she allegedly hid him in her house, and when he was arrested, Anagnostaki was accused of harboring. Then she crossed the Rubicon of the law, and there is a suspicion that her relationship with Zambunis was the reason that the fatal beauty was eliminated in September 2018, when her fate was decided by a burst from a Kalashnikov assault rifle.
Katerina Anagnostaki was also suspected of murdering a mafioso woman and was accused of being part of a gang of robbers who decided to strike at the “black bankers.” For this case, she received a 5-year suspended sentence, and later a charge of attempted murder was brought against her, which shocked her.
This happened in 2011, when two men in motorcycle helmets were waiting for her on Veicu Avenue in Galati, where she was at work. No one knows whether the criminals knew about her pregnancy when they shot her in the head and fled, leaving 26-year-old Katerina seriously wounded but alive.
Flight, return and end
Katerina was taken to the emergency room, where doctors fought to save her life and save the child, who is now 12 years old. They succeeded, and Anagnostaki was discharged after several months of hospitalization. It was then that she went, as it was written, to America with her daughter for several years, and when she returned, she had changed a lot and seemed to have distanced herself from the Greek mafia, living an ordinary life in Athens. But someone has not forgotten either her or her actions in a place where, since 2016, one execution followed another for several months, and the list of victims continued to grow.
On that Wednesday, September 20, 2018, the clock showed just before midnight as the charming 33-year-old woman drove her Mercedes back to the luxury residential complex in Kifissia where she lived. On her mobile phone there was an application that allowed her to view the cameras in the underground parking lot where she parked her car, as recently she began to receive various strange messages.
After making sure that everything was in order, she drove in and out of the parking lot, not noticing the “shadows” quickly following her, armed with Kalashnikov assault rifles. No one heard the muffled shots, and it was not until noon the next day that the lifeless body was found.”Catherine Bella Mafia“, which lay in the Mercedes convertible for several hours, and sixteen shell casings were found scattered around.
Three months earlier, she wrote in an Instagram post: “First smiles, then lies and finally bullets” – the phrase, which turned out to be prophetic, was accompanied by a photograph in which she was pointing a machine gun at a target.
Her lifeless body was discovered by her mother, concerned that her daughter was not answering her calls, experiencing perhaps the most tragic moment fate has in store for a parent who must find the courage to kiss her child to death. Zambunis felt he was next, but had no idea it would happen so soon.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wuJU62brNaw
Assassination and “Kavouras”
A month later, the heavyweight of the Greek mafia, with whom Katerina has inextricably linked her life for many years, is assassinated on Akti Kondylis street in Piraeus, as he is leaving the office of the oil company. Zambunis manages to escape and leaves seriously wounded in the leg. In a few months, he will receive a new message when his close “associate” Panagiotis Sitokonstantinou receives it on May 7, 2019 in Kaminias.
At night everyone knew him as “Panay” or “Kavouras”, and the police were investigating whether he was behind the murder of bodybuilder Vasilis Grivas in Glika-Nera. The association was clear because, according to them, Grivas was allegedly behind the attempted murder “Kavurasa” in 2010 in Egaleo while he was taking his child to school. He survived and since then he always wore a bulletproof vest and carried a pistol – he was considered a sharp shooter with a revolver, and after the murder “Catherine Bella Mafia“He was constantly on the alert.
In early 2019, he left Athens for his native Cephalonia and returned in early May, possibly with assurances that he was not in danger. He stayed at his relatives’ house in Caminia, in an apartment building on Katsantoni Street, rode a motorcycle, was not armed and did not wear a bulletproof vest.
He was probably confident that his name was no longer on the death contract when he parked his motorcycle and walked towards the house where he lived. Hearing a car approaching, he stopped next to it and a passenger shot him with a shotgun, leaving him lying dead on the landing of an apartment building in a pool of blood.
The end of V. Zambunis
Nearly four years later, Zambunis, who usually walked with an escort and sometimes wore a bulletproof vest, was allegedly given assurances that he was no longer in danger. As the “godfather” of a powerful Greek mafia clan, he may have believed that the circle of bloodshed was now closed, at least as far as he was concerned, and so he gradually relaxed. In the last few months, he very often traveled alone in his armored BMW, the body armor was a thing of the past, but he was always armed with a Glock, and there was also a Kalashnikov assault rifle in the trunk.
However, last Sunday morning, the stop at the gas station he kept at Neos Kosmos turned out to be the last of his life… The Lexus stolen by hitmen from Italy was parked a few feet from the armored SUV that Zambunis had just gotten into. The aftermath of the incident can be seen in the leaked surveillance camera footage, which shows the first killer firing magazine after magazine from a Kalashnikov assault rifle, breaking through the armored glass of the BMW. He reloads and fires again, followed by his accomplice on the other side who shoots Zambunis, and finally the end comes.
The gunmen disappeared in a stolen car, which was later found burned, and when police arrived, they found Zambunis’s lifeless body, riddled with bullets. The remnant of a war that began eight years ago and cannot end.
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