June 24, 1991 Four bodies were found in one of the villas in the prestigious Athens suburb of Ekali. – businessman Michalis Chrysafidis, his wife Elizabeth and their two sons.
The murder of the Chrysafides family has become one of the most mysterious and brutal crimes of modern Greece. More than three decades have passed, but a final answer to the question of who exactly and why destroyed the entire family has not emerged.
The villa where no one answered for several days
The family stopped communicating in mid-June 1991. Acquaintances and employees of Michalis Chrysafidis’s enterprise were informed that the owners had allegedly gone on vacation.
When the silence dragged on, a relative of Chrysafidis, together with people from his entourage, arrived at the house in Ekali. On June 24, they went inside and discovered a terrible picture.
Michalis Chrysafidis, his wife and two sons were dead. The bodies were in different rooms. There were victims bound and gaggedsome of the bodies were covered with blankets and towels.
The investigation found items that were linked to the attack, including ax and heavy sledgehammer. The nature of the injuries indicated the exceptional cruelty of the crime.
The main suspect is a man who lived with his family
Almost immediately, police attention focused on a 28-year-old Thai citizen Praserte Sertuasanewho was called “Tai” in the house.
He had worked for the Chrysafides since about 1989, lived directly on the villa grounds and had his own room. According to the recollections of family friends, they trusted him and actually considered him a person from the inner circle.
However, by the time the bodies were discovered, Prasert was no longer in Greece.
June 21, 1991 he flew to Bangkok with his wife and relatives. It was this circumstance that became one of the central elements of the investigation.
He said that the owners had gone on vacation
Additional suspicions were raised by stories from people who tried to contact the family in previous days.
According to them, it was the butler who answered the phone and claimed that the Chrysafides had gone on vacation and would return later.
If this evidence is accurate, someone was actually trying to create the impression that being away from family was completely normal, and thus gain a few days before the crime was discovered.
But the forensic examination confused the matter
The strangest part of the investigation was the alleged different moments of death of family members.
The materials of the case, which were subsequently repeatedly reproduced by the Greek media, indicated that all four could not have been killed at the same time, but at intervals of several days.
Two sons, according to one version of the chronology, could have died yet June 20father – June 21while Elizabeth’s death was attributed to a later time.
It was here that the main contradiction in the version about the only criminal appeared.
Prasert left Greece on June 21. If the assumption of Elizabeth’s later death was indeed true, then after his departure there should have been a someone else.
This circumstance gave rise to a version of a possible accomplice and became one of the most mysterious elements of the entire story.
Just a robbery?
The police also considered a mercenary motive. The family was wealthy, and Michalis Chrysafidis was engaged in business.
Investigators were checking the safe and property in the house, trying to determine whether money, jewelry or other valuables were missing.
However, the simple robbery version did not adequately explain the scale of the violence, the destruction of the entire family, and the supposed spread of the murders over time.
If the criminals really were only after money, the obvious question was: why keep people in a house, kill them one by one, and then try to make it seem like the family was on vacation?
Thailand did not extradite the suspect
After Prasert Sertuasana became the main subject of interest in the investigation, the Greek authorities tried to force his return from Thailand.
Was involved in the search Interpoland the return of the suspect was discussed between Greek and Thai authorities.
However, it was never possible to bring him to Greece for a full trial.
As a result, a process did not take place that could have made it possible to verify the investigation’s version in court, interrogate the suspect and receive answers to the numerous contradictions in the case.
Video: Chrysafides family case
The story of the Ekali quadruple murder continues to attract the attention of Greek journalists and crime researchers decades later.
The video is dedicated to the case of the Chrysafidis family, the circumstances of the murder and versions of the role of the Thai butler.
The will added another mystery
A separate line of investigation was handwritten will of Michalis Chrysafidis.
It was reported that in the event of the death of the entire family, the property was to go to one of the relatives.
The appearance of this document inevitably gave rise to additional suspicions and versions, but the investigation did not receive evidence that would link the heir to the quadruple murder.
Thus, the will became another unusual detail in the case, but not the key to solving it.
A crime without ending
Over the past decades, the story of the murder of the Chrysafidis family has repeatedly returned to the pages of Greek newspapers and television programs.
The main suspicions were traditionally associated with the Thai butler, who left the country literally on the eve of the discovery of the crime.
But there is a fundamentally important caveat: Prasert Sertoisana was not convicted by a Greek court for the murder of the Chrysafides family. Therefore, it is impossible to talk about his guilt as an established judicial fact.
Moreover, the alleged chronology of deaths itself created serious questions about the version of the only killer and left open the possibility of the existence of an accomplice – or a different sequence of events.
As a result, the story of the Ekali villa remains more than just a tale of the brutal murder of four people.
This is one of those cases where the victims, the crime scene, the alleged weapon and the person on whom the investigation is focused are known – but after more than three decades there is still no definitive answer to the main question: What exactly happened in the Chrysafidis family home during those few days in June 1991?
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