Today, memories of the student’s tragic death are coming to the forefront Eleni Topaloudi in November 2018 by two of her peers who raped and they threw her—badly beaten but still alive—onto a rocky beach in the area of Lindos in Rhodes.
The case is being heard today in the Mixed Court of Appeal which, once the trial begins, will be called upon to decide whether the two perpetrators of this heinous murder will be sentenced to a lesser term or whether the sentence of life imprisonment plus an additional 15 years—imposed on them two years ago two years ago by the trial court. The court ruled that the two convicted individuals were not entitled to any mitigating circumstances.
The defendants accused of the brutal assault and subsequent murder of Eleni Topaloudi are two young men, now 24 and 22 years old, who were permanent residents of Rhodes. The older of the two is a member of a wealthy family on the island, and the younger is the son of a craftsman from Albania. The two friends shared a common interest in martial arts. The younger of the two is also implicated in another case involving the rape of a young girl with special needs, which allegedly took place just a few days after the Topaloudi murder.
The thread that led to the discovery of the crime began to unravel on the afternoon of November 28, 2018, when a local couple discovered the lifeless body of a young woman floating on Fokia Beach in Rhodes.woman was floating on the water. The medical examiner determined that the young woman had been severely beaten before her body was found in the water and that her death was the result of a criminal act. The body was identified. It belonged to Eleni Topaloudi, a student of Mediterranean Studies at the University of the Aegean. The Coast Guard’s investigation identified the younger of the two perpetrators, of Albanian descent, whom the student had met on the night in question. His testimony led to the identification of the second perpetrator. The circumstances of the student’s death sent shockwaves not only through the local community but throughout the entire country. The student had been raped and horribly abused.
As medical examiner Panagiotis Kotretsos, who received the body of Eleni Topaloudi, testified in the trial court, the victim had been brutally tortured before being found unconscious in the water. The response given by Mr. Kotretsos to the court’s observation that the two perpetrators were claiming—which was characteristic of what the victim’s remains “revealed”— Mr. Kotretsos’s response to the court’s observation that the two perpetrators are claiming the victim’s consent to the rape: «There is no such thing as consent to death. For someone to do these things, it’s not just about the intent to have sex. It is something that goes beyond even the most extreme human behavior. It gives me the impression that the perpetrator considers this to be the correct course of action and that it is not something we would describe as having gotten out of hand.».
The referral order issued by the Rhodes Misdemeanor Court describes the brutal, literally torturous ordeal endured by the young female student at the hands of the two young men sentenced to life imprisonment, the student endured while she was at the older perpetrator’s country house in the Lindos area.
The judges describe in detail how Eleni’s refusal to have sex with them triggered extreme reactions: She was threatened with a knife and brutally punched repeatedly in the face by the two young men who raped her.
According to the court ruling, Topaloudi, «after regaining consciousness a short time later, told the defendants that she intended to report them to the police, thereby provoking their anger and, at the same time, their concern that they would be arrested and face criminal penalties for their conduct. Faced with this unpleasant prospect, the defendants then weighed their options and jointly decided to physically eliminate the victim… The defendants, each fully accepting the other’s behavior, They dealt her a series of blows to the head with their fists and an iron rod, causing her severe hemorrhagic infiltration…, while they also attempted to kill her by strangulation.» The defendants, despite the injured Eleni’s pleas to take her to the hospital, «They persisted in their criminal plan and carried her, naked, to the car in order to carry out the premeditated felony of murder they had decided upon».
The defendants went to a rocky beach in the Lindos area and threw Eleni—who was exhausted and already severely beaten—off the cliff, from a height of about 10 meters above the sea. The girl's struggle was now a losing battle, as her serious injuries «made it impossible for her to move effectively enough to stay afloat.”». The death of Eleni Topaloudi «was caused by drowning”».
The medical examiner told the trial court that If Eleni Topaloudi had been taken to a hospital after her hellish home, she would most likely still be alive.
In their statements before the Mixed Jury Court, the two defendants had each blamed the other for what happened at Lindos’s house, each maintaining that he was the one who was shocked by the other’s rage, and that out of fear he was paralyzed and unable to prevent what happened to the 21-year-old. Both claimed that they had sex with the victim’s consent and that the outburst occurred when Eleni praised the sexual performance of one of them. This appears to have been a tactic the two perpetrators employed from the start: «They told us the same story, each putting the other in the role of the protagonist,» one of the Coast Guard officers who questioned the two young men had told the court. .
The trial in this case is expected to last several days.
