We’re sure our mother was murdered on Greek island
Jean Hanlon was found dead in paradise – and for years the police didn’t seem to care. So her sons took up the case instead... and now, with the launch of a cold case review, they feel the net may finally be tightening on her killer
On the wall of Michael Porter’s home hangs a favourite image of his mother, Jean Hanlon. eyes twinkling, head thrown back in full-throated laughter, it is a moment of joyful exuberance frozen in time.
For Michael, however, the picture is also a bittersweet reminder of the daily battle for justice which he and his two brothers have long fought on her behalf.
It is now 12 years since her body was found floating in the waters off the holiday paradise of Crete, where the 53-year-old Scots divorcee had moved in search of sunshine and happiness.
Through the shock and grief at losing their beloved mother, Michael and his siblings have had to contend with apathetic local police and a bureaucracy apparently unwilling to help find the truth surrounding her death.
Jean’s body was found floating in the port of
Heraklion on March 13, 2009, four days after she went missing. But what an initial postmortem examination concluded was a tragic drowning has since evolved into something far more sinister than a simple accident.
Her family have never accepted that explanation and their concerns that the case has never been properly investigated grew after a later coroner’s report revealed she had died from a broken neck before she entered the water.
Jean had also suffered shattered ribs, a punctured lung and facial injuries. Her clothing and shoes were scuffed, suggesting she had been dragged. Her phone, bag and jacket were missing.
Yet, in all the intervening years, no one has ever been held to account for the killing of Jean Hanlon. Far from having their day in court, Michael and his brothers, David and Robert Porter, from Dumfries, have had to fight tooth and nail to stop the case from being consigned forever to the files marked unsolved.
They have endured years of frustrations and brick walls, hamstrung by the language barrier and ineffectual policing, even hiring a private detective at one point in an effort to investigate the situation.
On three occasions, Greek police have closed the case, leaving Jean’s family on the brink of despair. Finally however, their perseverance may be about to pay off.
Last week, Greek prosecutors announced a brand new investigation, which would review any and all the available evidence from scratch. Furthermore, this root-and-branch inquiry would be conducted by a different police department, one that was experienced in investigating complex crimes.
For Michael, the news is the breakthrough he has long campaigned for: ‘It is the best news possible – although we have been down this road before, so we are trying not to get our hopes up,’ he said.
‘This past year has been difficult but it has now gone through several officials and the new investigation has been given the go-ahead. We just want to get our mum justice.’
The 36-year-old added: ‘This is the third time they have reopened their investigation, but I feel things are different this time and that we might be about to get what we want, which is a proper investigation of the case.
‘Hopefully, now, the police will take this seriously, they will realise that we are not going to go away and that we want answers.’
In order to provide those answers, detectives assigned to the case will have to piece together the fragments of evidence gathered during previous, incomplete inquiries to build up a picture of Jean’s life on Crete and what befell her in those final, fateful few hours.
In doing so, they will have to fill in many blanks, addressing inconsistencies in witness statements and coping with a dearth of forensic evidence.
‘What I hate the most about this is how long it has been going on for and that this could have been resolved within that first year if it had been investigated properly at the time,’ said Michael. ‘I really believe that. I think there is this attitude towards British residents that they somehow brought this on themselves, they automatically pigeonhole them as drunks or sexually promiscuous.
‘They don’t realise that these people chose to live on their island because they loved it there.’
He added: ‘I have always made it very clear that we have no hard feelings with the Greek people. Our issue is with the Greek authorities at the beginning because they wouldn’t listen to us. and it was the wrong police department that was dealing with mum’s case – they deal with sunken ships, not homicides.’
Jean Hanlon was 40 when she went to Crete on her first holiday abroad and fell in love with the lifestyle and the people.
In 2003, the former hospital secretary at Dumfries Royal Infirmary landed an office job in a tour agency there before she finally settled on the island she adored two years later.
Before long she had swapped jobs, taking up bar work in the popular tourist spot of Kato Gouves, about 30 minutes’ drive from Heraklion, Crete’s pretty island capital.
The seaside promenade at Kato Gouves is packed with restaurants, tavernas and hotels that attract holidaymakers from across europe to its long stretch of golden sand.
‘She just worked in local bars and tavernas,’ said Michael. ‘She was earning peanuts but her lifestyle of being out there in the sun, surrounded by happy people, the culture, she loved it. Money didn’t really matter.’
Jean usually came home to Scotland in the winter months when the resort shut down, returning when the summer season started, but a growing circle of friends, both Greek and expats, helped persuade her to stay on through winter for the first time in 2008.
MICHaeL last spoke to his mother on March 6, 2009, three days before she vanished, when they discussed his plans for an upcoming visit. everything seemed normal. The only dark cloud, he later learned from reading the diary she assiduously kept, was that a recent relationship with a Greek man had soured.
On Monday, March 9, 2009, Jean left her apartment to go shopping before walking down to a taverna where she met a Scottish woman she knew for coffee. During the conversation she mentioned that a car had been following her but didn’t seem distressed. She had also made plans to look after a disabled child in the town the following day, a favour to British friends who had returned briefly to the UK.
Later, she headed down to the waterfront for a job interview at the Blue Sky Taverna. She got the waitressing post and the owner said she departed happy, albeit abruptly without finishing her drink. From here, things become hazy.
evidence at Jean’s apartment, including a pile of worn clothes and an ironing board, suggests she returned home and changed. Her sons think a man was there too.
That evening, a Belgian friend in Kato Gouves named Peter called
Jean’s mobile phone. She told him she was in the Marina Café bar near the port in Heraklion with a man she didn’t know.
She said he didn’t speak any English and that he was a bore. Peter said that she sounded drugged, and was speaking a lot faster than she normally did.
Jean passed the phone to the man and Peter had a brief chat with him. The man did not give a name but said he was from Kato Gouves. An hour later, Jean sent Peter a one word text, saying ‘HELP’. He told police he called her back and she insisted everything was fine. Jean later called him back, but Peter had gone to bed and failed to pick up. It was the last anybody heard from her.
By the time Jean’s body was discovered floating in the water in Heraklion port four days later, her sons had arrived in Crete to help the search for her. Instead, they were taken to the morgue. ‘I knew instantly it was mum,’ said Michael. Shellshocked, the brothers soon found themselves at loggerheads with police, who were adamant their mother had drowned.
‘Grief gets put on the back burner,’ said Michael. ‘With my mum’s case, I think we switched instantly into detective mode to try to work out what happened to her when nothing made sense.’
Their suspicions proved accurate when a coroner detailed numerous serious injuries, including a broken neck, were inflicted before death. His report also showed there was no drink or drugs in her body at the time of her death, meaning she could not have been drugged as her friend Peter had suggested.
There was little water in her lungs, meaning she was dead before she entered the water. Despite the mounting evidence of a crime, the family struggled to convince the local police to reinvestigate. While suspects have emerged over the years, they have been released because of lack of evidence, leaving Jean’s three sons deeply frustrated.
They discovered through Jean’s diary that she had become involved with a local man known only as Nikos, but broke it off because she didn’t like the way he treated her.
Michael said that police tracked down the Greek and interviewed him. His statements, which the family have had translated, suggest he had no alibi on the night of
Jean’s disappearance. Yet he has never been named as a suspect.
A year after the Scot’s death, however, the Greek police did name two suspects, a Belgian and a Greek. Both had been friends of Jean. Michael was told there had been ‘inaccuracies’ in their statements.
THE Greek friend had lied on a number of counts, including saying the last time he had spoken to Jean was a week before, when phone records showed he had spoken to her on the night of her disappearance. He also told police he did not have a motorbike. Not only did he have one, he did not have a licence for it.
In her diary, Jean had written about trips to Heraklion on the back of the friend’s motorbike, and how scared she had been on it. Her fear made her son wonder if perhaps there had been an accident and a cover-up: ‘It would explain the extent of her injuries. He’s panicked, realised he would get done because he didn’t have a licence, and put the body in the water thinking it will never come back.’
The case has appeared on Greece’s version of Crimewatch and a Channel 5 documentary, Murdered in Paradise: The Killing of Jean Hanlon, led to her case being reopened in 2019. But last year, Greece’s Ministry of Justice contacted the devastated family to say the inquiry was being wound down after no new evidence.
The family, though, have refused to give up, raising funds through their Justice for Jean campaign to continue to fight.
Their Greek solicitor, Apostolos Xiritakis, said: ‘This case is being passed to an experienced police department which specialises in hard criminal cases.’
A proper investigation is all Michael and his brothers have ever wanted, although they are only too aware that the outcome will inevitably bring more pain, regardless of whether they finally get the answers they have been seeking.
‘You think by fighting for her you are keeping her alive. That will be the hardest part,’ Michael said, ‘that there will come a time when you realise you have to let her go.’