Mum’s final message was HELP So why, 14 years after her body was pulled from a Greek harbour, have police only now admitted she was killed?
HER final text contained just a single word, but it haunts Jean Hanlon’s family to this day. ‘Help’, the message read.
Four days after that desperate plea was sent, Ms Hanlon’s body was found floating off the holiday paradise of Crete, where the 53-year-old Scots divorcee had moved in search of sunshine and happiness.
Fourteen years later, her devastated sons are still trying to fathom what happened to their adored mother that fateful night in March 2009, when help never came.
At the time, they were told it was a tragic drowning but something about the post-mortem examination conclusion clashed with the note of anguish in that last mobile message.
Amid their shock and grief, her son Michael Porter and his two older brothers, David and Robert, refused to settle for that too-easy explanation.
Their concerns that the case has never been properly investigated only grew after family pressure led to a second coroner’s report. This revealed she had died from multiple injuries, including a broken neck, inflicted before she entered the water.
It appeared to present irrefutable evidence that Ms Hanlon’s death was far more troubling than a mere accident, but cajoling an apathetic local police force and sclerotic legal system into delving deeper into this perplexing mystery has developed into a grinding battle of wills.
As each unwanted anniversary rolls by, Mr Porter has pleaded for help to unravel the truth surrounding her death, only to find help remains in short supply beneath the lazy blue Cretan skies.
Last week, it seemed the impasse had been broken at last when a fresh inquiry – the third – into Ms Hanlon’s death ruled for the first time that it was the result of ‘foul play’. Then came the Kafkaesque twist: yes, she may have been unlawfully killed but, detectives disclosed, so much time has passed that there is insufficient evidence to find her killer.
Not for the first time, the case of an expat’s death abroad was consigned to the files marked unsolved. At this point, no one would blame Mr Porter for throwing up his hands in despair after enduring endless frustrations, hamstrung by the language barrier and official intransigence.
Nothing, though, could be further from his thoughts: ‘To be told, “This isn’t an accident, it is foul play, but there’s just not enough evidence so we closed the case”, it’s heartbreaking, it’s frustrating and it’s just infuriating,’ he said. ‘Our family won’t give up. We now know for certain there was a crime. Someone else was involved. Someone knows something and someone is hiding something.
They need to come forward and just tell us what they know.
‘It has been 14 years and we know time is not on our side and, with forensics, the more time that passes, the more difficult it becomes.
‘It’s a weird feeling for us knowing this because it throws up so many more questions about what happened then.’ He added: ‘If the police hadn’t wasted so much time and had treated mum’s case with the respect she deserved, there is a high chance we could have found out what happened.
‘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.
‘I have always made it very clear 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.’
Ms 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 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 tourist spot of Kato Gouves, about 30 minutes’ drive east along the coast from Heraklion, Crete’s pretty capital. The seaside promenade at Kato Gouves is packed with restaurants, tavernas and hotels that attract holidaymakers from across Europe to its long crescent of golden sand.
‘She worked in local bars and tavernas,’ said Mr Porter. ‘She was earning peanuts but her life in the sun, surrounded by happy people, the culture, she loved it. Money didn’t really matter to her.’
Ms Hanlon usually came home to Scotland in winter when the resort shut down, returning in the summer season, but a growing circle of
‘Someone knows something and is hiding it’
friends, both Greek and expats, persuaded her to stay on through winter for the first time in 2008.
Mr Porter last spoke to his mother on March 6, 2009, three days before she vanished, when they discussed his plans for a forthcoming 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 called Nikos had soured.
On March 9, 2009, Ms Hanlon left her flat and went shopping before meeting a friend for coffee, mentioning in passing that she thought a car had been following her. The next day she was due to look after a disabled child for friends who had returned briefly to the UK.
Later, she headed to the waterfront Blue Sky Taverna, where she was hired as a waitress. The owner said she left happy, albeit abruptly without finishing her drink. From here, things become hazy. Evidence at Ms Hanlon’s flat, including a pile of worn clothes and an ironing board, suggests she returned home and changed. Her sons think a man was there too and used the toilet.
That evening, a Belgian friend in Kato Gouves named Peter called her mobile phone. She told him she was in the Marina Café bar near the port in Heraklion with a man she didn’t know.
Peter worried that she sounded drugged so she 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, Ms Hanlon sent Peter that one-word text saying: ‘Help’. He told police he called her back and she insisted everything was fine and that she called him again later, but Peter had already gone to bed and failed to pick up. After that, there were no more exchanges.
By the time her body was found in the water at Heraklion’s port on March 13, her sons had arrived in Crete to help search for her. Instead, they were taken to the mortuary. Still shellshocked, the brothers soon found themselves at loggerheads with police who were adamant she had drowned.
They have battled on regardless, pursuing their own inquiries, digging up new facts and refusing to allow prosecutors to give up on their mother. In 2021, Mr Porter’s lawyer managed to have the case reopened by the Department of Organised Crime (DOC) in Athens.
‘They are like the big boys who deal with big gangs, homicides, terrorist attacks and stuff and were really keen to take it,’ he said.
‘I was told they would do a thorough reinvestigation; they found a lot of inaccuracies. Our lawyer in Greece gave me a summary of what they found. They believe 100 per cent it was foul play.
‘However, they couldn’t find the evidence to charge anyone, so it’s been handed back to prosecutors – ie shelved again.’
He added: ‘So we will wait to receive the full report and our lawyer will analyse that along with the prosecutor and see if they can find something substantial enough in it to have the case pushed back to the courts and reopened so we can find the evidence we need to solve the case.’
Now 38, Mr Porter, who lives in London, has spent so much spare time piecing together the jigsaw and chasing down clues, but huge gaps remain: ‘We don’t know how she got to the port of Heraklion that night; we don’t know who she met and what happened after.
‘This mystery man still hasn’t come forward. You have to wonder why – surely to God, in the past 14 years, he cannot have missed every bit of press and publicity about this case. If I were innocent, I would want to come forward to clear my name and help police.’
Mr Porter said three people were on the police’s radar at various times: Peter, because he was the last to speak to Ms Hanlon; Nikos, because the pair were in a stormy relationship which had recently broken down; and another Greek from Kato Gouves, called Vangelis, with whom she had been friends and who would give her rides on his motorbike.
Peter and Nikos had apparently been cleared of involvement by police, but Mr Porter wonders why Vangelis did not remain a person of interest. He said: ‘Vangelis gave a fake alibi, then tried to get the alibi he said he was with to lie to the police. Obviously, the alibi refused and told police.
‘A couple of years later, we were told off the record that Vangelis had reportedly claimed he didn’t own a motorbike, he didn’t have a licence to ride one and his motorbike had become a write-off. I tried to push this through our lawyer but again nothing came of that.’
Mr Porter said he kept tabs on Vangelis and paid him a visit at his family’s taverna in 2019 when he was out there doing a public appeal.
He added: ‘We talked for a while and there was lots of chatting in Greek with other family members.
‘I secretly recorded the entire conversation and sent about three hours’ worth to my Greek lawyer to listen back, but he said there was nothing untoward in any of it. Vangelis has four brothers and their mum and dad treated mum like a daughter.
‘I really don’t think he would have done anything intentionally to hurt mum but he is very much protected by his older brothers. They will all batten down the hatches and Greeks stick together.
‘And Crete is slightly a law unto itself as it’s an island and not part of the mainland.’
When the case appeared on Greece’s version of Crimewatch, Light In The Tunnel, in March 2020, the show received a call from a man who claimed to have details but was too scared to share them.
Nevertheless, a year later, the case was reopened to allow the DOC to conduct a full review.
It sounded like a major step forward but several months ago, Greece’s Ministry of Justice got in touch with the devastating news that the DOC inquiry was being wound down.
Mr Porter said he had been ready to accept his mother may have
‘Vangelis gave a fake alibi, then tried to get the alibi to lie to police’
‘We have to fight for mum as she fought for us’
died in a tragic accident but the term ‘foul play’ suggests a deliberate act. Either way, it’s the not knowing that saps the soul.
He said: ‘Trying to find out the truth is not something you can simply just let go of. It’s not a choice. We have to fight for mum because she always fought for us.
‘She always supported me as a young boy when I wanted to dance. That was 30 years ago in Dumfries when I was the only boy in a class of 160 girls and everybody would go on at my mum about it, saying: “Are you trying to make Michael the daughter you never had?”
‘As a single mother, she didn’t have that much money but she always made sure that my brothers had their football boots and went to their matches and that I had my tap-dancing shoes and made all my costumes by hand.
‘She just brought up her sons and forgot her life, until she went to Crete. It was meant to be her time.’
He added: ‘So we fight on to give mum the justice she deserves and, hopefully, to stop this same nightmare happening to other families.
‘We can’t grieve because nothing’s finished – we need to know what happened. Then we can finally let mum and the family rest and remember the good times.’
Fourteen years on, all Ms Hanlon’s sons want is the truth. For that to happen, they could really use some help.