Crete 'struggling with shame' after rape and murder of US scientist
The lawyer of a man who has admitted raping and killing the acclaimed American scientist Suzanne Eaton while she attended a conference on Crete says the crime has left locals struggling with feelings of guilt and shame.
Almost three weeks after the body of the 59-year-old California biologist was found in a cave, people on Crete remain profoundly shocked, the attorney Pantelis Zellios told the Guardian.
“There is a huge sense of guilt and shame,” said Zellios. The manner of Eaton’s death, the way in which her corpse was discovered dumped, fractured and wounded at the bottom of a ventilation shaft, had been devastating for the nation of proud islanders, he said. “Across Crete many feel a sense of responsibility … so much so I keep having to remind them that in every society there are individuals who are good, and individuals who are bad.”
Yiannis Paraskakis, a 27-year-old carpenter, confessed to randomly singling out Eaton – a prominent developmental biologist with the Max Planck institute in Dresden – as she enjoyed a jog along a country road not far from the Orthodox Academy of Crete where the international conference she was enrolled to speak at was taking place.
Driving a white sedan – subsequently picked up by road cameras in the area – he admitted ramming into the American twice with the intention of incapacitating her and abducting her. A dedicated athlete and accomplished musician, Eaton had a black belt in taekwondo but appears to have been overwhelmed after falling to the ground when the vehicle hit her.
“Both before the investigating magistrate and to me he said repeatedly he was motivated by the desire to have sex,” said Zellios of the father of two, who until a month ago worked in a carpentry store before unexpectedly announcing he was quitting.
“It seems Eaton was hit in the head by the vehicle’s metal fender and likely concussed when he put her in the trunk of the car although investigations are still under way.”
The woodworker admitted raping the biologist three times outside the cave before throwing her down a ventilation shaft leading down to it.
A coroner ruled the American had died as a result of asphyxiation and was likely to have suffered “a slow and painful death”.
It wasn’t until six days after she was last seen playing the academy’s piano that her corpse was discovered in the cave around six miles (10km) from the conference venue outside the coastal community of Kolymbari in the northwest of the island.
Camera surveillance and a YouTube video that the culprit had uploaded depicting his discovery of the subterranean