Kypseli: infant murdered with 20 knife wounds – over 1,000 'torture houses' in Athens
A couple of drug users is accused of killing their 8-month-old infant and hiding the body in a freezer for four years. Tovima.gr reveals over 1,000 similar squalid dwellings in central Athens.
Infant killed in Kypseli: the tip of an iceberg of 1,000 'torture houses'
A 43-year-old Greek man and his 38-year-old German partner are accused of murdering their eight-month-old boy in 2022 with 20 knife wounds, subsequently — according to authorities' assessments — because the infant was crying. They then placed his body in a bag and kept it in a freezer for four whole years, until the case was uncovered by Greek police.
Tovima.gr presents assessments from officers of the Hellenic Police according to which at least 1,000 similar squalid dwellings — 'torture houses' — are identified mainly in central Athens: in Omonia, Agios Panteleimon, Kolonos, Patissia, Kypseli and Attiki Square, as well as in other areas.
The couple and life in short-term rentals
The couple were regular users of hard drugs and lived in squalid conditions in short-term rental rooms in run-down areas of central Athens. The 43-year-old had already been accused in two pimping cases. The horrifying aspect of the case is that the family's other children knew that the 'package' in the freezer was their dead brother.
In their initial statements, the accused parents claimed they believed the child was 'possessed' and that 'the Illuminati gave them the wrong baby at the hospital'. Later they argued that they hid the body in the freezer because they could not part with it. Authorities believe, however, that the concealment was done to cover up the murder.
19 uncovered cases — and less than 10 per cent comes to light
Officers of Greek police point out that less than 10 per cent of these cases are uncovered. In recent years, 19 similar cases of 'torture houses' have come to light, with victims being women, minors and migrants, in which human trafficking rings, drug trafficking and labour exploitation of foreign nationals operate.
Among the previously uncovered cases, tovima.gr refers to the murder of a seven-year-old in Kypseli — a case that was also uncovered in 2022, when it became known that his parents had hidden his body for five years in a crypt inside their house. Equally shocking was the murder of four-year-old Anny, of Bulgarian origin, in a house on Michail Voda Street: the girl's body was dismembered and parts of it were thrown in the rubbish, even inside food bowls.
In 2022, the case of sexual exploitation of a 13-year-old in Sepolia by a 53-year-old shop owner was also uncovered; he used online applications to push the minor to dozens of clients from across Athens. Among the uncovered cases is also a report of exploitation of minors by ten people in Petralona, as well as the sexual exploitation of the children of a parliamentary police officer.
In late July 2025, a three-year-old girl was found dead on Eden beach in Palaio Faliro. Her 32-year-old mother, of Algerian origin, is considered responsible for the murder, and in this case too there were reports of drug use.
Infants in bins, children in cave-like houses
In recent years, at least eight infants have been found dead in rubbish bins in Attica and other parts of the country, according to information presented by tovima.gr. In recent months, in at least five cases children — mainly with parents who are drug users — have been found living in dump-like apartments in Agios Panteleimon, Agioi Anargyroi, Peristeri and elsewhere.
A common conclusion in most of these cases is the inability of state services to prevent incidents due to negligence, lack of coordination, understaffing and underfunding. By now, private organisations that had undertaken the hosting of at-risk minors have ceased to respond adequately — due to new specifications imposed on them by the Health Ministry — resulting in many abused children being trapped in hospitals.
Currently, 93 minors are housed in 21 hospital units across the country. Many of them have been unclaimed for several months, while some children — as happened in the Kypseli case — are snatched by their parents and returned to the same squalid conditions. The Minors Directorate of Greek police assumes, on the basis of prosecutorial orders, the protection of approximately 7 to 10 children each month.
The crying that leads to murder
It has been found that children's crying often enrages drug addicts, who, owing to long-term drug use, become particularly irritable and engage in uncontrolled reactions. Several murders of infants and young children, both in Greece and abroad, have been committed for this very reason.
A similar incident had occurred in 2017 in Agia Barbara, with the murder of a six-year-old by her father, who said he 'could not bear' her crying. That same year, in Nea Smyrni, a 40-year-old mother with mental health problems threw her four-year-old daughter from the fifth floor and subsequently fell herself.
Source: Google News GR — Crime (el)