Scotland<\/a>. \u201cWe\u2019ve had the entire homicide division of the Greek FBI working night and day on the case,\u201d said the police spokesperson Konstantina Dimoglidou. \u201cWe\u2019re in contact with other police forces. We\u2019re going to solve this.\u201d<\/p>\nThe abandoned building in Athens where the body of Ross, 38, was found in a suitcase. Photograph: Louiza Vradi\/Reuters<\/p>\n
But four days after Ross was publicly identified, with Greek authorities announcing the body was that of a Briton based on fingerprints that matched biometric data in the US, mystery continues to shroud the case.<\/p>\n
Initial examination of her remains proved inconclusive although pathologists deemed she had probably been dead for several days before the discovery. There were no evident injuries or sign of struggle on her body, raising further questions as to how she had died.<\/p>\n
On Friday, as local people left flowers at the site, police said investigators were intensifying their search of CCTV footage after it emerged that DNA analysis of the suitcase had not produced any evidence that could be linked to a suspect.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhenever I pass by I think of that poor woman,\u201d said Manos Andreou, a fashion designer who walks his dog each day along Evelpidon. \u201cUntil the area was closed off, I used to go in there and let her run around it, so it\u2019s all been a bit of a shock. They say they\u2019re looking at camera footage, they say they\u2019re making progress, but can you see any cameras anywhere on this street?\u201d<\/p>\n
The daughter of a lawyer, Ross, who had lived and worked in the US, flew into Athens from Edinburgh on 26 June. Until 15 July she had stayed with the son of a Greek friend in Keratsini, a working-class suburb close to the port of Piraeus. Before moving on, she had told him she would be spending a few days with friends from the US in Kypseli.<\/p>\n
Detectives, now desperately trying to reconstruct her movements, have expressed frustration at their inability to trace the Americans. Other members of the Briton\u2019s social network in Athens have been interviewed at length, giving testimony that has been described as \u201cincredibly helpful\u201d. None are considered suspects.<\/p>\n
\u201cJuly 15 was the last day she had contact with any of her friends,\u201d said the police spokesperson. \u201cOur investigations are focused on the intervening days and whom she may have met and where she stayed. The Americans have not been identified or found.\u201d<\/p>\n
Police remain confident the suitcase was not at the crime scene more than 48 hours before its discovery on 18 July. They are also convinced that Ross died nearby in Kypseli although have stopped short of describing her death as a murder.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is always the possibility that she died and then for some reason was hidden,\u201d added Dimoglidou. \u201cOur priority is to get to the bottom of who left the suitcase. Whoever they were was careful not to leave any fingerprints or DNA.\u201d<\/p>\n
Adding to the mystery, it emerged that the Briton\u2019s mobile phone was in operation and being used days after her death. Ross\u2019s distraught father is reported to have told police he received text messages from his daughter, believing she was alive and well, until her body was identified, publicly, on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
Messages spoke of her \u201cneed to be alone\u201d. Authorities, who have yet to retrieve the device, believe they were deliberately sent so that she would not be declared missing and \u201cto buy time\u201d. Investigators have located the phone\u2019s digital footprint to Athens.<\/p>\n
One source said: \u201cWe have to presume that the person who had her phone and then sent these messages, days after pathologists believe she probably died, is connected to the crime and we cannot rule out that they knew Ms Ross.\u201d<\/p>\n
More than 60 people in the Greek police department\u2019s homicide division have been assigned to the case. Urgency is such that investigators have also requested that laboratory tests be fast-tracked to determine the cause of death.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt such times, when there is advanced decay because of heat or the conditions in which a body is kept, only toxicological tests and in-depth examination of [vital organ] tissues can determine, exactly, how a person died,\u201d said Grigoris Leon, who heads the Hellenic Society of Forensic Medicine.<\/p>\n
There would be answers, he said, that would unearth the truth.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have no doubt they will come but it won\u2019t be easy and it will take time.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two worlds separated by sheets of corrugated iron: one, a tree-lined road, bordered by a park and the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":722295,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-722294","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/722294","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=722294"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/722294\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/722295"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=722294"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=722294"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=722294"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}