Aristidis Pagratidis was convicted in February 1966 by the five-member Court of Appeal of Thessaloniki of three robberies with murder, committed in two separate events in March and April 1959, and of one attempted rape, and was sentenced to death four times. He was executed on February 16, 1968, saying that he was innocent. The killings had gone unsolved for almost five years before his arrest in December 1963, and in the decades since his execution writers, a former prosecutor and a retired police officer have questioned the verdict.
Aristidis Pagratidis was born in 1940 in Toumba, a district of eastern Thessaloniki, the youngest of the children of a poor family. His father, an army officer according to LiFO, was killed during the Greek Civil War; Vice Greece describes him as orphaned very young. The family settled in Thessaloniki after the war. LiFO reports that as a teenager he was sent to a reform institution on Corfu after taking a bicycle with a friend, and that he afterward took whatever work he could find, including construction work and a job with a motorcycle show. He later told his lawyers, as To Vima reports, that he had been working at a fairground in Athens during part of the period of the crimes.
Vice Greece describes him as unable to read and write and as poor to the point of hunger, and says he was known in the neighborhood by a diminutive nickname.
Between 1957 and 1959, couples and women walking in and around the Seikh Sou forest on the northeastern edge of Thessaloniki were attacked and robbed. LiFO lists an attack on a woman in March 1957 and attacks on couples in October and November 1958 in the same area. Athens Voice gives the date of the next attack as January 20, 1959; To Vima and LiFO give February 19, 1959. On that evening a man and a woman were attacked. Both survived.
The first of the three killings that led to the 1966 verdict took place on March 6, 1959. Konstantinos Raisis and Evdokia Paliogianni were killed in the Mikra district of Thessaloniki. To Vima reports that the attacker robbed them. Vice Greece writes that the police first suspected conscripts and that the file was closed in haste. Raisis's age is given as 31 in two accounts and 39 in a third; one account gives Paliogianni's age as 23.
The second came on April 3, 1959, in Thessaloniki. Melpomeni Patrikiou was killed and robbed, according to To Vima. A woman who was with her survived, according to Athens Voice and Vice Greece.
The authorities offered a reward of 100,000 drachmas, and the police were heavily criticized. LiFO writes that after April 1959 the attacks stopped for nearly five years.
On December 7, 1963, an unrelated incident took place at an institution in Thessaloniki, and Pagratidis was arrested over it within hours or the next morning, depending on the account. To Vima gives December 8 for the arrest, and Protothema says the police presented him to the press as the man behind the 1959 attacks on December 9. All accounts agree that he was about 23, that he did not deny the December 1963 incident, and that it was this incident that turned the attention of the Security Police to the unsolved cases of 1959.
He was questioned for several days. Athens Voice, Vice Greece and LiFO all report that on the fourth day of detention he confessed to the attack on the couple in the forest, to the deaths of Raisis and Paliogianni, and to the death of Patrikiou. Protothema gives the date of the confession as December 11, 1963. He later withdrew it. To Vima reports that within days he told his lawyers that he had been pressed physically and psychologically, that the reconstructions of the crimes had been arranged for him, and that he had been working in Athens during part of the period in question.
In 1963 the newspaper Ellinikos Voras described him as a "young abnormal," according to Naftemporiki.
The December 1963 incident was dealt with on its own. Protothema reports that in October 1964 he was convicted of that offense and sentenced to nine years' imprisonment and a fine; Athens Voice instead places the nine-year sentence in the same proceeding as the 1966 trial.
The trial for the 1959 crimes began in February 1966 before the five-member Court of Appeal of Thessaloniki. The court sat for several days. A defense lawyer withdrew after a dispute with the presiding judge, according to LiFO and To Vima. LiFO reports that the prosecutor proposed life imprisonment and not death, on the condition that another person was not shown to be the real perpetrator; To Vima says the prosecution asked for four life sentences.
On February 22, 1966, after a recess of about fifteen minutes, according to To Vima, the court sentenced him to death four times ("tetrakis eis thanaton") for three robberies with murder and one attempted rape. The text of the judgment itself is not on record.
Several accounts of the trial list what was not placed before the court. LiFO states that forensic evidence gathered in 1959 was never presented, that two witnesses who had seen the attacker did not identify him, and that the accused, according to the same article, could not drive. To Vima writes that a police constable testified that Pagratidis had confessed to him, while in his earlier statement to the investigating judge the accused had said that he knew of the crimes only from the questioning and the reconstructions. It adds that the only woman who saw the attacker and survived testified that she was "99 percent sure" it was not him. Athens Voice states that the forensic evidence was not examined by the medical examiner. These are the claims of the writers named, not findings of a court.
After the verdict Pagratidis was held at Gedi Kule, the old prison in the Eptapyrgio fortress of Thessaloniki, for about two years. Whether an appeal to the Supreme Court or a petition for clemency was made is not on record.
Before dawn on February 16, 1968, he was moved and visited by a priest. He was executed at 7:06 a.m. in the Seikh Sou forest. To Vima and Athens Voice give the date as February 16; Athens Voice cites a report in the newspaper Makedonia of February 17, 1968. His family had not been told, according to To Vima. His reported last words, just before the order, were "Manoula mou, ime athoos," "Mother, I am innocent."
None of the claims that follow is a finding by a court.
Thomas Korovinis, the author of the novel O gyros tou thanatou ("The Circle of Death"), is cited by LiFO as saying that the Security Police used Pagratidis as a convenient case to shift attention from the political killing of the member of parliament Grigoris Lambrakis, and that he was tried like a delinquent child.
Giannis Kyriakidis, a photographer present at the reconstruction of the crimes, is cited by LiFO as saying that the police fed Pagratidis and told him what to say, and, in To Vima, that the priest who heard his confession on the morning of the execution was convinced that he was innocent. He is quoted there as having told the priest that he had done many wrongs but had not killed.
Kostas Tsarouchas, a journalist and the author of a 1989 book on the case, says in the work, as cited by LiFO, that Pagratidis was not the man behind the attacks. Protothema reports that the same book records a statement attributed to a police major, Kostas Antoniou, made before his death, that the officers had been ordered to see that Pagratidis was found guilty.
Konstantinos Logothetis, a lawyer and former prosecutor, presented a book on the case, "Pagkratidis: eis thanaton tetrakis," in Thessaloniki on June 19, 2022. According to efsyn, he said he did not rule out a retrial, which under Greek procedure requires a request from a relative of the convicted man or from the prosecutor of the court, and new evidence unknown to the original judges. He cited the reconstructions, conflicting fingerprints, blood groups that did not match, and a minority opinion of one judge on the panel that was long kept from view. ERT states that Logothetis began to have serious doubts about the identity of the perpetrator when he looked at the case years later.
Vasileios Komninos, a retired lieutenant general of the police, said in a January 22, 2022 interview with efsyn, as the paper reports, that about two years after the execution he arrested and questioned a repeat offender, whom he regarded as the real perpetrator, and that the matter was closed on orders from above. Protothema attributes a similar claim to the journalist Eva Nikolaidou in January 2022. The claim has not been tested in court.
The playwright Sakis Serefas, cited by LiFO, argued that the central question is less one of guilt or innocence than of whether the trial was fair. A stage adaptation of Korovinis's novel, "Aristos," ran at the Anesis Central Stage in Thessaloniki from March 9 to 17, 2020, according to LiFO.
The judgment of the Court of Appeal of Thessaloniki of February 22, 1966, has not been set aside. In June 2022 Logothetis said a retrial was not excluded; no application and no decision on one is on record. The Greek press has returned to the case at intervals, including at the fiftieth anniversary of the execution, when To Vima published a long account on January 5, 2018.
1940: Aristidis Pagratidis is born in Toumba, Thessaloniki.
March 1957 to November 1958: attacks on a woman and on couples in and around the Seikh Sou forest.
February 19, 1959 (January 20 in one account): a couple is attacked; both survive.
March 6, 1959: Konstantinos Raisis and Evdokia Paliogianni are killed in Mikra.
April 3, 1959: Melpomeni Patrikiou is killed in Thessaloniki.
December 7 to 9, 1963: arrest and presentation to the press after an unrelated incident.
About December 10 to 11, 1963: he confesses on the fourth day of questioning, then retracts.
October 1964: sentenced to nine years' imprisonment on a separate charge (per Protothema).
1966: trial before the five-member Court of Appeal of Thessaloniki.
February 22, 1966: sentenced to death four times.
February 16, 1968, 7:06 a.m.: executed in the Seikh Sou forest.
1989: Kostas Tsarouchas publishes his book on the case.
January 22, 2022: Vasileios Komninos gives his interview to efsyn.
June 19, 2022: Konstantinos Logothetis presents his book.