For fifteen months, from September 1981 to December 1982, women in the northern Greek towns of Drama and Xanthi, and in the city of Thessaloniki, were attacked at night by the same man. Two of them died. Others were badly hurt and survived. The Greek press called the attacker the Δράκος της Δράμας, the Dragon of Drama, and the attacks, as Athens Voice put it in a 2022 retrospective, had terrorized the provincial town, especially its women.
The man arrested on December 13, 1982, was Κυριάκος Παπαχρόνης, a 22-year-old reserve officer serving with a commando unit of the Greek army at Drama. Survivors had described a man in military uniform, and that detail led army officers at his own camp to him. According to Parapolitika, he had been put in charge of one of the teams searching for the attacker.
He denied everything at first, then confessed. In June 1983 a military court sitting in Thessaloniki convicted him of two homicides, a rape, attempted homicides and attempted rapes, and a string of bombings, and sentenced him twice to death. The appeal court upheld the sentences in July 1984. He was never executed. The sentences were commuted to life imprisonment, and on December 8, 2004, after a little more than 21 years in custody, he walked out of prison under restrictive conditions. He has lived quietly since, first in Larissa and later in the Kozani area, and a stroke in 2020 left him disabled.
Accounts of the case agree on the outline but differ in many details: the date and place of the first killing, the ages of several of the women, and the exact counts on which he was convicted.
Κυριάκος Παπαχρόνης was born in 1960 in Xanthi. Proto Thema, in a 2024 profile, said he was one of three children. His family ran a restaurant and café, and he worked there as a young man. After school he moved to Athens for a time and took casual work in hotels.
He was devoted to physical training and competed at a high level in boxing and karate, Proto Thema reported. His physique and his looks would become part of the public story of the case. At his trial, Athens Voice wrote, he kept returning to his manhood, his courage, his strength and his appearance as if they explained what he had done.
From the age of 19, according to Athens Voice, Παπαχρόνης served as a reserve cadet officer (έφεδρος δόκιμος αξιωματικός) in the 5th Commando unit of the ΛΟΚ, the army's mountain raiding companies, at a camp in Drama. Enikos, in 2012, described his rank in the early 1980s as reserve second lieutenant. On Time, in a 2021 report printed by Parapolitika, called him a reserve second lieutenant in a commando unit.
Colleagues admired him as a model officer, Athens Voice reported. He also admired the old ΛΟΚ traditions of harsh treatment of recruits, and witnesses said he often hit soldiers under his command.
As a young officer he moved between Thessaloniki, Kavala, Drama and Xanthi, Proto Thema wrote in March 2024.
The first death came in September 1981. The reports do not agree on where or exactly when.
Athens Voice and the August 2024 Proto Thema profile place it in Xanthi, his hometown, on September 9, 1981. Both say she was stabbed to death after a quarrel with him that day. Athens Voice gives her age as 46; Proto Thema names her as Γεωργία Θεοχαρίδου and gives her age as 56. He later claimed that she had belittled him, and he dated his hatred of women to a humiliating encounter in his early teens.
The list of offenses printed by On Time in 2021 places the killing in Drama on September 5, 1981, and names the victim as Γρ. Θεοχαρίδου. In that list the conviction for her death is for rape and homicide.
Little else is on record about her life.
The next attacks came in December. On the night of December 20, 1981, a woman in Drama was attacked and survived. On December 30, a 19-year-old woman was attacked in Drama and survived.
On January 15, 1982, a young woman was attacked in Drama. She survived and was able to give police their first clear description of the man.
The three attacks had terrorized the town, Athens Voice wrote. No further attacks were reported until the summer of 1982.
Αναστασία Αλεξανδρίδου was a student in Thessaloniki. On Time gave her age as 20; Athens Voice gave it as 22. The August 2024 Proto Thema profile says Παπαχρόνης had met her in the city before August 15, 1982.
She was killed in Thessaloniki on the evening of August 15, 1982. Her bag was taken. Her friend later told investigators that the only thing missing from it was a lighter.
Her death was the second of the two homicides of which he was convicted. The conviction listed by On Time is for rape and homicide.
The attacks in Drama began again in the autumn. On September 21, 1982, a 23-year-old woman was attacked and escaped. On October 1, an 18-year-old was seriously hurt in Drama. On October 25, another woman was hurt and survived; Athens Voice places that attack in Xanthi and gives her age as 36, while the August 2024 Proto Thema profile gives her age as 32 and places it in Drama. Athens Voice reports that this attack was connected to the series only after the arrest.
The last attack came on December 8, 1982. The victim, a woman of 30 in Drama, was seriously injured and survived. Proto Thema reported that she was able to give police a more precise description than earlier victims.
Alongside the attacks on women, a series of bombs went off in northern Greece in 1982. After his arrest, Παπαχρόνης admitted planting them. According to Proto Thema, he planted bombs at two targets in Xanthi on March 12, 1982, two more in Kavala, and another at the gate of his own camp in Drama. He was also held responsible for setting a fire at an airfield near Kavala, which Proto Thema's March 2024 report describes as a military airfield, and that report lists a train derailment among his convictions.
Survivors agreed that the attacker wore an army uniform. That pointed investigators at the soldiers of the Drama garrison, and the army took part in the search.
According to Parapolitika, Παπαχρόνης himself was placed in charge of one of the teams looking for the attacker.
The attack of December 8 proved decisive, Athens Voice reported. That night an order for a night exercise had barred soldiers from leaving camp, so only officers had been in town. Two officers, Χρήστος Τριανταφυλλίδης and Τάσος Κοσμίδης, worked through the records of who had slept outside the camp. Of those men, only Παπαχρόνης had no alibi, and he had come back late: at 7:00 in the morning instead of 6:15.
The security police of Drama arrested him on the evening of December 13, 1982. He denied everything at first, Athens Voice reported, but his story soon gave way under its own contradictions, repeated identifications by the women who had survived, the lack of an alibi and the fatigue of long questioning. He confessed to all the crimes.
Proto Thema, citing newspapers of the time, reported that he broke his silence when he was brought before the investigating magistrate soon after his arrest and confessed everything. He said that had he not been caught he would have gone on attacking women, and that he felt satisfaction each time.
The key piece of evidence, Athens Voice wrote, was the lighter taken from the bag of Αναστασία Αλεξανδρίδου. Asked what the lighter reminded him of, he answered with one word: the name of the district where she had lived.
He told investigators, and later the court, that the sound of women's heels drove him to violence, Proto Thema and Parapolitika reported. He blamed his hatred of women on the encounter in his teens.
Because he was a serving officer, Παπαχρόνης was tried by military justice. The trial ran from June 14 to 18, 1983, in the building of the Five-Member Court of Appeal in Thessaloniki, under the jurisdiction of the Permanent Military Court (Διαρκές Στρατοδικείο) of Kavala, according to Athens Voice. Reports from Kozani in 2020 name the court as the Permanent Military Court of Thessaloniki. The charges included intentional homicide, serial attempted homicide, and illegal possession and carrying of weapons.
The case drew heavy coverage in the newspapers and on television, and the courtroom was crowded. Police deployed 300 officers to guard him over the four days of the hearing, because of his aggressive and violent behavior, Athens Voice reported. In the dock, Proto Thema wrote in 2024, he tried to project an image of masculinity, showing off his strength, and drew both fear and a kind of admiration. He said openly that he hated women.
Forty witnesses testified. So did four psychiatrists who had examined him during his pretrial detention. They found him mentally sound, and the August 2024 Proto Thema profile adds that the experts who examined him found no psychiatric illness to explain his conduct. His lawyers argued for mitigating circumstances; the court accepted none.
He was sentenced twice to death ("δις εις θάνατον"). The reports differ on the prison terms that went with the two death sentences. Athens Voice gives a further 20 years. Parapolitika, in 2023, gives 23 years.
When he heard the sentence, Parapolitika reported, he told the court: "Send me to the firing squad, because if I get out, I will do the same things again."
The published summaries of what he was convicted of do not match.
Proto Thema, in March 2024, listed his convictions as two intentional homicides, one rape, two attempted rapes, three attempted homicides, five bombings, one train derailment and the arson of a military airfield. Parapolitika, in 2023, wrote that he had confessed to two homicides, seven attempted homicides, eight attempted rapes, assaults and five bombings, and the Kozani newspaper reports of 2020 give the same totals for the period from September 1981 to December 1982. Athens Voice wrote that by the age of 22 he had committed two murders, four attempted murders, rapes, attempted rapes and other abuse; Enikos, in 2012, gave a similar list.
All of these accounts agree on the central point: two women died, and he was convicted of both homicides.
The list printed by On Time in 2021 sets out the offenses by victim. It gives rape and homicide for the deaths of Γρ. Θεοχαρίδου and Αναστασία Αλεξανδρίδου; attempted homicide, or attempted rape and homicide, for the women in Drama who survived, including the 18-year-old and the 23-year-old; two further attempted rapes and homicides in Xanthi; and the arson and the five bombings.
The appeal court (Εφετείο) upheld the same sentences in July 1984, according to the August 2024 Proto Thema profile.
The death sentences were later commuted to life imprisonment, as On Time, Parapolitika and Proto Thema all reported. The reports do not give the date or the legal basis of the commutation. Some local reports from 2020 describe the sentence as converted to 22 years of imprisonment instead; the national reports describe life.
His sentence began at the prison of Corfu, Proto Thema reported. In his first years inside he was violent and insubordinate and was involved in frequent incidents. Parapolitika reported that he took part in a prisoners' uprising in Corfu and hit a fellow prisoner, and On Time wrote that he took part in prison riots and attacked other inmates.
From the 1990s, the Kozani reports said, he became a model prisoner. At the prison of Larissa, Proto Thema wrote, he changed markedly. He read, chanted in the prison church and painted. On Time added that he read psychology and theology, stopped breaking prison rules and helped set up a second-chance school, an adult education program, inside the prison.
The prison chaplain, Father Κωνσταντίνος Γεροστέργιος, told On Time that he had repented and never spoke about his past. The director of the school, Φ. Βελώνης, called him a good young man who had helped a great deal to set it up and who urged fellow prisoners to enroll.
While he was in prison, women wrote to him. Athens Voice described the letters as unprecedented in Greece: love letters and promises of eternal love from women drawn to the handsome and brave officer. Proto Thema reported that the letters came from admirers drawn by his physique and his smile, and that scientists and scholars studied his case. Athens Voice compared the phenomenon to the admirers who wrote to Ted Bundy in the United States.
He applied for release after 21 years and six months in custody, Proto Thema reported in March 2024, and was freed in December 2004, at 44, under restrictive conditions. Enikos and News.gr also gave his time in custody as 21 years and six months; On Time gave 22 years and six months. Athens Voice wrote that he left the judicial prison of Larissa. On Time gave the date as December 8, 2004.
The conditions included a ban on returning to the northern Greek towns where he had committed his crimes, among them his birthplace, Xanthi, as well as Drama and Thessaloniki, On Time reported.
On his release he issued a public statement. He asked the state and the public for forgiveness, On Time and Enikos reported, and promised to live from then on "εν αγνεία και σεμνή πολιτεία," in chastity and modesty. He wrote that in their youth he and others had sold their souls to the Devil, like Faust, and that he personally had lost. Proto Thema reported that he ended the statement with the words "Hasta la vista, εν ευθέτω χρόνω," roughly "Hasta la vista, in due time."
He settled in Larissa. Aftodioikisi.gr reported in 2018 that he had chosen to live there permanently, had quickly put on weight and had dyed his white hair black, and that he had given no one cause for complaint since his release. The Kozani reports of 2020 said he had not come to the attention of the authorities again.
On August 18, 2011, according to Enikos and News.gr, he became engaged; News.gr described her as a chef. Both reports said he kept a profile on social media, where he posted photographs from his youth. They later married, Proto Thema reported.
In 2012 he gave an interview to the television channel Star. "I made a mistake," he said, according to On Time. "I am ashamed to live among you." He asked to be left in peace, saying that he and his partner bothered no one.
By 2020 he was living in a village in the Kozani area. In January 2020 he was taken to the Mamatseio Hospital in Kozani with an acute ischemic stroke. The local newspaper Εφημερίδα Κοζάνη (efkozani.gr) reported on January 22 that he had been in hospital for three days and that his condition was stable but critical; the Drama newspaper Πρωινός Τύπος carried the report in February.
The stroke left him disabled. On Time reported in November 2021 that he used a wheelchair and that a medical board had assessed him, from June 1, 2021, at 89 percent disability for life, with paralysis on his right side and degenerative arthritis of the knee and hip. He was then 61 and lived with his wife and some twenty dogs and cats.
In March 2024 Proto Thema reported that he had serious health problems and lived isolated with his wife, away from publicity, and that he said he regretted what he had done.
Proven by final judgment: the homicides of the woman killed in September 1981, named in reports as Γεωργία Θεοχαρίδου or Γρ. Θεοχαρίδου, and of Αναστασία Αλεξανδρίδου in August 1982; together with attempted homicides, attempted rapes, a rape conviction, bombings and arson, in counts that the published summaries give differently.
No killing beyond these two is attributed to him in the reports on his trial and later life, and both death sentences were for those two killings.
Details that vary between reports:
The first killing is placed in Xanthi on September 9, 1981 (Athens Voice; Proto Thema, 2024) or in Drama on September 5, 1981 (On Time, 2021). The victim's age is given as 46 (Athens Voice) or 56 (Proto Thema), and her first name as Γεωργία (Proto Thema) or with the initials Γρ. (On Time).
Αναστασία Αλεξανδρίδου's age is given as 20 (On Time) or 22 (Athens Voice).
The prison term that accompanied the death sentences is given as 20 years (Athens Voice) or 23 years (Parapolitika). Most reports say the death sentences were commuted to life imprisonment; some regional reports say they were converted to 22 years.
His time in custody is given as 21 years and six months (Proto Thema, Enikos, News.gr) or 22 years and six months (On Time).
The woman attacked on October 25, 1982, is described as 36 and in Xanthi (Athens Voice) or as 32 and in Drama (Proto Thema).
His rank is given as reserve cadet officer (Athens Voice) or reserve second lieutenant (Enikos, On Time).
1960: Κυριάκος Παπαχρόνης is born in Xanthi.
September 1981 (September 9 in Xanthi, or September 5 in Drama, by different reports): a woman named in reports as Θεοχαρίδου is killed.
December 20 and December 30, 1981: two women are attacked in Drama and survive.
January 15, 1982: a young woman is attacked in Drama and survives; she gives police the first clear description.
March 12, 1982: bombs are planted at two targets in Xanthi; further bombs follow in Kavala and at the gate of his camp in Drama.
August 15, 1982: Αναστασία Αλεξανδρίδου is killed in Thessaloniki.
September 21, October 1 and October 25, 1982: further attacks on women in Drama and Xanthi; all three survive.
December 8, 1982: a woman of 30 is seriously injured in Drama and survives.
December 13, 1982: he is arrested by the security police of Drama and confesses.
June 14 to 18, 1983: trial in Thessaloniki under military jurisdiction; sentenced twice to death.
July 1984: the appeal court upholds the sentences.
Later: the death sentences are commuted to life imprisonment.
1980s and 1990s: held at Corfu, then Larissa; from the 1990s described as a model prisoner.
December 8, 2004: released from the judicial prison of Larissa under restrictive conditions, at 44.
August 18, 2011: becomes engaged; later marries.
2012: interview with Star television.
January 2020: hospitalized in Kozani after a stroke.
June 1, 2021: assessed at 89 percent disability.
March 2024: reported living quietly with his wife, in poor health.