1 day ago
8
A body found on a barren Greek island has been identified as Michele Bourda, the British tourist who went missing on a beach more than a month ago.
Greece’s coastguard confirmed that the 59-year-old, whose mysterious disappearance sparked a massive rescue operation, had been discovered on the islet of Fidonisi by a passing yacht.
“Identification happened earlier today,” Bourda’s husband, Christos, told the Greek news outlet Protothema. “I am utterly devastated. I did what I could to recognise my wife because she was only bones … It’s a tragedy.”
The Greek-born pharmacist, who met the Briton when both were university students in Germany 36 years ago, said he would be pressing charges against local authorities because of the “criminal” way in which they had handled the case.
“The investigation was not conducted properly. I have already filed a complaint against the police and the coastguard because they were criminally slow in dealing with my wife’s disappearance. Valuable time was lost and she could still be alive.”
It had, he said, taken police three hours to write up a missing person’s report.
The Glasgow-born mother of one was last seen on 1 August lying on a lounger on the popular beach of Ofrinio, near the northern city of Kavala, before her husband, who had nodded off on an adjacent sunlounger, woke to find his wife missing.
Images captured on CCTV showed the couple enjoying crepes at a beach cafe hours earlier. “Unfortunately, I fell asleep first, and when I woke up, she wasn’t there,” the 66-year-old said.
Her remains were eventually found more than 25 miles (40km) along the coast. The pair, who lived in Scotland, had arrived in Greece on holiday only three days earlier.
Bourda, who had long battled depression, according to Christos, but was, he insisted, in good spirits on the day of her disappearance, had left her personal belongings, including her medication and towel, on the lounger.
Several hours later the alert was raised and the search began. But the pharmacist, who was quick to tell police that his wife had gone missing once before in the UK, after becoming despondent when she lost her job at BT, claims he spent much of the first day frantically looking for his wife alone.
“The police didn’t do anything. One person who was there said she didn’t see any police that day either, not one single policeman at the beach. The only thing I saw was a police car driving up and down the road to the beach. Not getting out of the car, just looking in the direction of the sea.”
A Greek missing persons charity, Lifeline Hellas, issued a silver alert stating her life was “in danger” and mobilising Greek authorities when it became clear she was nowhere to be found.
At first the search focused almost exclusively on the sea, with the Hellenic coastguard sending out two patrol boats. Private recreational craft and five fishing boats also scoured the waters, extending rescue efforts across the entire Strymonian Gulf.
When, after three days, the operation failed to yield results, the Greek police force took over, focusing their own search inland.
“After so many days, it’s really unusual that nothing should be found,” a coastguard official said at the time. “Protocol dictates that the police now assume responsibility for the search.”
Rescue efforts intensified on 10 August when a team specialised in finding missing people arrived from Athens with three sniffer dogs. “They were here for 15 days,” said Evangelos Kollias, spokesperson for the police force in Komotini overseeing the inquiry.
“The scenario that she walked away was actively being examined. We had police officers out on foot and in patrol cars with drones and dogs looking for the missing woman. We had vowed to continue the search efforts until she was found.”
Officials now believe that Bourda probably drowned and that her body was pushed by strong currents along the coast before it was discovered on the privately owned islet. The results of an autopsy conducted by pathologists on Friday have yet to be announced.
