Passaris behind store execution
Costas Passaris, Greece’s most wanted criminal who is currently being held in a Romanian prison, carried out an apparently random murder in an Athens pharmacy last August after attempting to kill a couple some days earlier, police said yesterday. Passaris, 27, is wanted in Greece for the murder of two police guards during his February 2001 escape from an Athens hospital where he had been taken from prison for tests, as well as a series of other violent crimes. Passaris was finally arrested in Romania last November, where he is being held for two murders and robbery. Yesterday, police said that while on the run in Athens on August 28, 2001, Passaris shot dead microbiologist Maria Safou, 50, and seriously wounded her sister Argyro Christakou, 48, in Christakou’s pharmacy on Pipinou Street in the city center. No money was stolen during the attack. Police said Passaris was also responsible for the attempted murder of Albanian Andrea Sera and his Greek girlfriend, Chrysanthi Mamnioglou, in Kallithea on August 11, 2001.
