Underworld link in two deaths?
Athens police are hoping to rule out a link between yesterday’s cold-blooded execution of a man working for the brother of a senior underworld figure and the death, on Sunday, of one of the last survivors of a notorious crime clan whose male members were all wiped out during gang warfare between 2000-2002. Late on Sunday, Kyriaki Grigorakou, 36, was found dead in the driver’s seat of her car that was parked on the corner of Aghiou Dimitriou and Alki Argyriadi streets in Brahami, southern Athens. Police said she bore no external signs that would point to foul play, and this was confirmed by a postmortem yesterday. Grigorakou was the daughter of Athens extortion gang boss Vassilis Grigorakos, who was executed by a rival crime group in a 2000 ambush. Her two brothers, Nikos and Theodoros, were also murdered in 2000 and 2002 – Theodoros was poisoned in his Korydallos Prison cell. Another family member died in a 2001 bomb explosion. The only members of the Grigorakos family left alive now are Kyriaki’s mother and sister. Yesterday afternoon, a senior employee at a firm owned by the brother of a senior underworld figure whom the Grigorakos clan had accused of orchestrating Vassilis and Nikos Grigorakos’s murders was shot dead in the Ilioupolis plant where he worked. The gunman walked into the factory and asked for the boss – Michalis Tsakoyiannis, whose brother Giorgos is being sought for membership of a major Athens protection gang. When told Tsakoyiannis was out, he asked for whoever was filling in for him. The man was taken to company accountant Panayiotis Mariolis, 34, whom he shot four times in the head, chest and stomach before escaping on foot.
