Mother gets life for murder
An Athens court has acquitted a retired Japanese diplomat of the murder of his daughter but sentenced his Greek wife to life in prison, according to a verdict issued late on Friday. The court, comprising three judges and four jurors, unanimously found Maria Tanida, 69, guilty of the murder of her 35-year-old daughter Amphithea in September 2008. The former diplomat, 79-year-old Masami Tanida, was acquitted. Both the victim’s parents had been in custody since September 2008, when Amphithea Tanida’s body was found wrapped in sheets in the couple’s house on the island of Evia. Both parents claimed their daughter had committed suicide but the autopsy determined that her death had been the result of suffocation. A cut found on the 35-year-old’s left wrist was made after her death, according to a coroner who said that the direction of the cut was not consistent with a self-inflicted wound.
