Greek authorities have identified the body found in a suitcase in an abandoned building in central Athens as Elizabeth Jane Ross, a 38-year-old British woman. The discovery, made 11 days earlier, has turned a grim unidentified find into a named criminal inquiry.
For readers searching Athens now, the case has moved because police finally matched the remains to Ross after local databases came up empty. Greek police said the next of kin had been informed, and Greek media named the victim on Wednesday, giving a face and a name to a case that had already drawn attention for the way the body was found.
Ross was born in Scotland in 1988 and had been staying in the city with friends. They last saw her on 15 July, three days before a homeless man found the suitcase in a derelict building in Kypseli on 18 July. She had reportedly flown to the region from the US and arrived in Greece on 29 June from Cyprus, a trail police are now trying to reconstruct step by step.
That reconstruction has become central to the inquiry. Greek homicide officers sent fingerprints to Interpol after drawing a blank on local databases, while US authorities provided evidence based on DNA. Police also cordoned off the building on Evelpidon Street as they examined CCTV to trace Ross’s movements before her death, and authorities said they were treating the case as a criminal act because of how the body was found.
But the picture is not complete. Local media reported that there was no evidence of a struggle or signs of injury, even as investigators continued to handle the death as suspicious. That gap matters because it leaves open two of the most basic questions in the case: how Ross died and who put her in the suitcase or left her in the abandoned building.
A British Foreign Office spokesperson said consular support was being provided and that the office was in contact with local authorities. Greek officials have not ruled out UK investigators joining the inquiry, but for now the case rests on the evidence already in hand: CCTV, fingerprints, DNA and travel records that may show where Ross went after she was last seen and before her body was discovered.
