Serial rapist breaks back in Corfu cliff fall on run from police
A serial rapist plunged from a cliff and broke his back after police flushed him out of his hideout following a two-week manhunt on Corfu.
Dimitris Aspiotis – dubbed the beast of Kavos after receiving a 53-year-sentence for sexually assaulting six British women – had been released early from a lengthy prison term but is now wanted on fresh charges.
On Tuesday the 47-year-old was under armed guard in Corfu’s hospital after breaking his back and suffering multiple wounds in the 200-metre fall from a seaside cliff as he sought to evade arrest as officers closed in. It took the fire brigade and other emergency services three hours to extract him from the remote ravine into which he had fallen.
“He is now severely injured,” Corfu’s police chief, Manthos Yiannoulis, told local television. He said there were signs that Aspiotis had been aided and abetted when he went to ground after an Albanian woman, aged 34, on the island reported that she had been repeatedly raped at knifepoint by him.
“In the framework of the inquiry that is launched, when he recovers we will look into whether a third person, or not, was involved,” Yiannoulis said.
Police used drones, sniffer dogs and tracking devices for more than two weeks as they sought to find him. When his hideout was eventually discovered, deep in a forest setting, search teams found a loaded hunting rifle, several knives, screwdrivers, pliers, black rubber gloves, mobile phones and survival equipment.
The police chief said that “more than 100 men” were involved in the hunt. As the days went by his force had come under growing pressure to capture the criminal, he added, citing the threat of a tourist boycott of Corfu.
“Aspiotis is a man of the forest. He knew the area very well and he managed to survive in conditions that would have been impossible for the average person,” Yiannoulis said. “It was unacceptable for many in England that he had been freed from prison. It was a matter of honour for us to get him. We combed the area day and night.”
Doctors who examined the Albanian woman said it was clear she had been raped multiple times. The woman described how this May she was abducted at knifepoint and taken to a breeze-block animal shelter in the forest where she was kept for several days before she escaped.
Aspiotis was convicted of raping three female tourists in the summer of 2010. He was given a 53-year sentence in 2012. The attacks occurred shortly after he was released from prison after being found guilty of three previous rapes. He was allowed to walk free in 2018 under a law aimed at lessening severe overcrowding in the country’s prisons.
The case has highlighted what is widely regarded as failure of the Greek judicial system to protect the public from hardened criminals. The controversial law has now been scrapped for cases of rape and other violent crimes. Under the terms of his release Aspiotis had to remain on the island and regularly report to the police.
Describing Aspiotis as extremely dangerous the police chief said the serial rapist had been forced to emerge from his forest lair for food and was then seen by local residents.
A public prosecutor will formally charge Aspiotis with another rape once he has had surgery on Corfu.
Kayleigh Morgan, a British Airways steward, one of his victims, chose to publicly campaign against Aspiotis’ release. She told the Sun newspaper: “I warned he would strike again and was proved right. I’m just glad he was caught before yet another woman’s life was ruined.”
