The alleged "hired hit” murder of a UC Berkeley professor definitely looks to be a hired hit, with four of the five alleged collaborators having already reportedly pleaded guilty, but the man’s ex-wife insists she knew nothing of the scheme.
It was already a stunning and wild story that UC Berkeley professor Przemek Jeziorski was shot execution-style by a masked gunman while visiting Greece on July 4. But after Jeziorski’s ex-wife and four alleged accomplices were arrested the following week on charges of arranging his murder over a child custody dispute involving their twin children, an even more stunning and wild development became public on Monday. That is, the alleged hired killers all broke down and have reportedly admitted their guilt.
KGO reports that "Four of the five suspects on Monday plead guilty," though does not detail which four of the five. We know from previous reporting that the ex-wife’s alleged accomplices were her current boyfriend, plus two Albanian nationals, and a Bulgarian national (one of them reportedly a teenager.) The Chronicle and a few other news outlets have identified the ex-wife living in Greece as 43-year-old Nadia Michelidaki.
And while it is not stated outright in KGO’s reporting, it’s pretty clear that the ex-wife Michelidaki is the only suspect who is not pleading guilty, as she is charged as a “moral accomplice” on the killing.
“She has nothing to do with the murder," her attorney Alexandros Pasiatas is quoted as saying in KGO’s report. "She had no prior knowledge of the whole thing. She happened to be the murderer's girlfriend and now the most important [thing] is that she is terrified about the future of her children because she thinks that she may lose them."
Meanwhile, CNN released a report Monday night that has a staggering amount of detail about the four other suspects’ confessions. As CNN puts it, “One of the most remarkable aspects of the case is that the statements made to police by the alleged perpetrators have been widely leaked to Greek media.”
And CNN has full quotes from Michelidaki’s boyfriend who’s alleged to have done much of the arranging.
“I did it all for (her) and our children so that we could have a normal life without problems,” he reportedly told police. “We were afraid that he (Jeziorski) would end up taking the kids completely. That would completely finish off (my girlfriend), who was overly fond of them. This summer Przemek wanted to take the children and take them to America. But (my girlfriend) did not agree and so she went back to court with Przemek.”
None of the suspects are named, as it is a violation of Greek law to name suspects in media reports. But the current boyfriend admitted he bought the weapon more than a month ago, and asked a Bulgarian friend to “find Przemek and scare him so that he wouldn’t take our children away from us.”
The boyfriend says that on the day of the killing, he traveled two hours away to a coastal city “so that it would appear that I was there” and his smartphone location data would not “leave traces.” As he did that, he says the three accomplices drove to the Athens suburb and allegedly did the deed.
CNN quotes testimony from the actual gunman, who reportedly said, “I approached him and shot him a few times, but I don’t remember how many times.”
The three had a gray Porsche Cayenne as their getaway car, but the actual shooter said that the two getaway drivers abandoned him at the scene once they saw him actually go through with the murder. It seems they may not have actually intended to kill Jeziorski, but only meant to scare him.
The attorney for the boyfriend told CNN, “My client has confessed his actions but as you can see from the simplicity of some of the things that took place this was not an organized plan. His accomplices only knew about a plan to scare him (the victim) so he would stay away from the children." That attorney Ermis Papoutsis, added, “(The ex-wife), his partner, knew nothing about any of this.”
In other words, the ex-wife Michelidaki may be telling the truth when she says she knew nothing of the plot.
But the gunman reportedly testified to police that the boyfriend told him to “find some people to take him to Athens the next day to scare and threaten the Pole so that he would ‘back down’ on custody of the children.” (Jeziorski was Polish.)
And the gunman added, “In fact, from what he told me, (the ex-wife) made him do it because she didn’t want to give the children to the Pole.”
Meanwhile, the two ten-year-old twin children, both of whom are dual US and Polish citizens, are with Greek child custody authorities. Jeziorski's brother Łukasz Jeziorski said in a statement to CNN that “Our primary concern is their safety and wellbeing, and helping them reconnect with their family to minimize the trauma they have already endured.”
Image: Haas School of Business - UC Berkeley via Facebook
