Investigators in Athens are focused on piecing together what happened during the final hours of Elisabeth-Jane Ross’s life, hoping it will explain why the 38-year-old Scottish charity worker was killed and her body left inside a suitcase in a derelict building.
The man accused in her death, 26-year-old Afghan national Sharif Ahmadzai, was formally charged with intentional homicide on Sunday after being questioned for three days. He is due before an investigating magistrate on Wednesday.
George Kalliakmanis, honorary head of the Athens police officers’ association, told the Guardian that detectives are now zeroing in on motive, since Ahmadzai has admitted to moving Ross’s body but insists he did not kill her, a claim investigators say they don’t believe.
According to Kalliakmanis, CCTV footage places Ahmadzai transporting the body to the scene on the night of July 16, and he has separately admitted to using her stolen bank cards to withdraw roughly €10,000 in cash.
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A professional boxer competing in the lightweight division, Ahmadzai is understood to have come to Greece as an unaccompanied minor around ten years ago, arriving via Lesbos during the peak of Europe’s refugee crisis. He has told police he came across Ross’s body in a ground-floor flat in Exarchia, a countercultural Athens neighborhood known for its left-leaning residents, foreign community and NGO presence, in a building where he had a caretaking role.
Ahmadzai married Alaina Hall, an American and committed Christian, in 2023. He held keys to the flat, which doubled as a gathering space for a refugee support group the couple ran together called Love Every Nation. Investigators say Ross, a friend of Hall’s who shared her faith and volunteering background, had been staying at the apartment since July 10, after initially lodging with acquaintances in Greece following her arrival from Edinburgh on June 26.
Ross made her last phone call on the night of July 15. Her body wasn’t found until three days later, when a homeless man discovered it in an empty building in Kypseli, about two miles from the apartment.
Two theories are reportedly under active investigation. Detectives believe some sort of altercation occurred, but haven’t determined whether it was triggered by Ross catching Ahmadzai stealing from her, or whether it stemmed from a sexual assault or an unwanted advance she rebuffed.
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A preliminary postmortem turned up no visible injuries on the body, leading examiners to suspect asphyxiation as the likely cause of death, though decomposition made the findings inconclusive. Toxicology results and further organ analysis are expected to confirm the precise cause of death in the days ahead.
Hall, who first met Ahmadzai on Lesbos, is reported to have been instrumental in cracking the case. She reportedly grew suspicious after noticing unexplained cash he had access to, later linked to withdrawals made with Ross’s stolen cards, and went to police, handed over money he’d given her, and moved out of the shared residence into a hotel.
Deepening the mystery, someone continued using Ross’s phone for days following her death, sending texts to friends and relatives that investigators believe were crafted to delay anyone reporting her missing, including one message citing a need to be alone.
Kalliakmanis credited Hall’s cooperation as key to the investigation, saying the case posed real difficulties from the moment Ross was identified, but that the homicide unit’s diligence ultimately led to a breakthrough. Detectives, working with the UK’s National Crime Agency and Police Scotland, pieced together footage from surveillance cameras near where the suitcase turned up and from banks tied to the fraudulent withdrawals before zeroing in on their suspect.
