Fresh clues in Athens body-in-a-suitcase mystery: Facebook messages pretending to be from the victim – and the local suspect who’s vanished

Police in Athens have identified the woman found dead inside a suitcase in a derelict car park as Elisabeth-Jane Ross, 38, from Edinburgh, a devout Christian known for charitable work with the homeless, refugees and abused women across Greece and Kurdistan. Investigators now believe someone used her phone and social media accounts after her death to disguise the fact she had been killed, sending messages to her family claiming she wanted time alone, which matters because it suggests a deliberate attempt to delay discovery of the crime and mislead her loved ones.

Ross's body was found on 18 July by a homeless man who noticed the smell coming from the suitcase; she was formally identified via fingerprints and DNA matched through Interpol and US authorities. Messages sent from her phone between 15 and 29 July told her father she was travelling to a Greek island, and a Facebook post on 24 July, six days after her body was found, falsely claimed she planned to go to Turkey. Her phone remained active in Athens until roughly 24 hours before her identification was confirmed, then went dark. Greek police are seeking a homeless man known as "Markos", who reportedly slept in the building where the suitcase was left but has since disappeared.