An Impossible Murder - SCP Foundation

by stormbreath

crewtime 04/30/15 (Thu) 02:04:14 #93820713

Hello again, true crime fans. I'm back again with another near impossible case that seems to have something baffling going on in it. The case starts off simply enough, but quickly devolves into an absolute mess. This is one of the strangest cases I've ever looked into. I have absolutely no idea what is going on with this case on almost any level.

It starts off simply enough. In 1987, Spyros Papademos walks into the police office of Agia Marina, Crete and confesses to a murder. He says that he followed Vassilis Korakas home from a bar four weeks ago in an attempt to rob him. The robbery went wrong, and Spyros ended up killing Vassilis by hitting him in the head with a metal pipe he had been trying to use for intimidation.

After the murder, Spyros panicked and dragged the body off the side of the road, dragging him into the basement of an abandoned house that was near the scene of the crime. He wrapped the body in a tarp and left it there, taking the money off the body and running away.

Weeks later, however, he was wracked with guilt and walked into the police station to confess to the crime. The police went to the house where Spyros had said he stashed Vassilis's corpse and indeed found a body, with a receipt from the bar, printed with the date in question. The corpse was identified as Vassilis Korakas, matched with an ID on the corpse, and the police quickly took Spyros into custody and prepared for a trial.

There's only one problem with the case.

Absolutely none of it happened. None of it could have happened.

crewtime 04/30/15 (Thu) 02:04:14 #93820713

The first problem with the case was quickly uncovered during the initial stages of investigation, following the discovery of the corpse. See, there was a problem: Spyros had an airtight alibi. Perhaps one of the best alibis I have ever seen in my time dealing with true crime.

One week prior to his confession, Spyros had been released from a six month prison sentence.

The police — while doing their background check on Spyros — quickly discovered a record of his sentence, and called the prison to confirm if he had really served his time. The guards affirmed that was true, and even checked in with Spyros's supervisor in the prison kitchen — who told the guards that Spyros had been one of his best workers and they had never missed a day after starting soon into his sentence. Including, by definition, the day of the supposed murder.

Maybe the crime had been committed before his sentence, but he was only able to confess to the murder after his release? No. The coroner confirmed that the amount of decay on the body was consistent with the four week time frame for death. Further, the bartender from the bar where the receipt was from — and where Spyros said he followed Vassilis home from — remembered Vassilis coming in and clearing out a large tab, giving him a receipt for it. The same receipt found on the corpse.

It was briefly suspected that Spyros had actually committed the murder in the short time between his release and his confession, but the body could not have decayed as much as it did in such a short period of time — especially considering that it was the sheltered basement of a house and not directly exposed to the elements.

When confronted with these facts, Spyros didn't seem to have a response of any kind. He immediately clammed up and refused to speak to the police. He spent some time in his cell muttering to himself after this. The police were unsure of what to do with him. Then came the case's next twist.

crewtime 04/30/15 (Thu) 02:04:14 #93820713

Vassilis Korakas wasn't dead.

When the police contacted Vassilis' family to let them they had found his body, none other than Vassilis himself picked up the phone. After a brief discussion in which the police attempted to clear up possible confusion, Vassilis agreed to come down to the station with his family to look at the body.

While waiting for Vassilis to come down, the police chief and several officers entered the morgue with the coroner and pulled out the body. They checked it against the ID from the wallet they had taken off the body and confirmed that the face did look about the same, accounting for decomposition. They took a few photographs of the corpse at this time and then put the body back.

Then Vassilis showed up. He produced a photo ID — an identical match to the ID the police had taken off the corpse. An officer compared the two and determined that both were apparently legitimate. Vassilis was the only boy of the family — his other three siblings were all girls. He didn't have any cousins around his age, and there was nobody in his family who he could be mistaken for.

The entourage of police and the Korakas family entered the morgue. They opened up the locker where the body had been stored and found it empty. The body was gone. They turned to the coroner, who said he hadn't touched anything. A security camera happened to have been pointing directly at the locker. It captured the police putting the body back in, the coroner sitting in front of the locker doing paperwork and then the police opening the locker back up. At no point in between was the locker touched. The presence of the coroner, sitting in front of the locker, continually moving, practically proved the footage wasn't edited.

Scrambling and confused, the police grabbed the evidence photos they had collected, which did indeed still show a corpse — one that matched Vassilis. So at one point, there had been a corpse, which they did discover in the basement of an abandoned house. They had taken an ID off the corpse, one they still had. But the victim wasn't dead. To double check everything, the police sent an agent to the scene of the crime.

The abandoned house didn't have a basement.

crewtime 04/30/15 (Thu) 02:04:14 #93820713

The police finally took Spyros back into the interrogation chamber. They explained their findings and asked him what he had to say for himself.

Um. Well. I reckon I didn't do it?

This was not a satisfying answer. But it seemed to be the case. Without a body, without a timeframe for the murderer to have committed the crime, without a crime scene, and without even a death, the police were forced to release Spyros from custody.