Kyriakos Papachronis

Kyriakos Papachronis (Κυριάκος Παπαχρόνης, born 1960), also known as the "Ogre of Drama" (ο δράκος της Δράμας), is a Greek serial killer.

Kyriakos Papachronis was born in 1960 in Xanthi to parents Erifili and Charalambos Papachronis.

He also had a brother and a sister.

The Papachronis family kept a cafeteria in the city where Kyriakos worked since he was little.

When he finished high school, he stayed for a while in Athens, making a living from working in various hotels.

He dealt with sports and excelled mainly in boxing (in which he was declared champion in the 90 kg class) and karate, in which he was also declared a champion.

While working as a cadet officer in the army, he killed 3 prostitutes and attempted to rape 5 more in the city of Drama in northern Greece from 1981 to 1982.

In the afternoon of 9 September 1981, Papachronis visited a brothel in the area of Profitis Ilias in Xanthi and requested the services of a 46-year-old prostitute.

The coup, however, resulted in a fight, with the woman (as claimed by Papachronis) who underestimated his sexual competence.

He fled furiously to return a few hours later, stabbing the woman to death.

His next victim, also a prostitute, he met on the streets of Drama.

On 20 December 1981, while she was looking for customers, Papachronis followed her without her realizing and stabbed the woman in the back, but her screaming attracted passers-by and he quickly fled.

Ten days later, on 30 December, after she had left a screening of a porn movie, a 19-year-old student was attacked by Papachronis.

He stabbed her in the cervix, but was seen by the girl's father, who was waiting for her, and fled.

The surviving victims' testimonies led to his capture on 13 December 1982 He was initially court-martialed and sentenced to two life sentences, but it was later reduced to life imprisonment.

On 15 January 1982, Papachronis attacked a nurse while walking to the train station in Drama.

He dragged her under the airbridge and knocked her out, trying to rape her.

But he eventually changed his mind and left the woman alive, who was the first victim to give the police a precise and detailed description of Papachronis.

On 15 August 1982, he accidentally met a recent acquaintance at the Archaeological Museum of Thessaloniki, a girl named Anastasia Alexandridou, and persisted for her to go with him.

He then followed the girl to her house and asked to make love.

Eventually, he closed her mouth, grabbed her and dragged the girl to an adjacent grove.

There he pulled out his knife (which he always carried with him) from his sock and stabbed her in the cervix, ripping her clothes off and raped her.

He left her there naked, stealing all her personal belongings and throwing them away near the Menemeni train station, keeping only her lighter (which would later link him beyond doubt to the murder of the girl).

The victim died two hours later from internal haemorrhage and pulmonary asphyxia.

On 21 September 1982, he attacked a 23-year-old, who managed to escape.

On 1 October 1982, after observing her, he attacked and seriously injured an 18-year-old girl outside her home in Drama.

On 25 October, he attacked in Xanthi, this time seriously injuring a 32-year-old prostitute.

His last victim was a 30-year-old mother of four working as a cleaner, whom he stalked for several days before attacking her.

On 30 December 1982, he stabbed her in the face and carotid, then vanished.

The perpetrator's description by his surviving victims depicted a man wearing a military uniform, limiting the range of suspects.

The involvement of military authorities in search of the killer, with the detailed conduct of investigations and monitoring of the movements of suspected soldiers, led to his arrest a few days after his last murder attempt.

When the news of the attack was heard, two camp officers, Christos Triandafyllidis and Tasos Kosmidis, looked at the archives that night, and noted that only a few men were out of camp (due to a ban on leaving) and one of them was Kyriakos Papachronis, who had arrived late.

He was questioned by the campmaster, and due to the fact that he had no alibi for that particular evening, his apparent nervousness made the officer investigate his apartment.

From this search, his knives were discovered, as well as the lighter he had kept as a trophy from Anastasia.

He was subsequently arrested on 13 December 1982 by the Drama authorities.

Papachronis refused to admit guilt on all charges at first, but the many inaccuracies, his erroneous answers, the heaps of recognitions from his victims, the lack of an alibi, and fatigue from the interrogations eventually led him to confess to everything he had done.

He also admitted that on 12 March 1982, he had placed two bombs at the Post Office and the National Bank of Greece's Xanthi Branch, and on the following day, he had placed two more bombs in a shop at the Alpha Bank Branch in Kavala.

In the early days of his imprisonment, he was particularly undisciplined and violent but by the late 1990s, he turned into an exemplary prisoner.

22 years later, in 2004, he was released from prison.

Papachronis now lives peacefully in Larissa, undisturbed by authorities.