Myths and monsters | The Lab Detective Ep4

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Hello, it's Rachel here.

I'm the reporter on The Lab Detective.

Thank you for listening.

If you want to hear more of our investigations, you can listen to previous series right here on Tortoise Investigates from The Observer.

To hear more from The Observer's newsroom, you can search for The Observer wherever you listen to your podcasts.

And if you'd like to get early access and ad-free listening to all Observer podcasts, subscribe to The Observer Plus on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, or by downloading the Tortoise app.

The Observer

Last time on the lab detective,

are there any cases you're working on yourself?

I have contributed to a few cases, and recently to a case in Greece, for example, where.

The lesson I think should be that the legal system, if you've got scientists who are suddenly coming on board saying something's wrong, then those scientists need to be listened to.

And what was the upshot of that?

Well, that mother was suddenly

condemned to

life

in prison.

Well, it would be hard to live in Greece and not to have heard of it.

Rula Pespirigu is the most hated woman in Greece.

From the moment we heard of her case, which was when her third child died, she was in the news constantly.

I'm sitting opposite Katerina Bacoyani.

She's an investigative journalist based in Athens.

I've been wanting to speak to her ever since the geneticist Carola Vinuesa told me about a case she's been working on in Greece.

This all came up towards the end of my interview with Carola back when I started this investigation.

I asked her whether she thought there were any other possible miscarriages of justice that could be overturned by genetics.

And that's when she told me about Rula Pispirigu,

a mother who maintains her innocence despite being convicted of killing her three infant children.

Corolla urged me to look into it because unlike Kathleen Folbig and the British mothers who came before her, this woman is still in prison.

And so far, a full genome sequencing of the mother and her children has not been permitted by the Greek courts.

A scientific test that could reveal a hidden truth, that another innocent mother has been wrongfully convicted.

So that's why I'm sheltering from the blistering heat of Athens in July to find out what happened.

Well, at the time, I was following the news, obviously, but I hadn't really delved into the case.

So I have to say, together with most people living in Greece, I would say that I thought she was guilty

for murdering her three children.

Now since then, she has been convicted for all three murders.

That's the official verdict.

And for most people in Greece, it feels like an open and shut case.

So actually, I cannot stress this enough because there's no controversy here.

At least not in the eyes of the Greek public.

She did it.

She's guilty.

End of story.

In the beginning, Katerina wasn't reporting on the Rula Pisperigu case, she was just following the trial.

It was hard not to.

The story was everywhere, with lurid headlines splashed all over the newspapers.

In 2024, Rula was sentenced to life for murdering her nine-year-old daughter.

Then in March 2025, she received two additional life terms for killing her two other children.

Justice had apparently been served, and eventually the news started to move on, and so did Katerina,

until she was contacted by a source who urged her to think again.

I'm Rachel Sylvester, and from Tortoise Investigates, this is the lab detective, episode 4: Myths and Monsters.

So I got a tip from one of my sources.

They're very high up in the Justice Department and they asked me to go out for coffee and discuss

the case that was then known as

the Three Children of Patras, which of course is the case of Rula Pespirigu.

The tip is from a trusted source, the type of person that all journalists rely on.

Someone well placed who comes to you with a valuable piece of information that can kick-start an investigation.

So we met at a cafe downtown, as these things go, and my source told me that something about the Pispirigu case did not sit right.

The source tells Katerina that they have knowledge of the police investigation into Rula, and they have two serious concerns.

Because of their position, they're unable to do anything about it, but they think maybe a journalist could.

The first concern is that they don't believe the police were able to prove that Rula had access to a drug, ketamine, that was crucial to the case against her.

And this is important because Pispirigu was arrested after the death of her third child.

And my source was certain that they had found nothing.

Yet Pispirigu was arrested for administering the drug to her third child.

And then concern number two, which on the surface at least feels familiar.

The coroners, the state coroners that performed the autopsies on the first two children that died, they didn't find any malpractice.

They said that they died of natural causes.

Similar to Kathleen's case, the coroner's initial verdict for the first two children was that there was nothing suspicious about their deaths.

It was only when Ruler's third child died that sympathy turned to suspicion.

The original findings that the other children had died of natural causes were overturned.

It looks like the old dogma of Meadows Law: one child death is a tragedy, two is suspicious, and three is murder until proven otherwise.

So, from your source's point of view, that looks suspicious or worrying.

Exactly.

This senior source was urging Katerina to dig deeper and to question the prevailing narrative in Greece.

And even then, I did not want to look into Rule Pispirigu's case.

It's a very dramatic case.

It was a very sad case.

You know, I really didn't want to be involved with the case of a woman that probably killed her three children.

So I sort of ignored it.

She wasn't convinced there was enough there to justify her own investigation.

So she started looking for other stories to follow.

And then a fellow journalist in the paper where I work, who is the head of the science department, somebody from the Quick Institute contacted her and asked her what she knows about the Rouletes Pirigu case.

And Katerina's colleague told her about Carolla Vinuesa and what her team had revealed in Kathleen Folbick's case.

And then I was fascinated.

So what I did is I ran home and you know when you talk to somebody you always take notes.

So I looked into my notes from that

coffee break that I had with my source and I started reading everything again from a different perspective.

So now there were two people coming to me with information that maybe what I thought that she was definitely guilty was not true.

Katerina is clear with me.

When she started to investigate, she was never setting out to prove Ruler's guilt or innocence, and neither are we.

It's not our job to act as judge or jury.

What unites us, Katerina, Carola and me, is a set of questions.

One, could a full genome sequencing of Rula Pispirigu and her children reveal a genetic mutation that could explain the children's deaths?

Two, despite what we know about these cases of mothers being accused of murdering multiple children, why have the Greek courts not allowed this testing?

If there's a chance, even a 1% chance, that through genomics, through genetic testing, it can be proven that there was another condition that killed the three babies, then I think that as a society, we cannot ignore it.

Before we get to the science, I want to understand exactly what Rula Pispirigu has been accused of from someone who's been there from the beginning.

Welcome.

And to do that, Katerina told me I should speak to the head of a kind of secret society.

Let's begin from the start.

This is Elena.

It's not her real name.

Some of her family worry about her safety because of her connection to the case.

And so she's decided to keep some anonymity.

It might sound alarmist but people here are nervous about speaking out and the reasons why will become clear.

When Elena first heard about Rula Pisperigu it was just after she'd been arrested.

She had no personal connection to her.

She was just a figure of hate on the television.

And what she was hearing was that this woman from a small village on the coast of mainland Greece was being accused of killing her nine-year-old daughter Georgina by poisoning her with a lethal dose of ketamine and that the police were now also investigating the deaths of her two infant daughters.

The stories start to change and we start to see the mother that murdered the kids before she went to prison.

Soon after her arrest, a panel of state coroners were instructed to review the cause of deaths in the first two children.

And they make new

investigations,

but with other

different, completely different conclusions.

They determined both girls had in fact been suffocated.

A week after Ruler's arrest in 2022, she had to appear at court.

She was surrounded by police officers as a huge crowd tried to get close to her.

Some of them were chanting for her death.

The press labeled her a modern-day Medea after a woman in Greek mythology who punishes her husband by murdering their children.

At one court appearance, she was made to wear a bulletproof vest in case someone in the crowd tried to attack her.

She was characterized as unmotherly and unnatural.

People have even turned up in the village where she's from, making threats and scrawling graffiti on the family home.

It was disgusting.

I don't know.

With this story, I lost my sleep.

I just write a letter because I lost my sleep, and I felt like I want to do something.

Anyway, for me,

I was sure that she says the truth.

Elena has children of her own.

One of them has a genetic condition.

She never says outright that that was a catalyst for her writing a letter to Ruler, but I wonder if that's what motivated her.

I remember when I started to send the letters, I was looking to the post office for cameras.

I say that they will search who is this lady that sent my imagination, okay, that sent the letter.

It was frightening,

it was really frightening.

Why was it frightening?

Because she was the killer, she was the worst killer of all the centuries To support a woman like this?

After a couple of weeks, Rula responds and they start to speak regularly over the phone.

She becomes like Tracy was to Kathleen, one of the very few people who's willing to support her despite the accusations she's facing.

It was just one month after her child's death.

She didn't have the time to mourn nothing.

And slowly but surely, Elena makes connections connections with other people who are concerned about what they're witnessing.

Doctors, nurses, lawyers, all people with doubts about the evidence being presented against Ruler.

So we started to have this everyday meeting.

Here in this table, at half past eight, she called and we were from three to six people and then sometimes more, sometimes we are her ears, her eyes to the world.

And they've been gathering regularly ever since, in the hope that eventually the right people will listen.

As we were about to pack away our recording equipment, Elena showed me a video.

It was filmed by Ruler a few years ago.

Two of her little girls playing, looking healthy and happy.

This is Malena and Georgina.

It's a reminder of why this all matters, whatever the outcome.

She wants to know what happened.

She loves them and she talks with them every day.

She lives with their photos, she lives with their stories, she lives with her videos.

We have passed a lot.

A lot.

This story is in my veins.

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So there was a question of whether there could be a genetic condition explaining the death of the three daughters.

When we first sat down in Elena's living room, I noticed a big bunch of papers stacked in front of her.

She told me they were the medical files from the case.

And in the build-up to the trial, these documents worked their way to Carola Vinuesa, the lab detective.

What compelled you to get involved?

Well, very much like in the Folby case, right, I asked about the clinical conditions of the children, and I was told that they weren't healthy children.

This is what Carola learned.

In October 2013, Rula and her husband Manos had their first child, a daughter called Georgina.

Two years later, she was joined by another girl, Milena.

When Milena was just four years old, she was diagnosed with leukemia and started treatment for the cancer.

And died shortly after starting chemotherapy in hospital?

The couple went on to have another baby girl, Arida.

So now there was Georgina and Arida.

But Arida also became unwell.

The second girl died and she was found to have a congenital heart defect that was pretty serious.

Like in Kathleen's case, both young girls appeared to have serious health conditions, and the coroners who examined them at the time agreed those conditions had led to their deaths.

Tragic but explainable.

Where it becomes more complex is the death of Georgina.

Unlike the other cases in this series, Georgina was older.

She was nine when she died.

She'd been in hospital several times after suffering from convulsions, which left her partially paralyzed.

And the third girl died after she had had a previous cardiac arrest and left tetraplegic.

And she also had had quite a number of medical conditions, including epilepsy, pneumonia.

She was actually wearing a pacemaker, so obviously, she was prone to have cardiac arrest.

Ruler was accused of poisoning her daughter with ketamine while she was staying in hospital.

It's a drug that doctors sometimes use as an anesthetic.

But the hospital staff said that they didn't administer it to Georgina.

However, Katerina's source was telling her that there was no proof that Ruler had access to the drug or had ever searched for how to use a lethal dose.

And importantly, I was also told that the pathology

of the cardiac and liver samples during autopsy had shown shared findings in the three daughters that could be indicative of an underlying genetic defect or metabolic or liver or cardiac problem.

Instead of three murders, what Corolla was seeing in the documents suggested something different.

Why do you think a full genomic sequencing would be worth doing in this case?

Look, when you have three deaths in a family, simply

one of the most likely explanations, if it's not murder, is that there is a shared condition and

you would have a very high likelihood of a shared condition to be of a genetic origin.

So it would be a very logical starting point to ask why did three girls with shared cardiac and liver pathology die.

During the trial, a basic genetic test was carried out, but the whole genome had not been sequenced.

And it was only this comprehensive type of test that uncovered the CARM2 gene in Kathleen Folberg.

So, Ruler's defense team approached Corolla.

They asked if she would act as an expert witness and explain the value of genome sequencing.

We were asked to go to the court in November 2023, and it was at that point that we wrote a report based on our understanding of the case,

where we described what we understood were the medical conditions of the children.

Corolla and her fellow geneticist Todor Arsov teamed up again and prepared a report.

Their aim was to persuade the Greek courts that whole genome sequencing should be carried out so that all the facts could be made available.

To make the strongest case possible, they asked a selection of top experts to contribute.

There are all sorts of things that can be found if you look carefully.

And one of them was Peter Fleming, the renowned pediatrician who we spoke to in episode 1, someone who's watched these cases unfold since the Sally Clark trial back in the 1990s.

And I approach, you know, my job in that is to be neutral.

I'm not there on behalf of the parents or there on behalf of the child.

I'm there on behalf of the truth.

He studied the medical documents using his years of expertise about sudden infant death to see what the records might reveal.

From what I've seen of the evidence,

there isn't any.

This is just pure speculation as far as I can see.

This mother herself has a very serious condition called SLE,

systemic leufoserothematosis, with strong levels of a particular antibody in her blood, anti-Rho,

and that antibody can cross the placenta and cause damage to the heart of the newborn.

All three of the children who died had

findings that were compatible with that.

This, in the eyes of Peter and Carolla, is another crucial piece of medical evidence.

Ruler, the mother, has a serious condition called lupus,

a disease that causes your own immune system to attack your tissues and organs, and it can cause inflammation in the heart.

I just found it really strange that that information was...

It seems to have been ignored.

I don't know because we've had so much difficulty.

All I've seen is what the findings were.

Again, none of them had any signs or symptoms, any signs or findings to suggest they'd been suffocated.

Absolutely none.

And I just don't know how you suffocate a three-year-old without leaving marks.

Peter wants to be clear that they don't have the full picture.

They don't have access to all the documents.

But from what they've seen, he's concerned.

It seems to him that the medical history has been ignored.

And the stakes, though, are so high because there's a woman now in prison for having murdered three children.

How does that feel?

I find it appalling that from what I know of what happened, I'm just utterly astounded.

I just find it really hard to understand what's happened.

And it's

because

I've been involved quite closely in, as you know, as I've said before, in several other cases where we found reasons that the court hadn't found.

I just really don't understand what's going on here.

And so your opinion is that she's innocent?

My opinion is that I've not seen anything to suggest she's guilty.

And that's

the way the law works is the presumption of innocence.

That's the principle of Western judicial systems,

all Western judicial systems.

So in order to be found guilty, you have to have proof of guilt.

You don't have to prove innocence.

It also turned out that ketamine, the drug that Ruler was accused of using to poison Georgina, was part of the emergency kits routinely used in the pediatric intensive care unit at the hospital where she died.

What did the Greek court say when you submitted your report?

What was their response?

It was read aloud in court.

I think there was a bit of a surprise and reaction when

the lawyer read that

Georgina had been administered ketamine twice before in the context of hospital treatment.

I don't think that had been stated as a fact before and it was not, and perhaps it is not known to the public and the media.

I still wonder because what we have heard from the media is that

ketamine is a horse tranquilizer, it's given for recreational purposes and I think that's what made journalists in particular be very suspicious and critical of the mother.

But I just wondered that if the public knew that ketamine is one of the most common sedation agents or medications in hospital, whether they would have

pointed at the mother so easily.

From what I understand, right,

during the trial

they

looked at all of the evidence they had in front of them and I don't think they were persuaded to carry out additional investigations.

So it is frustrating that in the legal system, you know, there is this reluctance to try and go deeper and get all the information out there and the right people to look at it.

And Rula was found guilty of all charges.

When my producer Gary and I arrived in Athens, Rula had been in prison for over a year, serving multiple life sentences.

But Katerina told us we should speak to her new lawyer.

She's planning an appeal.

So in the UK cases back in the 1990s, there was a doctor called Roy Meadow who gave this expert evidence at the trials.

And he had this phrase that became Meadow's law, which was, one death is a tragedy, two deaths are suspicious, three are murder, unless proven otherwise.

Did that kind of idea come up in the trial?

This

phrase is written in rulers' convictions.

They knew it.

They said to it, the prosecutor said to her the phrase that you

already told me.

And she said that

there was a doctor in Britain that said that.

But that doctor in Britain has been completely discredited.

Yes, but here in Greece,

don't forget that we are a little bit,

how to say it,

slower in our

way of

judicial thinking.

This is Vaso Pandazi.

She's recently taken on the case.

She's a high-profile lawyer in Greece, and she prides herself on hardly ever losing.

The walls of her office are lined with framed photographs of her being interviewed on daytime TV shows.

So how much do you think misogyny was was at play in the trial and subsequently?

Oh, Greek society is very misogynistic.

We cannot forgive mistakes of a mum.

The proof of misogynistic

is that the father of the children is like a hero in Greece.

Whereas she is an absolute villain.

Exactly.

One of the revealing things about all these cases is that the fathers never seem to be under suspicion.

Often, both parents are in the house when the children die, but it's only the mother who's accused of murder.

We did speak with Manos's lawyer when we were in Athens.

She told me he'd also be happy to provide a DNA sample if he's instructed to do so by the court.

But she doesn't think it's likely.

The courts have all the evidence they need.

Vaso thinks a little differently.

Why

you don't want all the examinations to be done in order to feel safe as a judge that you didn't put in jail an innocent woman.

So, are you going to get that genetic testing done?

What's going to happen?

We are going to go to the Court of Appeal and I'm going to say to the judges from the beginning that if you want to have a serious trial, we have to bring here

the doctors and we have to take the tests.

Rulers' lawyers will make a formal application for whole genome sequencing as part of an appeal in January.

They'll be up against a criminal justice system reluctant to admit there may have been a mistake.

Because the Greek society and the Greek media are like, no, we don't accept another explanation.

See the murder.

You see, all of us want to see the monster.

All of us think that the monster is the other person, and we want to find out monsters around us

in order not to see the monster inside us

there's no way of knowing what a more comprehensive DNA test would reveal it might simply confirm the original verdict but I left Greece feeling uncomfortable that there seems to be a reluctance to explore every avenue to ensure there hasn't been a miscarriage of justice The myth of a murderous mother is so powerful that the legal system doesn't doesn't want to consider an alternative explanation for the children's deaths.

When we got back to London, I told Carola what I'd found and what Vaso is requesting.

And would you be willing to review the genomic sequencing, as you suggested last time?

I would be happy to help if there is a need.

And I have talked with other experts that would be happy to contribute.

What do you think it might show?

Look, it's difficult to know, but there is a range of metabolic or liver cardiac conditions that might not have been, that were not included in the panels that were looked at.

So,

you know, some,

I mean,

as I say, potentially dozens of conditions that could potentially present with something like that.

Who knows if there is a complex case of genomics and other factors?

These are conditions that can kill suddenly and unexpectedly in children that are healthy.

But it feels as if, at the very least, the court ought to have all the facts before it.

Yes, I think it is important, right?

Especially now, in which, you know, doing these genomic tests, it's affordable, available, it's quite easy.

Carola says that if the courts do give permission for a full genome sequencing and the DNA is provided, she and her team could find an answer to the mystery in as little as a month.

Do you worry that there's been another miscarriage of justice?

Look, personally, I do worry.

Whilst I'm not going to say whether she's innocent or guilty, from the evidence that we've heard and the evidence that we were given,

it is possible and in my opinion likely there is there has been a miscarriage of justice.

But I think it comes comes back to the bigger question of how should medical evidence be looked at in trials and who are the best experts and can a jury understand complex medical evidence.

Vasso, the lawyer, has asked us to come back to Athens when Rula's case goes to appeal and I do plan to follow the case.

But it's likely to take months and months before there's an outcome.

And until that time, Rula will remain in prison.

Her future will depend on the willingness of the legal system and the people who inhabit it to listen to science.

It's really important not to forget that this isn't just a murder mystery story or an exciting scientific journey.

At the heart of all these cases there's a human tragedy, a mourning family desperate to know why their child has died.

Throughout this investigation, I've held in my mind a conversation I had right at the beginning with a woman called Nikki Speed.

Her daughter, Rosie, died suddenly and inexplicably when she was just two years old.

Nikki pointed out that more genetic testing wouldn't just solve crimes, it could give answers to grieving parents.

The medical implications of genetics are extraordinary.

Patrick Valens, the science minister, told me that we're in a new age of cures.

These days, medicine isn't just treating diseases, it's eliminating them through new gene editing techniques.

The implications for the future of the NHS and for all of our health are astonishing.

Personalised medicines, predictive care, preventative treatments are all now on the horizon.

But it turns out that the potential for the criminal justice system is just as great.

Now genome sequencing can provide alternative answers, replacing misogynistic myths with evidence-based science, particularly for mothers accused of murder.

Look, I feel hopeful about genomics, right?

In the same case as it delivered, right,

the cause of death in the case of Fulbig.

It will continue to do that in other cases.

You know, some lawyers seem to feel very strongly that their clients are innocent.

I think, you know, genomics will bring answers in a fraction of these cases.

I think in the same way as DNA fingerprinting

revolutionized the identification of suspects, now the possibility to sequence genomes can offer alternative explanations for deaths and

in cases where people have been accused based predominantly on circumstantial evidence.

So I think it is becoming, or it should become, the first step in a murder investigation,

particularly when there is any clinical case of concern or a medical condition in the subject in question.

Thank you for listening to The Lab Detective.

It's reported by me, Rachel Sylvester.

It's written by me and the producer, Gary Marshall.

Additional production and fact-checking by Madeleine Parr.

Additional production in Athens by Danai DeVita and Evangelos Macris.

The music supervisor is Carla Patella.

Sound design is by Rowan Bishop.

Podcast artwork is by Lola Williams.

The executive producer is Basha Cummings.

The Observer

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