A Scottish charity worker may have rejected the advances of a boxer before she was killed in Greece, a police source claims.
The remains of charity worker Elizabeth-Jane Ross, 38, from Edinburgh, were found dumped in Athens on July 18, three days after she was reported missing from her flat.
Sharif Ahmadzai, 26, is suspected of killing her and transporting her body inside a black suitcase through the streets of Athens before dumping it in an abandoned building.
The Afghan boxer allegedly told detectives during an interrogation that Ms Ross was dead when he discovered her, and he put her in a suitcase so he could steal money from her without drawing attention.
Now George Kalliakmanis, a former officer who leads the police union in the Greek capital, has hinted that a rejection theory cannot be ruled out.
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He told The Sun: ‘He went to the flat where she was staying for a reason and it’s not thought that reason is because he wanted to commit robbery and steal her cards.
‘What was it? Nothing can be ruled out. Did she reject him? Nothing can be ruled out.’
Another source close to the investigation said: ‘It can’t be excluded that he had feelings for Ross who rejected him.’
Ahmadzai, who is understood to have access to Ms Ross’s flat through a charity he ran with his wife, is the prime suspect in the investigation.
His wife, an American citizen Alaina Hall, allegedly told detectives her husband went missing on the evening of July 15.
When she checked his location on Find My Friends, it allegedly showed him at Ms Ross’s apartment.
It has also been revealed that Hall, who shares a young child with Ahmadzai, received around £2,200 in cash and a new iPhone from her husband, which she feared may have been bought with Ms Ross’s bank cards.
Greek police officers told The Times that his wife’s testimony has been ‘crucial’ to the investigation.
Ahmadzai, who arrived on the Greek island of Lesbos via Pakistan, Iran and Turkey in 2016, met his American wife at a migrant camp, where she volunteered and he worked as a translator.
He has been charged with manslaughter, robbery and weapon offences.
Ms Ross, known as Lisa, was a missionary and a long-standing member of an independent Christian church called City on a Hill in Edinburgh.
Peter Anderson, a pastor of the congregation, paid tribute to her in a social media post: ‘We have lost a precious church member, Lisa. She was a member of our church for 20 years, and a very, very precious girl, and it’s a real tragic loss.
‘Lisa’s life was actually all about mission.
‘She served people and she cared for people all over the world.’
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