Athens - A Greek mother posed as a prostitute and drug addict in search for the killers of her daughter, even going as far as sleeping with a man she thought was the murderer, after police had closed the case.
Dubbed "Mother Courage" by the local press, Ms Eleni Fotiadou (44) scoured the underworld of Salonica for four months after she refused to accept a police verdict that her 20year-old daughter died of a heroin overdose last June.
Ms Fotiadu told the daily Ethnos she spotted traces of blows to the body of her daughter, but faced with the "total indifference" of the police she started her own investigation in August in the northeast Greek port town.
A laboratory assistant in the daytime, Ms Fotiadu donned a blond wig and sexy clothes at night to go on the trail of the presumed killers, shadowed by a private detective for protection. In November she deposited an impressive dossier on her research at the local prosecutor's office which immediately opened a case against eight people for murder and group rape.