ATHENS, July 17 (Xinhua) -- A 27-year-old Greek man was charged with murder and rape Tuesday in the killing of a 59-year-old U.S. scientist, whose body was found in an abandoned WWII bunker on the island of Crete earlier this week.
Crete police said a local man had confessed to the "violent criminal act" against Suzanne Eaton, a biologist at the Max Planck Institute at Dresden University in Germany.
The suspect said in his confession that he had seen Eaton running, and "with sexual assault as a probable motive, hit her twice with his car in order to immobilize her," Crete's Chief of Police Konstantinos Lagoudakis told a press conference Tuesday.
"Then, after she was unconscious, he put her in the trunk of his car and took her to the location of the World War II bunker" where her body was found, Lagoudakis said.
A coroner determined Eaton had "many broken ribs, and facial bones, and multiple injuries to both hands" and died from asphyxiation on the day of her disappearance.
Eaton, a mother of two sons from Armonk, New York, went missing on July 2 when attending a scientific conference in Crete. Her body was found a week later.
Police say the suspect is a married father of two, who owns farmland near the crime scene. He has not been publicly named according to Greek law.
The suspect remains in police custody and will appear in court before being placed in pre-trial detention, court officials said.
