Britons stabbed to death on Greek isle

A BRITISH couple have been stabbed to death at their retirement home on the Greek island of Cephalonia.

Roy Eccles, 55, and his wife, Judith, 49, were found by Mrs Eccles' brother, who was visiting the island, in the early hours of Thursday, the Foreign Office said. They are believed to have been killed in their beds. Their car was found abandoned 25 miles away near the ferry port of Sami, where boats connect with Patras on the mainland. Forty extra police officers were drafted in from the mainland yesterday to help with the inquiry, and a specialist team was due to examine the car.

The murders have shocked the peaceful island made famous by Louis de Berniere's book, Captain Corelli's Mandolin. A local police official said: "This is an unprecedented crime in our area."

Mr Eccles, a former electrical engineer, and his wife, an accountant, had retired from Cambridgeshire to their newly-built house on the edge of the village of Kaminarata last October.

A police spokesman said they were not sure of the motive for the attack. The victims suffered multiple stab wounds and the house was ransacked, but there were several puzzling features.

"The state of the house means that burglary is possible, but we found a lot of jewellery and other expensive things left behind," he said. "We are looking at other possibilities. It could have been over an argument. But we tend to go for robbery at the moment."

Nick Sklavounakis, the owner of a holiday apartment block in Argostoli, the biggest town on the island, said the murders had shocked everyone.

"Cephalonia is a peaceful place and I don't remember there ever being a murder before," he said. "The worst thing that happens is in the summer when the island fills up with visitors and sometimes people get killed in road accidents."

Captain Corelli's Mandolin, the book which features the island, the largest in the Ionian chain, has been in the bestseller list for months. It charts the Italian occupation during the Second World War and the idea that paradise can be violated by evil. As many as one in five of the thousands of Britons who visit the island are estimated to arrive with a copy of the novel.