A British mother who disappeared from her sunbed on a Greek beach has been found dead, her husband has confirmed.
Chris Bourda, 66, woke up from his sun lounger on Ofrynio beach, Kavala, on August 1 to discover his wife Michele, 59, had disappeared.
The mum-of-one’s belongings were still on her sun bed, but she was nowhere to be found.
The worried husband contacted police, as Michele suffered from severe depression and anxiety, but said officers did not arrive at the scene for another two hours.
Her body was finally located by police and was found half-naked, without a head and partially eaten by fish, her husband said.
The holidaymaker’s remains were found 40km from where she was last seen, on the privately owned island Fidonisi.
The body is due to be formally identified, but the swimsuit makes authorities ’99 per cent sure’ it is the Michele.
Chris, a phamacist, told the Daily Mail: ‘They have found her body. Sadly I was expecting this.
‘The problem is the harbour police did not start their search until late at night and I don’t know what effect that had.
‘They said they couldn’t find her, they claimed she had disappeared with an unknown man, but this was rubbish.
‘I think the harbour police really didn’t do anything and next time something happens like this they should think about it. It shouldn’t take them three hours to write up a missing person’s report before starting the search.
‘They said there were no signs she had drowned, that there was no body, that she was following someone else. But I knew this was not the case. She would not have gone off without her money, her glasses or her medication.’
Chis is still uncertain if his wife was purposefully trying to hurt herself, but criticised the police for their lack of urgency.
He added: ‘I had only been to the prosecution centre yesterday to complain about how the police and harbour police have handled this. It will be easy to see when I called the telephone line and how long they didn’t do anything for.
‘She had psychological issues. I told them that from the start and they weren’t able to find her.
‘It’s impossible. Nobody did anything to help. Even the chap who saw her in the sea, he lost sight of her.
‘People have not been very nice and they have not treated me well. When I was brought to ask in the restaurant if they had seen her they were asking why I had been brought there.
‘If they are a foreigner they do not care about you here.’
In the weeks after Michele’s disappearance, Chris was left searching for his wife alone, and had gone without sleep to devote all his time trying to find her.
He previously said: ‘For days and nights I have gone up down the coast, searched bushes, olive groves, empty houses, building sites, later I went to the hills, nothing.
‘I asked the police if they think that she is alive, why don’t they use dogs, drones, helicopters and they replied where shall we search? It’s a vast area.
‘I don’t think my wife would have gone to somebody in the car or anything. I really don’t. I have tried everywhere but one person alone is very difficult to find something.’
Michele suffered from bouts of depression and anxiety, Chris explained, and had on one occasion disappeared while they were living in London.
But police acted quickly and found her on the night she went missing.
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