Get you up to speed: Suitcase ‘killer’ text wife pretending to be Jihadist who killed Scot charity worker over religion | News World

What remains unclear — Investigators have not confirmed the precise motive behind the alleged murder of Elizabeth-Jane Ross.

Afghan boxer accused of killing Scottish charity worker sends deceptive texts

Elizabeth-Jane Ross, a missionary from Scotland, was found dead in an abandoned building in Athens after going missing

The main suspect in the death of a Scottish charity worker tried to concoct a strange cover story after she was killed and stuffed in a suitcase, according to police sources.

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.

Sources close to the case told Greek news outlet Protothema.gr,the suspect used a burner phone to send texts to his wife, friends of Elisabeth and even himself to cover his tracks.

In the messages designed to mislead police, he pretended to be jihadist and claimed to have killed Elisabeth because she was converting Muslims to Christianity through her work helping the homeless in Athens.

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She may have rejected the advances of a boxer before she was killed in Greece, a police source claims.

CCTV image allegedly shows Afghan boxer Sharif Ahmadzai pulling a suitcase containing Ms Ross’s remains through the streets of Athens

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.

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.’

The inside of the abandoned building where the body of Ms Ross was discovered by a homeless man (Picture: Reuters)

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.

Elizabeth-Jane Ross was described as a ‘very precious girl’ by the Edinburgh church she had been a member of for two decades

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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