Crete body find turns into murder hunt after family plea

POLICE investigating the death of a British woman whose body was found in a harbour on Crete are treating the case as murder, her family has said.

Tourist industry worker Jean Hanlon, 53, of Dumfries, disappeared in March last year in mysterious circumstances and her body was found four days later in the sea off the port of Heraklion.

Her family have campaigned for more than a year to find out what happened to her in the hours before her death after a local coroner initially ruled she died as a result of an accident.

They said a Greek magistrate had now publicly declared the case was being treated by police as murder and two men had been arrested and named by the authorities as suspects.

Michael Porter, 25, said police revealed his mother suffered a broken neck before she went into the water and had injuries consistent with a struggle.

He said: "This gives us confirmation that we were right to be suspicious all along and now we want our country to help us.

"We cannot afford to go out there again, we have not got a translator or legal aid and it is a battle to get justice.

"It worries and concerns me that many other families may have been told their loved ones died in an accident and have not persisted like us.

"Now we want to get out there and get these questions answered straight away."

Mrs Hanlon disappeared on 9 March last year, but police and British embassy officials in Greece were not informed until several days later.

She had moved to the village of Kato Gouves four years earlier to work in the seasonal tourism trade and returned to Britain regularly to visit her family, including her three sons.

Mr Porter, a musical theatre performer from Mansfield, said the last anyone heard of her was after she had met a man at a bar in Heraklion.