"The night has its own laws," say those who live it. The dark streets, the easy money, the power, the businesses, the blood relations. All their basic characteristics of a life very different from the one we all other people live.
The law of the jungle prevails at night. "The strongest survives." "If you do not eat them, they will eat you." Familiar expressions that describe what is actually happening.
The wars that break out at regular intervals between the powerful of the night are so bloody that in many cases even the police themselves do not intervene. Either because the mouths remain tightly closed and there is always a step back. Either because even if he knows he chooses to "set aside" since he can not influence the development of things. Former officers of EL.AS. they said "maybe this is the self-purification of the night".
The recent execution of the legendary Apache, reminded everyone that this war never ends. It can enter periods of "ceasefire" but as it is clear "nothing and no one is forgotten".
And perhaps there is no better case to confirm all the above than the "Apache" case. The security police had stopped dealing with him for a long time because he had also retired. He did not care and he was not employed. It seems, however, that for some it had to go away. Even now. So many years after the last adventure.
What is now looking for Greek police is whether the 60-year-old Vangelis Pallis made an appointment with his killers or they set an ambush for him.
In any case, it is a given that another "death contract" was executed and with it closes another important chapter of the night.
Vangelis Pallis started his activities in the late 1980s. However, his name was heard loudly for the first time when in May 1995 an arrest warrant was issued against him for the murder of Panagiotis Papadakos in the parking lot of the Hippodrome. A case for which he was finally acquitted in the summer of 2004 after the Joint Jury Court of Thebes unanimously acquitted him.
In June 1996, he had managed to escape from the Lamia Police Department, while he was on trial for attempted murder in the area, for which he was serving his sentence. He was wanted for six years and during those years his name at night "grew". Many were heard but few were confirmed.
One of these cases, which allegedly involved but was never proven, was the murder of horse owner Dimitris Michailidis and the injury of his brother Vassilis, in May 2002 outside the racetrack.
That year, however, was important for "Apatsi", since a special group of police officers had been created within the Security for his arrest. Eventually, he was handcuffed during a special operation outside the "Asclepieion of Voula". When he was arrested, they found that he was in possession of a pistol with four cartridges and a fake ID. During the many years he spent in prison he participated in many uprisings (he was one of the protagonists in the great uprising of Malandrino) and came in contact with anti-authoritarians.
A year before his release from prison in 2011, he had been attacked with a glass "knife" by a prison inmate.
In recent years, "Apache" had not occupied the authorities at all. Its execution is attributed to "accounts that were left open".
One more death contract of the many that have shocked the night world.
For many, its execution Gerasimos Nastouli in October 1994 outside a bar in Haidari was the cause for too much blood to be shed afterwards. Executors were two brothers. Known in the night world. Nothing was the same after that day.
On February 19, 2000, even experienced police officers were shocked to find out who was the man who had been brutally murdered with 19 bullets outside his home in St. Petersburg. It was about him Themi Papamali who was considered one of the harshest criminals to ever act in the country. His specialty was the placement of bombs while he had even fought in the civil war of the former Yugoslavia, in paramilitary groups.
The summer of 2000 was essentially a turning point in the night world. After the two months of June-July, nothing was the same at night. The changes were "cosmogenic" but also the blood that was shed later.
Initially, on June 7, he was executed outside courts of Evelpidon the man who did the "commands" in the southern suburbs, Nikos Grigorakos. Where he drank his coffee, in front of hundreds of frightened citizens.
On July 15, his father was executed, Vassilis Grigorakos, on the beach. His perpetrators had set an ambush and executed him almost on the move.
If a performance, however, is reminiscent of what we see in Hollywood movies it was that of Themi Kalapotharakou. It happened exactly 10 days after that of Vassilis Grigorakos and it absolutely confirms the title of the "toughest of the old generation of godmothers" that followed Kalapotharakos.
His executors had set an ambush on Poseidon Avenue, near his summer house. When they saw him, they opened fire on me Kalashnikov. Fire storm. Kalapotharakos was injured but did not fall so easily. He got out of the car and fired about 20 shots at his killers. The battle, however, was unequal. A total of 60 bullets were found in his body!
In June 2007, a man allegedly jogging approaches a well-known man from behind George Ears who had just arrived outside the cafeteria he kept in Gallipoli, Piraeus. He pulls out a gun and shoots him four times in the head and body. Two years later, the first woman victim of the night war falls dead from the fire of an unknown man. This is the Maria Kafieri, the widow of George Avtias. The woman fell dead while visiting a friend's house.
Over the next two years, four more death contracts were executed targeting night owls who were busy prosecuting the authorities.
His first murder is Gerasimos Mavrakis in October 2007. His name was in the big case for the extortionist ring in Piraeus in 2003.
A few days after the murder of Mavrakis, the businessman is executed at the junction of Iera Odos with Thebes Alekos Kosmopoulos who had been imprisoned for murders, blackmail and robbery but after his release he had not again occupied the authorities.
In December 2008, perhaps in the execution of a death contract, the owner of the "Muses" nightclub was assassinated. Babis Lazaridis. The unknown perpetrators had ambushed him outside a hotel on the beach and "gassed" him with a Kalashnikov. The famous singer was injured in the leg by bullet fragments Angeliki Iliadis.
The death contract that closed that bloody cycle that lasted nine years, was what was written on it the name of the businessman George Anagnostopoulos who was considered one of the hardest of the Athenian night and had already escaped two assassination attempts against him. The two executors entered, at noon on June 10, 2009, inside the businessman's cafeteria on Veikou Street in Galatsi and opened fire on him with a single pistol and a Kalashnikov.
The last loud execution in the world of the Athenian night was the one that took place in May 2017. The victim, known to the law enforcement authorities since the 1980s, Vassilis Grivas who was killed by nine bullets moments after leaving his 10-year-old son in Glykon Nero primary school.