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The devastated husband of a British woman who was found dead in Greece after vanishing from a beach last month has blasted local police for not helping him, and claims that cops did not care because his wife was a foreigner.
Michele Bourda, 59, disappeared from Ofrynio beach, in the Greek city of Kavala on August 1 and left all her belongings – including her glasses, medication and even her towel – on a sunlounger while her husband slept.
Her body was finally located more than a month after she first went missing, her husband Chris, 66, told the Daily Mail on Thursday.
Mr Bourda told The Mail that when he alerted the authorities, harbour police were ‘useless’ and did not start their search for his wife – who suffered from depression and anxiety – until late at night.
‘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.’
Pharmacist Mr Bourda also believes that while police might not have been able to save his wife, she would have been found earlier.
He said he remains unsure if his wife was purposefully trying to hurt herself.
‘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.’
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.
Mrs Bourda was found on a small, privately owned island called Fidonisi, around 40km down the coast from where she was last seen.
Her body is to be formally identified during an autopsy today.
And while he places most of the blame of the tragedy towards Greek authorities, he also called on mental health services to be improved back home in Britain.
‘The problem is the health system in the UK as well,’ he added. ‘If she had seen a psychiatrist much earlier and got the relevant medication then she would have still been alive.
‘The problem with depression is that they can sometimes trick you into thinking they are fine. I thought she was alright, but she wasn’t.
‘Unfortunately, I fell asleep in the sun and I slept and when I woke up I knew instantly something was wrong. I didn’t know then what had happened but I knew something had gone wrong.’
Her husband spent weeks searching for his wife of 36 years and claims he was not treated seriously, or kindly, by authorities and locals in the area.
Mr Bourda previously told the Daily Mail: ‘She had seemed quite happy that day. We went for a short swim as it was windy and there were a few waves.
‘She then ordered a few crepes and said we could have a nice sleep after. Unfortunately I fell asleep first and when I woke up she wasn’t there.
‘I quickly ran to the toilet and knocked on the ladies but she wasn’t in there. I then ran to the beach to look again in the water.
‘I asked the people behind us if they had seen her, they said no but then later they sent a photograph to the police which had shown us eating crepes in the background.
‘I then quickly went back to the waiter to say my wife was missing, have you seen her and he started laughing.’
It was only after Mr Bourda explained to the waiter that his wife had ‘psychological problems and needed to call the police’ that the barman realised the gravity of the situation.
He then asked for help from a local shopkeeper who rang the police, but officers did not arrive at the scene until two hours later, forcing Mr Bourda to continue his search alone.
Mr Bourda said that he did not see a single police officer on the beach the day she went missing – a claim that was echoed by a fellow hotel guest.
He said: ‘The police didn’t do anything on the day. One guest who was there that day said she didn’t see any police and I didn’t see any police that day either, not one single policeman at the beach.
‘The only thing I saw was a police car driving up and down the road to the beach. Not getting out of the car, just looking in the direction of the sea.’
Mr Bourda claimed during the initial search the police didn’t use dogs or drones and have only been using the search boat at night or in the early morning ‘so as not to disturb or concern the tourists’.
When he visited the hospital in search of his wife, he said doctors told him that ‘a lot of incidents’ do happen on that beach and that it can sometimes be dangerous.
‘I wonder if they have told me if she is alive so other tourists don’t get scared,’ he said.
Mr Bourda said that his wife, who worked at BT before working at a local council, had suffered intermittently from episodes of depression and anxiety for a number of years.
She had disappeared on one occasion before when they lived in London after suffering from a bout of depression after being made redundant but fortunately the police acted quickly and the mother-of-one was found that night.
Mrs Bourda became ill again in February, however, was in the process of recovering and had been in high spirits.
The couple had gone to Greece after a two-week break visiting Mr Bourda’s family in Germany to get away from the grey weather in Glasgow where they now live, in trade for some Mediterranean sunshine.
They had planned to stay at the beach resort for six weeks to make the most of the summer.
The Bourdas, who had been married for 36 years after meeting at university in Germany, had enjoyed their first few days wandering around Kavala.
Mr Bourda said: ‘The whole night before she had been holding my hand and you would never think anything was wrong or something like this would ever happen.
‘We were talking the other day and she was saying how happy our 40 years together and I said yes, we will hopefully have another 40 years in front of us.’
