British woman missing in Greece found dead: Michele Bourda, 59, who vanished from sunbed found on small island Fidonisi
British woman Michele Bourda, 59, who vanished from her sunbed on a beach in Greece has sadly been found dead.
The devastated husband of a British woman who went missing while he was asleep on a sun lounger has said police have found the body of his beloved wife. Michele Bourda suddenly disappeared on August 1 while her husband Chris, 66, slept on Ofrynio beach, in the Greek city of Kavala.
When he woke up, Mr Bourda started frantically looking for his wife, whose belongings had remained on the sun lounger, but she was nowhere to be found. The worried husband immediately alerted the authorities, as Mrs Bourda suffered from severe depression and anxiety, but said police were ‘useless’ not starting their search of the water until the evening.
On Thursday 4 September Mr Bourda told the Daily Mail that police officers had finally located his wife’s body, more than a month after she first went missing. She was found on a small, privately owned island called Fidonisi, around 40km down the coast from where she was last seen.
Mrs Bourda’s body is to be formally identified during an autopsy tomorrow. A grieving Mr Bourda said: “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.”
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. 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.