Second American tourist disappears in Greece as deaths, missing cases rise
A 70-year-old tourist was the second American– and seventh traveler — to go missing or be found dead in the Greek islands this month when he disappeared from the home he was staying at with a friend on Tuesday.
While most of the deaths appear to be related to a crushing heat wave in the region, his vanishing is more suspicious.
The man, who has not yet been publicly identified, was last seen on Tuesday in Mathraki, a remote island about 25 miles northwest of the island of Corfu, according to reports.
He was staying with a Greek-American friend, who came home Thursday to find the door of the house open, the lights and air conditioning on but the man missing, ABC News reported. His ID and travel documents were gone, too.
The friend reported the American missing.
The man was last seen Tuesday in a tavern with two female tourists who have since left the country, community leader Spyros Argyros told Greek news outlet eKathimerini.
The island of Mathraki is a popular destination for Greek Americans during the summer but has only about 50 permanent residents and no police station or coast guard. Officers from Corfu had to be called in to assist with the investigation.
Rescue teams searched the Ionian Sea Thursday but paused their operations Friday due to rough weather and were expected to continue on Saturday, according to officials.
The suspicious missing case follows the disappearance of Albert Calibet, a retired Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy, from the island of Amorgos, the easternmost of the Cyclades islands to the south of Greece’s mainland.
Calibet, 59, remains missing after not returning from a planned four-hour hike across the island to meet a friend for lunch on Tuesday. A wide search for him in the rocky terrain where he was trekking involving drones, a helicopter and even local shepherds was so far unsuccessful, ABC News reported.
None of Calibet’s belongings had been recovered as of Friday.
The seasoned hiker, who hails from Hermosa Beach, California, had dual citizenship in Greece and visited Amorgos almost every year for the past decade.
He set out amid a “severe high temperature warning,” which lasted through Thursday and even shut the acropolis down. Reports said surveillance video showed him in a parking lot setting off on the hike.
“We’re sick to our stomachs, knowing he’s out there somewhere,” his girlfriend Debbie Leshane told ABC. She said he called her as he was setting out for the hike, and then sent her a photo from the trailhead sign. It was the last she heard from him.
The two missing Americans are among a spate of tourists who have disappeared in recent weeks in the widespread Greek islands.
A traveler from the Netherlands who went missing from the island of Samos on the Turkish coast on June 9 was found dead on Saturday, according to reports, bringing the total number of tourist deaths this month to five.
Dr. Michael Mosley, a British physician and TV star, was found dead on June 9 after going missing from the island of Symi, about 150 miles south of Samos, four days earlier.
Mosley, 67, took the wrong route on a hike and collapsed just short of a marina in a spot where his body couldn’t be easily located, according to reports.
A 67-year-old Dutch tourist, a 70-year-old French tourist and an 80-year-old man also died in the heat, all on the island of Crete, between June 5 and June 13.
Two French women, ages 73 and 64, went missing from the Cyclades island of Sikinos on Friday, local outlets reported.
Officials fear tourists are unaware of how risky hiking in the sweltering heat is.
Tourists often “veer off track” and get lost, according to Dimitris Katatzis, head of the Samos rescue team. “We saw a couple [of foreigners] walking a trail in 41C [106 degrees Fahrenheit] without hats,” he told local media. “It defies logic.”
