- .Dental tests have now revealed Maria is a five or six-year-old, not four
- .She is now at the centre of an international appeal to uncover her identity
- .Charity claims she was treated like 'dancing bear' by family she lived with
- .DNA tests show she isn't related to Hristos Salis or Eleftheria Dimopoulou
- .They've been charged with child abduction and will appear in court today
- .Eight 'promising' calls about Maria's identity now thrown into doubt
By JILL REILLY and LIZZIE PARRY
Greek police are exploring the possibility that child traffickers had planned to sell Maria, a young blonde girl found living in a Roma camp to a wealthy family, but were forced to get rid of her when investigators closed in on them.
The couple who were found living with the girl last week in the town of Farsala, deny snatching her and say they took her under their care after her mother handed the girl to them shortly after giving birth.
But one police theory being investigated is that the young girl was to be sold in an illegal adoption, and was left to the Roma couple when it failed.
Costas Yannopoulos, the Director of Athens-based charity Smile of the Child where Maria was taken for care, said it was ‘well known’ that ‘there is a baby-trade conducted by gipsies between Romania, Bulgaria, Greece and England.’
Charged: Hristos Salis (right) told the court he did not want Maria (centre) in the house as he tried to blame his wife, Eleftheria Dimopoulou (left), for taking the child
Charges: Hristos Salis, 39, left, and Eleftheria Dimopoulou, 40, right, are appearing at a courthouse in Larissa to answer charges of abducting a minor and holding false papers. They are pictured here last Thursday
Meanwhile DNA tests carried out on Maria have revealed the child is not currently on Interpol's missing person's list.
The samples taken from the child do not match any of the missing children on the list, Greek police told the Daily Telegraph.
The Greek authorities, in charge of an international hunt to find the little girl's relatives, have received more than 8,000 calls and possible leads from Japan, South Africa, Sweden and the USA.
Mystery: Dental and medical tests suggest Maria is five or six years old, instead of four as previously claimed
One US couple, who had their daughter taken from their Kansas City home more than two years ago have revealed that they have contacted those in charge of the hunt, in the hope the missing girl could be theirs.
As the search for Maria's identity widened into an international appeal, Jeremy Irwin, 31, and Deborah Bradley, 30, who lost their daughter Lisa in October 2011, were reported by Greek authorities to be one the eight leads out of thousands they are taking extremely seriously.
Attorney John Picerno, who has represented Irwin and Bradley since their daughter disappeared from her bed after an apparent home invasion, confirmed they were one of four American inquiries about Maria, but refused to go into further detail.
Speaking to the Daily Telegraph, Picerno said, 'We inquire about every child that is found and fits the age profile of Lisa.
'We investigate all leads. I don't have any further comment at this stage.'
But the revelation that Interpol does not have Maria's records on their missing persons' list, will throw the lead into doubt.
Hristos Salis, 39, and Eleftheria Dimopoulou, 40, have been held in custody pending trial after responding to the charges behind closed doors in Larissa, Greece.
The couple, who face a sentence of ten to 20 years in prison if convicted, deny snatching the girl and say they took her under their care after her mother handed the girl to them shortly after giving birth.
'It was an adoption that was not exactly legal, but took place with the mother's consent,' Constantinos Katsavos, one of the lawyers for Salis, told reporters, adding that is what the couple testified in court.
Today photos released of the properties being raided when Maria was found show a haul of illegal goods were seized. Police photos show a range of chainsaws and laptops, above
A pen-style pistol and bullets found among other illegal items at the Roma settlement
The couple were also charged with procuring false documents, while Salis faces separate charges, together with other people from the settlement, for allegedly possessing an illegal firearm and drug-related offences.
Maria, who the Greek media has dubbed the ‘blonde angel’, is the focus of a global investigation after she was found during a drug and gun raid last week.
Police photos released today show authorities seized a haul of goods including a range of chainsaws, a pen-style pistol with bullets as well as drugs.
The evidence photos also show credit cards which are believed to be stolen, alongside a pistol and a balaclava.
Drugs, left, and a cannabis pipe, right, were also found during the raids
Cannabis, mobile phones, drugs and weapons which were seized during the raid
The evidence also shows credit cards which are believed to be stolen alongside a pistol and a balaclava
Police grew suspicious about Maria because she bore no resemblance to the couple claiming to be her parents. DNA tests showed she is not related to Salis and Dimopoulou.
A dental test revealed she is between five and six-years-old - after previous estimates had put her age at four.
At the weekend a charity caring for the girl said she was treated like a ‘dancing bear’ by the family she lived with – who exploited her innocent looks, making her beg for money.
Greek media are reporting that Maria's DNA is being compared with DNA samples from people in seven other countries.
Maria was ‘filthy and terrified’ when social services took her to Smile of the Child on Wednesday.
In court: Members of the media wait outside a courthouse in the town of Larisa, some 350 km (217 miles) north of Athens where the couple appeared yesterday
Appearance: The Roma couple, arrested on suspicion of abducting a young blonde girl, appeared before a prosecutor in Larissa
Spokesman Panayiotis Pardalis said: ‘It was obvious that she was not a Roma girl. The little girl was terrified when she first came to us and didn’t talk at all, but she is now calm and has been playing with other kids.’
Director Costas Yannopoulos added: ‘She was living under bad conditions and was very dirty, but is now safe.’
She was released from hospital yesterday, after tests were carried out on her teeth to try to determine her age.
Mr Yannopoulos said evidence so far suggested she had been trafficked.
'Dancing bear': A still from a video taken last month shows Maria in the crime-ridden Greek gipsy camp
Video: The child was filmed just three weeks ago at the Roma settlement in Farsala, central Greece
At the weekend night family members showed the Mail the house where Maria was found.
They revealed a small but tidy brick home and claimed the only bedroom – with the only bed, a pink bedspread and cuddly toys – was reserved for her use.
A cupboard, again the only one in the house, contained little girl’s shoes and other clothes.
Pictures released by police show the little girl’s blonde hair may have been dyed brown when she was younger – indicating the family may have wanted to hide her difference.
But another daughter Emmannuella, 16, said Maria’s hair turned blonde naturally.
The couple have told various stories – that she was abandoned by a Bulgarian woman, or found on a rubbish tip – but Mr Yannopoulos said it is more likely she is from Scandinavia.
Yesterday residents of Farsala's gipsy camp claimed a Bulgarian family had made an arrangement with the couple to look after their daughter since she was a baby.
Babis Dimitriou, the chairman of the Farsala village Roma association, told The Daily Telegraph: 'There was a Bulgarian husband and wife who were working around Greece in temporary jobs, who used to stay here sometimes.
'At one point they left the girl to be raised by the family here in the village.
Neat and tidy: Maria's room, the only bedroom in her 'family's' house
Seen: A cupboard, again the only one in the house, contained two rows of little girl's shoes and other clothes
'The family raised the child as if it was their own, although her father would come back every now and then to see her. The last time he visited was only five days ago, after the arrests had been made.
'All the other Roma here were telling the Bulgarian man to explain to the police that the girl was his, but he has now disappeared.'
'We're talking about a woman who could not raise this child and who gave it to the couple in 2009 through a third party shortly after her birth,' a lawyer for the couple, Marietta Palavra said at the weekend.
'There has been no kidnapping, no robbery, no trafficking,' insisted her colleague Konstantinos Katsavos, who also represents the couple.
'They did not buy the child,' he said.
Exploited: Eleftheria Dimopoulou, 40, is pictured with little Maria in a video shot two years ago
'We know the (girl's) parents are from Bulgaria,' Marios Sainopoulos, a representative for the Roma community in Greece, told Skai TV on Monday.
DNA TEST TO DETERMINE A CHILD'SBIOLOGICAL PARENTS
DNA is found in almost every cell in the body including skin, hair follicles, and semen. Saliva doesn't contain cells, but as it moves around a person’s mouth, it collects them.
DNA in blood comes from the white blood cells.
Many of these cells are porous which makes them easy to isolate DNA from.
DNA is found in bones, but because bones are calcified, it makes the extraction more difficult – unless bone marrow is present.
DNA determines eye and hair colour, bone density, height and so on. A large amount, 99.9 per cent of the DNA from two people is the same, yet 0.1% will be unique and this is known as a genetic marker.
A child inherits half their DNA from each of their parents. It isn’t exactly the same half each time, which explains why siblings look different.
The more closely related two people are, the more likely it is their genetic markers will be similar. Identical twins have identical genetic markers, for example.
During parental tests, scientists look for similarities in the genetic markers between two samples taken from the child and the parent.
The DNA is collected, traditionally, using swabs of the inside of a cheek to collect buccal cells.
The strand is isolated from the cells and millions of copies are made, using 'polymerase chain reaction'. The more DNA available, the easiest the genetic code is to analyse.
By copying the strands, rather than taking new samples each time, it speeds up how quickly the tests can be carried out and why the results can now come back within a day, rather than weeks.
The DNA molecules are split at different points and the code at these points forms a ‘fingerprint’. The fingerprints from the two samples are compared to see if they match.
If the band patterns of the alleged father don’t match, he can be conclusively ruled out as the child's parent.
In maternal tests, a particular form of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) is tested. Both sexes have mtDNA but only women pass it on to their children.
If a daughter doesn’t share the mitochondrial DNA from an alleged mother, they do not come from the same maternal line.
The comparison is repeated to confirm the results and the more probes used; the more definitive the results can be.
'The mother gave the child away because she could not raise it... the child was not kidnapped,' he insisted.
Police allege the woman claimed to have given birth to six children in less than 10 months, while 10 of the 14 children the couple had registered as their own are unaccounted for.
Police said the family received more than £7,000 a month in benefits for the children they claimed to have.
Police chief Vassilis Halatsis added that the woman had two separate ID cards and names.
He said: ‘Of the children we have traced so far, just by looking at them you can see that there is very little or no resemblance at all to the parents.
‘It is obvious that we are faced with a very well-organised racket, and it is certainly not the only one.’
Neighbours said the couple gave Maria special treatment because of her blonde hair. One woman, washing children’s clothes in a bathtub, said: ‘She was treasured because she was so beautiful . . . We all loved her.’
Salis’s brother Kostas added: ‘She had problems with her eyes. We took her to the doctor, we took her everywhere. We didn’t take her to sell her.’
Haralambos Dimitriou, 57, president of the gipsy settlement, said any conflicting accounts of how Maria came to the family were given ‘out of fear’.
Marietta Palavra, lawyer for the couple, said: ‘There is nothing but love and care between the Roma parents and the four-year-old girl.’
She said they could each face up to ten years in prison if convicted.
At the weekend a Greek couple who were told in 2009 that their baby was stillborn, but later exhumed the grave to find an empty coffin, underwent DNA tests, but found out Maria was not their child.
'We were always suspicious and when we got the go-ahead from the local prosecutor to exhume the newborn from a local cemetery, we found no remains, nothing in the casket,' the father, whose wife is fair with blue eyes, told local television.
According to the London-based Minority Rights Group, some 80 percent of Greece's 300,000 Roma are illiterate.
They are already stereotyped by some in Greece and elsewhere as social outcasts, thieves and beggars - and now they fear they will be stigmatized as child traffickers as well.
The case 'doesn't reflect on all of us,' said Babis Dimitriou, president of the local Roma community.
Police have raided dozens of Gypsy settlements across Greece in the last few weeks, including four more camps Monday in Athens and Thessaloniki.
The state-run Athens News Agency reported Sunday that police were investigating hospitals and childcare agencies for possible child trafficking, suspecting a ring operating between Bulgaria and Greece.
'The police are investigating every possible angle,' a spokeswoman at the local Larissa police station told AFP.
In January 2011, police arrested more than a dozen people in the two neighbouring Balkan countries, for the trafficking of newborn babies to Greece.
In that case it was Roma babies who were being trafficked. The ring arranged for pregnant Bulgarian women, primarily of Roma origin, to give birth in Greece with their babies then sold off in illegal adoption procedures.
WAS BEN NEEDHAM SEEN AT THE SAME GIPSY CAMP?
The family of missing Ben Needham revealed how Greek police refused to follow up reported sightings of the boy at the same remote gipsy camp where Maria was discovered.
Disappearance: Ben Needham was 21 months old when he vanished on the Greek island of Kos in 1991
Ben was 21 months old when he vanished on the Greek island of Kos in 1991.
His sister Leighanna said officers told them it was too dangerous to enter the Roma settlements to look for him – despite witnesses claiming they had seen a child there matching his description.
Ben’s grandfather Eddie, 64, tried to search the camps himself but was forced to stop when he was threatened at gunpoint.
Today his mother Kerry Needham, 41, told Radio 4's Today programme: 'It is definitely not a surprise. We have always strongly suspected Ben's abduction was gipsy-related.'
She said it has already been strongly denied by Greek police who told her: 'Gipsies do not steal children - they have enough children of their own, why would they want someones else's child?
She said she would also told: 'It would be impossible to steal a blonde-hair, blue-eyed child within the gipsy encampment. This is proof they are wrong as this girl was turned up with blond hair and blue eyes.
'We are in very close contact with South Yorkshire police and at the moment obviously they are saying there is no connection with Ben's case which is fine, we are not saying these gipsies are the same ones that too Ben, we just now need the Greek police to investigate the gipsy community a lot further,' she told the programme.
'This case has given us fresh hope and maximum publicity and it is just a matter of time,' sje saod.
Miss Needham, 20, who was born after her brother disappeared, said: ‘We as a family have strongly believed for a while that Ben was taken by gipsies for illegal adoptions or child trafficking and the discovery of this little girl shows how important it is to never lose hope.’
She now wants her DNA tested against Maria’s to determine whether the child could be related to Ben.
Ben's father Simon Ward, who wanted the same camp searched, said the case has renewed hopes that his son will be found.
He told the Daily Mirror: “When I first heard I thought ‘Oh my God, yes, they have found her.’ It means this girl’s parents do not have to go through what we have been through.
'But it also confirms this could have happened to Ben. It could be very important for Ben’s case.
'It could throw up all kinds of information, and new leads.'
Five years after Ben disappeared, a local convict called Andonis Bedzios claimed he saw a child matching his description in the care of a well-known gipsy family at the Farsala camp and was told they had ‘got him from Kos’. He gave a statement to police which was never followed up.
A taxi driver also came forward to say he had seen Ben, from Sheffield, in his cab with a member of the same family.
But Haralambos Dimitriou, president of the gipsy settlement where Maria was found, said: ‘It is impossible that the little boy was here. At that time it was just tents here – but I would have known if he was here.’
South Yorkshire Police said 'there appears to be no direct correlation' between this case and the disappearance of Ben Needham.
In a statement they said: 'The case of Ben Needham continues to be investigated by the Greek authorities and South Yorkshire Police continues to support his family.
'No investigation is currently being carried out by the Force in light of this recent case and officers from South Yorkshire Police will only become involved should authorities in Greece require our assistance.'
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