Greek authorities charged the ex-wife of a UC Berkeley economics professor in an alleged scheme to gun him down as he walked to visit their twin children, a media outlet in Greece reported this week.
Investigators also arrested at least four men — among them the ex-wife’s new companion — related to the July 4 fatal shooting of Przemyslaw Jeziorski, a beloved professor who had taught at Cal since 2018, according to To Vima, a Greek newspaper. Together, the authorities say, they conspired to carry out the killing in Athens’ Aghia Paraskevi district, all allegedly at the behest of Jeziorski’s ex-wife.
Jeziorski’s ex-wife was identified by the San Francisco Chronicle as Nadia Michelidaki.
The killing happened around 4:15 p.m. on July 4, when a masked gunman “approached the victim on foot and opened fire from close range,” according to CNN, which cited local police. Jeziorski was shot in the neck and chest, and investigators found seven bullet casings, the outlet reported. He died at the scene.
Authorities in Greece told To Vima that three men — two Albanian nationals and a Bulgarian man — drove Michelidaki’s companion to the scene of the shooting, and gave him the gun to carry it out. The ex-wife’s companion appears to have lived in Greece, the weekly newspaper reported.
At the time of the killing, Jeziorski, 43, had been embroiled in a custody battle with Michelidaki, according to the Polish news site TVP World.
The killing happened a day after Jeziorski attended a custody court hearing, CNN reported. At the time, Jeziorski had been walking to his ex-wife’s home to visit their two children, according to To Vima.
Days after the killing, Jeziorski scrambled to get enough money to bring his remains back to Poland, where he was born and raised, according to CNN.
“Our family is heartbroken, and we are doing everything we can to ensure that justice is served,” the professor’s brother wrote in an online fundraising page, the cable channel reported. The family also wanted to hire attorneys in Greece “to pursue legal action and support ongoing investigations,” the outlet said.
Jeziorski held a Ph.D. in economics from the Stanford Graduate School of Business and master’s degrees in mathematics and economics from the University of Arizona. He also held a bachelor’s of arts in economics from the Warsaw School of Economics.
He also previously worked as an assistant professor of economics at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore in 2010 and 2011.