Vassilis Lymberis was born in Greece in 1945. Unfortunately, little is publicly documented about his early life, including his upbringing, education, or occupation. What is known is that by the age of 27, Lymberis was estranged from his wife, Vasiliki Lymberis, and their relationship had deteriorated significantly. They had two very young children together: Panagiota, a toddler just two-and-a-half years old, and George, who was only one.

The exact motivations behind Lymberis’s horrific crime remain complex and are rooted in personal animosity and emotional breakdown. What is clear is that the act was not one of sudden impulse—it was premeditated and coordinated. Lymberis enlisted the help of three friends to carry out the plan, a disturbing sign that this was not just a crime of passion but a calculated attempt to eliminate his estranged wife, children, and mother-in-law.

Prior to the crime, Lymberis was not known to be a public figure or high-profile criminal. He was an ordinary man and descent. Greece, in the early 1970s, was under the rule of a military junta, and capital punishment was still in practice.

The crime took place in Chalandri, a suburb of Athens, during the night of 4 January 1972 and into the early hours of 5 January. Lymberis, with the assistance of three accomplices, set fire to the home where his estranged wife was living with their two children and her mother.

The victims were:

• Vasiliki Lymberis (24), his estranged wife
• Antigoni Markou (55), his mother-in-law
• Panagiota Lymberis (2½), his daughter
• George Lymberis (1), his son

His accomplices included Pavlos Angelopoulos, a 17-year-old at the time, and two other unnamed friends. The plan was brutal in its execution: the house was deliberately set ablaze while the victims were inside, unable to escape. Antigoni and the two children died instantly in the inferno.

Miraculously, Vasiliki survived the initial blaze, suffering severe burns. She was rushed to the hospital, where she lived until noon the next day, 5 January 1972. Before she died, she managed to provide a statement to police from her hospital bed—crucially identifying her estranged husband as the person responsible. Her testimony sealed the case against Lymberis and brought the full scale of the horror to light.

The case gripped Greece. The notion that a father could murder his own children in such a manner provoked nationwide disgust. The Athens Court of Appeal (Criminal Court) found Lymberis guilty of multiple counts of murder by arson. On 6 May 1972, he was sentenced to four death sentences, one for each life taken. His teenage accomplice, Pavlos Angelopoulos, also received a death sentence. The other two accomplices received lesser sentences.

Lymberis was imprisoned at Halicarnassus Prison (Kriti), where he awaited execution. Despite a final plea for clemency made to the Clemency Council, it was unanimously rejected. On the morning of 25 August 1972, Lymberis was taken to the SEAP firing range at Two Aorakia, in Heraklion, Crete. He was executed by a 12-man firing squad, with only six rifles containing live ammunition, a common method to diffuse personal guilt among the executioners. Hours before his death, he wrote a final letter to his mother.

Simultaneously, Angelopoulos was scheduled for execution in Corfu. However, due to his young age at the time of the crime, his clemency request was granted by a narrow 4–3 vote, though the final approval from the ruling dictator Papadopoulos was not ratified. His sentence was later commuted to life imprisonment in 1975. After serving over 20 years in prison, Angelopoulos was eventually pardoned and released in the mid-1990s.