Police: American Scientist was Raped, Killed in Crete

A man has confessed to abducting, raping and killing an American scientist who was in Crete for an academic conference, The Washington Post reported, citing Greek authorities. Suzanne Eaton was reported missing July 4 and her body was found July 8 in a cave used as a shelter during World War II. Greek police said that the suspect, a 27-year-old Crete resident, confessed to hitting Eaton twice with his car and bringing her, unconscious, to the abandoned shelter, where he raped her. Police said the cause of death was suffocation.

Eaton, a 59-year-old California native and mother of two, led a research group at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics in Dresden, Germany, and was a professor at Technische Universität Dresden. "We are devastated by this senseless tragedy," the Max Planck Institute said in a statement.