You can't make this stuff up! Nikos Georgeadis a/k/a Nikos Sampson: history's most successful crime reporter.

Submitted by Caleb (United States), Sep 8, 2010 at 23:36

Having led the 1974 **coup** that ousted Archbishop Makarios, Nikos Sampson was President of Cyprus for about as long as Lady Jane Grey "The Nine Days Queen" was Queen of England. But some twenty years earlier, still using his birth name of Nikos Georgeadis, he pursued the profession of journalist with astonishing success. While working the crime beat for the **Cyprus Times** in the 1950's, young Nikos Georgeadis always managed to "scoop" the other journalists in covering the murders of British soldiers and Greek Cypriots of "questionable loyalties" on the violence-torn island. He somehow was always first on the scene, usually arriving ahead of the police to file his reports! How did he do it?? What was his secret?? Pretty simple, actually. He was also the murderer--EOKA's top man. Attacking in the dark, from behind, he would dispatch the unlucky victim then calmly report on the crime, "perpetrator unknown", to his newspaper. Young Nikos did this twenty times before the British authorities got wise and arrested him. He was sentenced to life imprisonment but unfortunately amnestied when Cyprus gained its independence. There is a certain macabre humor in this story, but twenty dead men, British and Cypriot, does tend to apoil the joke...

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