POLICE in Greece are probing blood stains found on the pillow of a missing British scientist who vanished while out jogging amid claims she argued with her boyfriend the night before.
Dr Natalie Christopher, 34, an astrophysicist from London, went missing in Ikaria on Monday morning hours before she and her Cypriot partner were due to fly back to their home in Nicosia.
Police have told The Sun Online that blood stains found on the couple's Natalie's bed sheets have been sent to a laboratory for DNA testing.
According to reports, the scientist's boyfriend said the blotches were the result of a nose bleed.
This comes as a hotel chamber maid allegedly told police she had heard the couple arguing and had seen a sheet on the sofa in their room suggesting they had slept apart.
"I heard a lot of shouting the night before " she told Sigmalive.
Natalie is also the second female scientist to go missing in Greece while out jogging this summer – after an American biologist Dr Suzanne Eaton was allegedly raped and killed in Crete last month.
Dr Christopher's 38-year-old boyfriend reported her missing around noon on Monday when she failed to return from a jog which reportedly began at 8am.
He says he phoned her mobile at 10am, when he woke up and found she was not at the hotel, and she answered telling him she was running in the Ayios Kirikos area.
However, after she failed to show up, he called the cops at 12 noon, police spokesman Theodore Chronopoulos told The Sun Online.
I cannot exclude they were arguing. Testimonies are being taken as part of an inquiry running parallel to the search operation
Mr Chronopoulos said: "Her partner spoke to her when he woke up at 10 AM and discovered she wasn't there.
“They had a conversation and she said she was out jogging.
“At 12 (noon) when she still hadn't come back and when he started to worry, he called police."
According to local media, the Oxford-educated scientist's phone was still on, prompting her worried sister to urge people not to call her to save the battery.
However, Mr Chronopoulos told The Sun Online that there has been no signal on Natalie's phone since 5pm on Monday.
He said: "The mobile phone company confirmed that her phone was on and that it had picked up a signal until about 5pm on Monday.
“Since then there hasn't been a signal."
On the claims that the couple had argued the night before her disappearance, he said: "I cannot exclude they were arguing. Testimonies are being taken as part of an inquiry running parallel to the search operation."
He added that two sniffer dogs had joined the search for the missing Brit today.
The owner of Natalie's hotel Natalie also found blood on the couple's sheets – stains which the police are now probing, Greek media reports.
However the missing Brit's boyfriend says the blood was the result of a nose bleed Natalie had the night before her disappearance, Skai reports.
Natalie’s partner told Protothema News yesterday that she told him she was jogging up a hill in a rocky part of the island.
He says she promised to be careful.
The unnamed man claims she told him: “I can't go fast, I'll be back slowly, don't worry.”
Policemen, firefighters, coast guard officers, volunteers and a naval helicopter equipped with thermal imaging are now taking part in the search operation, with units combing the mountainous area around Kerame.
The owner of the hotel the couple were staying at said police had sealed off the room and that Natalie's partner was staying with him at his house.
I can't go fast, I'll be back slowly, don't worry
The unnamed man told Greek media: “He is a very good lad, he’s from Cyprus. He’s lost it, he has panicked, he cannot believe it."
He described the pair as a "nice little couple" and said there was no signs of problems in the relationship.
Speaking to The Sun Online, Greece's police spokesman Theodoros Chronopoulos said more than 40 officers are currently combing the island.
A specialist police team with technology expertise and equipment able to detect mobile phone signals "in ways that phone companies cannot" had been dispatched to the island yesterday evening.
He said: "They have been up and working since day break. All eventualities, every scenario, is being examined.
"Ikaria, geographically, is not the easiest place to conduct such an investigation. It is full of ravines and rivers and mountains."
Well-placed police sources said the missing scientist's boyfriend "was very unlikely to be considered a suspect."
ROCKY TERRAIN
According to her online profile, Natalie is a researcher for the European University Cyprus in Nicosia and works to "develop our understanding on the evolution of galaxies by fitting models to data collected from telescopes and satellites."
She is an extreme sports enthusiast and was the face of 'Cyprus Girls Can' – a campaign to encourage local women to exercise.
Her disappearance follows the alleged rape and murder of American scientist Suzanne Eaton in Crete.
A local man has apparently confessed to the crime in which sexual assault appeared to have been the motive.
Dr Eaton was found dead in mid July at the bottom of a cave which was used by the Nazis to store weapons during World War II near Cania.
The 59-year-old mother-of-two was originally from California and lived in Germany with her husband, a British scientist.
She vanished on July 2 at some point in the afternoon and was due to attend a conference but failed to show up.
Her family believe she went out for a run, as the only things missing from her hotel room were her running shoes.
Coroner Antonis Papadomanolakis told Greece's ANT1 News that 'something complicated happened' during Eaton's death.
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