A Romanian cop was recently sentenced to almost 16 years in jail for having murdered his wife, a lawyer who disappeared seven years ago and whose body was never found. The lengthy trial and the mysterious disappearance was a popular topic for Romanian media, and the case was named Elodia, after the name of the missing woman.

The recent court order of 15 years and eight months in jail for former cop Cristian Cioaca is lower than the previous court order, of 22 years. The prosecutors had asked for the maximum sentence, of 25 years in jail. The ruling is final and Cioaca will serve time for having premeditatedly killed his wife seven years ago, and having cut up and hid her body. The man, who was under preventive house arrest, was already taken to the Colibasi prison. He will also have to pay EUR 380,000 in damages to his wife’s family, and to his own son, for whose custody the family is currently fighting a legal battle.

Just before the crime, Cioaca and his wife Elodia Ghinescu, a lawyer from Brasov, were fighting about alleged affairs and a potential divorce. On the night between August 29 and 30 in 2007, while fighting in their bedroom, the man ended up killing her. Despite having their two-year old son in the same apartment, the man placed and cut up his wife’s body in the bathtub, then transported it into his car, and eventually hid it. Prosecutors never found the woman’s body, which is why Cioaca was only arrested and prosecuted for the murder five years later.

The Criminal Police eventually found evidence of the murder in the couple’s apartment, including under a freshly applied layer of painting on the walls. Several objects belonging to the murderer and to his wife were also found in a ravine near Rasnov, in Brasov county.

Cristian Cioaca and his wife Elodia have been for several years at the center of a media debate started by the now closed television channel OTV, owned by media mogul Dan Diaconescu. In its search for sensational and audiences, OTV created a new TV genre, by splitting the case into daily episodes, back when the rest of the local media was not yet covering the lawyer’s mysterious disappearance. Later on, most Romanian media tackled the story, which ended up being one of the most publicized murder case in Romania.

editor@romania-insider.com