Crete police say a man has confessed to the rape and murder of developmental biologist Suzanne Eaton, according to the New York Times.
Eaton, a group leader at the Max Planck Institute for Cell Biology and Genetics, was attending a conference on insect hormones at the Orthodox Academy of Crete when she disappeared while out on a run, as Nature News reported last week. CNN reported that her body was then found a few days later in a former World War II bunker, and the coroner told the Associated Press that he suspected foul play.
In his confession, the 27-year-old unnamed suspect told police he saw Eaton on her run, hit her twice with his car, and transported her in his trunk to the bunker where raped her and left her in a ventilation shaft that he then re-sealed, the Times reports.
On a tribute page at the Max Planck website, colleagues call Eaton passionate, curious, and enthusiastic and say she "loved the big, hard questions in science."
"My mother was a remarkable woman," her son, Max, also writes there. "She managed to live a life with few regrets, balancing out her personal life with her career."