A domestic carer and her drug-addict boyfriend have been arrested on suspicion of mounting a central Athens burglary that led to the death of one of the woman’s elderly employers, police said yesterday.

Officers said the 36-year-old foreign national and her 27-year-old Greek boyfriend had confessed to the January 21 murder of pensioner Koula Samba, 79, in the Patissia flat she shared with her elderly husband. The suspects’ names were not made public.

Samba died of suffocation after being tied up and gagged when she woke up during the burglary, in which 1,500 euros and a gold watch were stolen from a safe in the couple’s bedroom. Police said the female suspect had started work as a live-in domestic helper in the flat 10 days before the break-in, and let her boyfriend into the flat when the pensioners were asleep.