Investigators taking a fresh look at the deaths of a 54-year-old woman and her 26-year-old son in Aigio are now weighing a possibility that would upend the case: that no one else was involved in their deaths, and that the son was killed before the mother took her own life.

The two were found dead inside their home in Aigio, a town in the northern Peloponnese near Patras. The woman’s 65-year-old Italian partner has been in custody since, charged with killing both. He has denied any part in the deaths from the start, telling authorities that his partner may have shot her son with a Flobert, a low-powered small-caliber gun, and then stabbed herself repeatedly.

Authorities reviewing the case file and the autopsy findings now say they cannot state with any certainty that a third person was involved in the two deaths. Several details in the autopsy photographs, they say, point instead to the scenario of murder- suicide: the son slain, the mother taking her own life.

What the autopsy photographs show

Two findings are driving the shift. The first concerns a wound to the mother’s back that figured in early accounts of the case. It does not show up in the autopsy photographs, investigators say.

The second concerns cuts on the woman’s wrist. Authorities now describe them as shallow, the kind seen in other suicides, where a person makes tentative cuts, often called hesitation wounds, before going further.

Questions over the Patras examiner

The forensic medical examiner who first recorded the wound to the mother’s back is now himself under scrutiny. He headed the forensic service in Patras, which carried out the autopsies.

He had allegedly previously been accused in a serious criminal case, and disciplinary proceedings were opened against him, according to the report. The Ministry of Justice later set those proceedings aside, and he stayed on as head of the Patras service. Authorities are now looking into whether his work on the Aigio deaths was thorough.

Earlier in the investigation, tests turned up sedatives and cannabis in the defendant’s system, which his lawyers say backs his account that he was in a stupor and unaware of his surroundings that night. Authorities had also been checking whether sedatives or psychiatric medication were kept in the house, and if so who obtained them.

For now, the Italian remains in custody, charged with both killings, and investigators are careful to say that nothing is settled. As it stands, they say, there is no certainty about whether anyone else played any part in the deaths of the mother and her son.