ATHENS, Greece — A car repairman who police said killed his mother-in-law and a friend Saturday then commandeered a bus carrying 33 Japanese tourists, leading them on a nearly 10-hour odyssey at gunpoint before releasing them unharmed and surrendering to a TV talk show host.
Distraught because he believed his wife was cheating on him, authorities said Christos Kendiras, 48, used a shotgun shortly after daybreak to kill 77-year-old Georgia Spyrou and Stamatis Taktikos, 44, whom he suspected of being his wife's lover, in the village of Galata, about 125 miles southwest of Athens.
The auto bodyshop repairman then drove to Epidauros, the site of a 4th century B.C. theater that is one of Greece's prime tourist attractions.
There, he set fire to his car and used the blazing wreck and gun to pull over a bus of Japanese tourists who were heading to the theater.
Threatening to kill his hostages, Kendiras took the bus on an all-day trip back and forth along the main highway connecting central and southern Greece. He demanded he talk to popular talk show host Makis Triantafilopoulos, who began following the bus in a car.
Police chief Yannis Georgakopoulos said authorities concluded Triantafilopoulos was the best solution for an end to the crisis.
During the hijacking, Kendiras shot at police vehicles, slightly injuring one officer. Dozens of police cars, helicopters and ambulances followed the bus until Kendiras released the hostages and surrendered.
Police said he frequently threatened the passengers — 23 men and 10 women, including a Japanese tour guide.
Authorities took them to a hotel in Athens afterward. An executive for the Japanese tour operator, Hankyu Express, said in Tokyo that the company was arranging for a psychiatrist to fly in from Paris for them.
"I speak for the government and people of Japan in offering heartfelt thanks to Premier (Costas) Simitis for his utmost efforts as well as to the Greek government and everyone else involved," Japanese Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori said.
Greek police, having learned from two similar bus hijackings in one year, quickly isolated the vehicle from media and all other traffic once the standoff began. They flew in hostage negotiators and psychiatrists.
The government was concerned the hostage crisis might damage Greece's tourism industry in the run-up to the 2004 Olympics, and ordered police to make sure none of the Japanese were injured.
In conversations with the Alpha channel, where Triantafilopoulos works, Kendiras kept calling himself "the strange one."
"He wanted his demands to be heard," Triantafilopoulos said, but did not say what they were. "He said he wanted to kill himself. He said everything a hurt and bitter person can say."
Relatives say Kendiras was an angry man who grew even angrier when his wife, Marina, left him two years ago.
His cousin, Yiannis Tsouros, said Kendiras persuaded his wife to return — but the reconciliation was troubled.
"He is a jealous man. He has shown this, over the years he had been hitting his mother-in-law, his father-in-law, his wife, his child," Tsouros said.
Villagers in Galata claimed he had often been violent toward his wife and 22-year-old son.
"His nickname was 'Paraksenos' (the strange one)," said Andreas Koulis, the local butcher. "That's how everyone knew him. No one knew him by his name."
Triantafilopoulos assured Kendiras his grievances would be aired if he gave up. He agreed to surrender himself at Triantafilopoulos' office in the Athens port of Piraeus.
As he arrived, Kendiras gave his shotgun to bus driver Giorgos Tsakonas, bowed to the hostages — who clapped — and was escorted by officers and Triantafilopoulos to police headquarters.
"He came up, we had a drink and a chat, he told me his problems," Triantafilopoulos said. "We are in the police headquarters together as I promised him."