‘She made me afraid': Slain UC Berkeley professor sought restraining order against ex-wife

San Francisco Chronicle​

4 days ago

Two months before Przemyslaw Jeziorski was shot to death in Greece outside his ex-wife's home, the UC Berkeley professor sought a restraining order against her, saying he feared for his life.
Jeziorski, 43, sought the court order amid a child custody and property battle with ex-wife Nadia Michelidaki, 43, accusing her of threats and extortion attempts, and her boyfriend of assaulting him twice during visits to her suburban Athens home to see his children.
The request for a restraining order, filed in Alameda County Superior Court in May, detailed increasingly hostile behavior from Jeziorski's ex-wife and her boyfriend that made Jeziorski worry about what more they might do to him.
Jeziorski was killed on July 4 as he was walking to Michelidaki's home to see his children. Earlier this week, Greek police arrested Michelidaki, her partner and three others, charging them with Jeziorski's killing.
In an interview with the Chronicle, Michelidaki's attorney, Alexandros Pasiatas, said his client was not involved in Jeziorski's killing.
Jeziorski and Michelidaki had visited a child psychologist and come to an agreement on their children's custody and summer plans, he said. Michelidaki had been 'very, very happy' with the agreement, he said, adding that it 'wouldn't make sense' for her to then have her partner kill Jeziorski half an hour later.
Michelidaki was in police custody as of Thursday and will remain there until a hearing on July 21, when a judge will decide whether Michelidaki should remain in jail pending trial. Her children are currently under the care of the state, Pasiatas said.
Jeziorski and Michelidaki married in 2014. Jeziorski filed for divorce in fall 2021, citing irreconcilable differences, and their marriage was dissolved in 2024, although bitter divorce proceedings continued as the couple fought over child custody and shared property. Jeziorski and Michelidaki negotiated an agreement where Jeziorski could take his children on vacation in July every year.
In the 12-page restraining order request, Jeziorski accused Michelidaki of a raft of abusive behavior, such as sabotaging their mutual business, attempting to damage his professional reputation and withholding their children from him.
He said he was assaulted twice by Michelidaki's partner, Christos Dounias, when he visited her home to drop off or pick up his children. During the first incident, on May 1, 2024, he said Dounias knocked his phone out of his hand during one exchange as he was on a phone call with his brother.
Later that day, when he returned to the home to drop his children off, he said, Dounias came down to pick up the kids.
'I told him that since he had assaulted me, I was not comfortable leaving the kids with him for fear of their safety,' Jeziorski wrote in support of his request for a restraining order. He threatened to report Dounias for kidnapping if he took the children.
At that point, he said, Dounias charged out of the home and began pushing and kicking him.
Jeziorski wrote that he believed his ex-wife 'repeatedly' had Dounias pick up the children instead of appearing herself, which he viewed as a tactic to intimidate him.
'She made me afraid of my life by having her partner, who is hostile and aggressive towards me, (present) during the visitation exchange, despite my asking her not to do so,' he wrote.
After the May 2024 incident, authorities charged Dounias with assault, Jeziorski said.
Jeziorski went on to accuse Michelidaki of violating their custody agreement and refusing to renew their children's passports, 'which prevents me from taking them to see their grandparents. … Their grandfather is very advanced in age and I want my children to see them before he dies.'
In his request for a restraining order, he also detailed several other incidents. In one, in early 2025, he said Michelidaki attempted to extort money from him by sending him messages on Slack accusing him of failing to give her co-authorship on research papers, threatening to 'contact my colleagues and the dean of my department if I did not pay her money.'
'Any small accusation of plagiarism will absolutely destroy my credibility and station in the academic community,' he said, calling the allegations 'a complete lie and slander,' and saying that many of the papers she wanted credit for were written years before the two met.
He also said Michelidaki threatened to call police when he held a graduation party in early May at a Berkeley short-term rental property he and she co-owned.
Jeziorski wrote that he believed Michelidaki was trying to 'humiliate me socially in order to control me' and their finances, and to get him to drop charges against her current partner.
He went on to accuse Michelidaki of taking money out of their joint real estate accounts, actions that he said caused 'chaos' and made him worry she might damage his finances or create debts, and asked for sole control of the account and other business accounts.
In the document, Jeziorski asked a judge to order Michelidaki to cease communications with him, to stop making defamatory statements about him and to stop contacting his professional colleagues.
Court documents detail other aspects of the deterioration of Jeziorski and Michelidaki's relationship, including Jeziorski's allegation that Michelidaki was attempting to withhold their children from him and her attempts at tarnishing his reputation as an academic.
This summer, Jeziorski planned to take his children to Poland, where they traveled annually to visit their grandparents, and the U.S. for a trip to Disneyland.
In May, Jeziorski emailed Michelidaki, requesting she take their children to passport renewal appointments at the U.S. Embassy in Athens for their upcoming vacation with him.
Michelidaki responded, 'Take them to the one in Paris. And what about your 'dying father'? Don't care to visit him anymore or he quit dying?'
'We don't need to talk this way. My father is not well,' Jeziorski wrote.
Court documents also show that Jeziorski felt Michelidaki was threatening his career as a tenured professor of marketing at the Haas School of Business.
Jeziorski said that In April, Michelidaki accused him of plagiarism in his research by failing to cite her as a co-author in 'every publication that gave (him) tenure position,' court documents show.
'Adding my name to the Airbnb reviews paper is not acceptable form of attribution. I want my name removed from this embarrassing paper and added to the papers I received in similarly embarrassing state and turned into top journal publications. But seriously remove my name from this trash today,' Michelidaki wrote to Jeziorski.
Jeziorski said Michelidaki played no role in writing these papers; she 'never meaningfully contributed to the research beyond scanning a page or two for commas and grammar errors,' Jeziorski said in the court documents.
Concurrent with Michelidaki's request for co-authorship, he said she also messaged Jeziorski on Slack demanding more child support.
Jeziorski wrote to the court that the two negotiated he would pay 30,000 euros (more than $34,000 in U.S. funds today) per year in child support, in addition to paying for their children's private school tuition.
'Your child support is now 120k per year,' Michelidaki messaged, according to the court documents.
'If you would like to change the mediated agreement please contact my lawyer,' Jeziorski responded. 'I do not want to talk about it in the work slack channel. Also, please do not contact me about extra money demands or with threats of lawsuits of any kind.' Michelidaki responded, 'search up the term threats as you don't know how to use it.'
She then threatened to report Jeziorski for plagiarism again to his senior colleague in the marketing department of Haas, 'I'll get paid for my work one way or another. I'll write a book too. I have so many plans for this year!!!'
'Although I know her threats are baseless, I am still intimidated by her actions,' Jeziorski wrote to the court. 'Her baseless allegations will harm my economic prospects for employment and completely damage my reputation in the intellectual community, regardless of their truth.'
Court documents show Michelidaki threatened to call police on Jeziorski.
As a part of Jeziorski's responsibilities as a tenured professor at Haas, he threw a graduation reception this spring for recent graduates at an Airbnb rental property he co-owned with Michelidaki in Berkeley.
Jeziorski said he independently rented the property on Airbnb for the event.
'I know you are at the property,' Michelidaki wrote in an email. 'Do you really want to deal with the police during the party with your students?'