Georgakis filled a canister with gasoline, wrote a letter to his father and gave his fiancée Rosanna his windbreaker telling her to keep it because he would not need it any longer. Around 1:00 a.m. on 19 September 1970, Georgakis drove his Fiat 500 to Matteotti square. According to eyewitness accounts by street cleaners working around the Palazzo Ducale there was a sudden bright flash of light in the area at around 3:00 am. At first they did not realise that the flame was a burning man. Only when they approached closer did they see Georgakis burning and running while ablaze shouting, "Long Live Greece", "Down with the tyrants", "Down with the fascist colonels" and "I did it for my Greece." The street cleaners added that at first Georgakis refused their help and ran away from them when they tried to extinguish the fire. They also said that the smell of burning flesh was something they would never forget and that Georgakis was one in a million. According to an account by his father who went to Italy after the events, Georgakis's body was completely carbonised from the waist down up to a depth of at least three centimetres in his flesh. Georgakis died nine hours after the events in the square at around 12 noon the same day. His last words were: Long Live Free Greece. Reaction of the junta The Greek newspaper To Vima in the January 2009 article "The 'return' of Kostas Georgakis" with the subtitle "Even the remains of the student who sacrificed himself for Democracy caused panic to the dictatorship" by Fotini Tomai, supervisor of the historical and diplomatic archives of the Greek Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The article reports that throughout the crisis in Italy the Greek consulate sent confidential reports to the junta where it raised fears that the death of Georgakis would be compared to the death of Jan Palach (through express diplomatic letter of 20 September 1970 Greek: ΑΠ 67, εξ. επείγον, 20 Σεπτεμβρίου 1970) and could adversely affect Greek tourism while at the same time it raised concerns that Georgakis's grave would be used for anti-junta propaganda and "anti-nation pilgrimage" and "political exploitation". Through a diplomatic letter dated 25 August 1972 (ΑΠ 167/ΑΣ 1727, 25 Αυγούστου 1972) Greek consular authorities in Italy reported to the junta in Athens that an upcoming Italian film about Georgakis would seriously damage the junta