Greeks have been left reeling after the husband of a British-born student confessed and was charged with her murder, a crime he had previously blamed on a robbery.
In a dramatic twist to a case that has gripped the country since Caroline Crouch was strangled next to her baby daughter, investigators announced late on Thursday that Babis Anagnostopoulos had admitted to the murder.
“The culprit is her 33-year-old husband who has confessed to the act,” the Greek police tweeted.
Anagnostopoulos, who appeared in court on Friday handcuffed and wearing a bulletproof vest, was charged with intentional homicide and abuse of an animal, after the family dog was also found killed. Crouch, who had met the man she would go on to marry as a teenager on the Greek island of Alonissos where her parents have long lived, was 20.
This article is more than 1 year old
Greek husband confesses to murder of British woman
This article is more than 1 year old
Babis Anagnostopoulos had claimed robbers killed Caroline Crouch, 20, who was found dead next to her baby
Babis Anagnostopoulos and Caroline Crouch.
Babis Anagnostopoulos and Caroline Crouch. Photograph: Athena Pictures
Helena Smith in Athens
Fri 18 Jun 2021 17.11 BST
Greeks have been left reeling after the husband of a British-born student confessed and was charged with her murder, a crime he had previously blamed on a robbery.
In a dramatic twist to a case that has gripped the country since Caroline Crouch was strangled next to her baby daughter, investigators announced late on Thursday that Babis Anagnostopoulos had admitted to the murder.
“The culprit is her 33-year-old husband who has confessed to the act,” the Greek police tweeted.
Anagnostopoulos, who appeared in court on Friday handcuffed and wearing a bulletproof vest, was charged with intentional homicide and abuse of an animal, after the family dog was also found killed. Crouch, who had met the man she would go on to marry as a teenager on the Greek island of Alonissos where her parents have long lived, was 20.
Initially the helicopter pilot had blamed his wife’s death on ruthless “foreign” robbers who had broken into the couple’s suburban Athens home, a version of events he had maintained for more than five weeks. He claimed he had been blindfolded and tied to a bed, drifting in and out of consciousness as he watched the crime unfold.
“Everything was staged for the crime scene to look like the scene of a robbery,” Costas Hassiotis, the director of the greater Athens homicide division, told reporters, adding that the suspect had tied his own hands and those of his dead wife.
Speaking outside court, Vassilis Spyrou, Anagnostopoulos’s lawyer, confirmed that his client had confessed to the crime, adding that he had expressed remorse for his actions.
“He’s in a very bad psychological state,” Spyrou had earlier told Alpha TV. “He knows what he has done, he has admitted to the crime.”
Nikos Rigas, the deputy chairman of the police officers’ association of Athens, told state TV that examination of mobile devices, a smartwatch, and cameras had established a timeline that revealed inconsistencies in the pilot’s account.
“(The suspect) tried to create a crime scene environment that looked convincing: the dog was killed, and his baby was placed next to the body of the murdered mother,” Rigas said.
Anagnostopoulos, who was in Alonissos attending a memorial service for Crouch at which he was photographed hugging the victim’s mother, was arrested after being flown to the Greek capital on a police helicopter on Thursday. When police initially picked him up he was told a suspect had been identified, but not that it was him.
It was not the first time he had been called to the police headquarters to give testimony. But this time the police had evidence – in the form of data gleaned from Caroline’s smartwatch and the pilot’s mobile phone – that Anagnostopoulos had killed his wife. A pulse monitor on the watch showed she was dead at a time before he claimed the raid had taken place, while a fitness app on his phone proved he was moving around the house at the time he said he had been blindfolded and tied up.
In both cases, the findings conflicted with the timeline of events the professional pilot had previously given. A memory card removed at 1.20am from the security camera of the couple’s home, several hours before 4.30am when he claimed the thieves had broken in, provided further evidence.
Presented with the new data, Anagnostopoulos admitted to the murder, telling the detectives their relationship had grown increasingly stormy and he had killed Crouch in a fit of rage after she had threatened to leave him, police said.
“I had to appear persuasive and so I strangled the dog too,” he was reported as saying in extracts of testimony released by police to the Greek media.
The seven-month-old puppy was hanged from a banister in the couple’s home.
Few crimes in living memory have outraged Greeks so deeply and for 37 days the pilot had appeared distraught, telling police he had “begged for their lives” as the thieves pointed a pistol at Lydia, his daughter’s temple, and telling the press he hoped no family had to experience the same ordeal. “They were so happy, so in love,” Alonissos’ mayor Petros Vafinis told the Guardian at the time. “The shock in our little community is immense.”
Athens’ citizens protection minister, Michalis Chrysohoidis, said within hours of the 11 May murder being made public: “We rarely encounter such brutality in Greece, both in Greek society and in crime.”
In a rare step, the government declared a €300,000 reward for information that might lead to the capture of the culprits.
Images of Anagnostopoulos attending his wife’s funeral cradling their 11-month-old baby resonated far and wide.
So, too, did his heartrending eulogy given by Caroline’s graveside. “I am lucky that I met you, very lucky that you loved me and even more lucky that you are the mother of my child,” he had said. “Lydia will grow up not remembering her wonderful mother, but Caroline who was the joy of life will always be near me, through Lydia.”
His confession was quick to elicit rage. Overnight Greeks flooded social media with messages of condemnation and calls for justice, while the mainstream media expressed shock not only at the hypocrisy of “this accomplished actor” but the willingness of so many, including senior Greek justice officials, to go along with his story that hardened “Albanian and Georgian” criminals were to blame for the murder.
“The pandemic of sympathy for the professional, respected father who, tied up, saw his young wife being murdered in front of his child has collapsed like a tower of cards,” the leftwing newspaper Efsyn wrote in an editorial. “Along with it the far-right propaganda about foreign thieves committing heinous crimes has collapsed too.”
On Friday, the case was being likened to that of Oscar Pistorius, the South African sprinter who was convicted in 2015 of fatally shooting his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp, in his Pretoria home.
“We have experienced the Greek version of the Pistorius case, it has almost the same characteristics,” Giorgos Kalliakmanis, who heads the union of police employees in west Attica told state-run TV.
From the outset, he said, investigators had suspected the pilot but were flummoxed by the lack of DNA, or other evidence, that pointed to his culpability.
“The Pistorius crime shocked people across the world. And this crime has caused ripples beyond the Greek borders,” he said, adding that investigators had followed a “step-by-step” approach to ensure they would obtain the proof that would allow them to ensnare the perpetrator.
