THIRD UPDATE: Love Letters to the "Murder, He Wrote" Husband

 

Jeff–Saturday

 

I had planned to be back on Mykonos by now, posting photos showing preparations for the onslaught of summer.  But a horrid stomach bug sidelined my plans and delayed my departure until next week.  That left me to search for a topic to discuss.  I found it in a newspaper article prominently featured in Greek and UK newspapers.  

 

It’s the latest development in a story I first covered twenty-three months ago reporting on a murder so horrendous that it shook the Greek people to the core. [See, Murder, He Wrote for an extensive description of events.] So much so, that Greek National TV interrupted coverage of the Euro football championships to broadcast details of the confession.

 

It involved a 20-year-old British-Greek wife and mother, Caroline Crouch, murdered on May 11, 2021 in the presence of her pilot/flight instructor husband, Babis Anagnostopoulos, and 11-month-old baby.  The original story, as told by the husband, placed the blame on a band of brutal home invasion thieves claimed to have entered their suburban Athens home at random.  He accused them of being Eastern European foreigners—so ruthless that they also strangled the couple’s dog.  The crime spread fear across the nation over the potential risk to each family’s safety in its own home.

 

On June 16, 2021, after eight hours of police questioning, Husband confessed to the murder, claiming his wife told him that she was planning to leave him and take their baby with her before he “blurred” and killed her. In other words, a crime of passion, not premeditated.

Thirteen months ago, I updated that original post [See, UPDATE: Murder, He Wrote], describing in detail a new twist asserted by Husband on the verge of trial.  He now claimed to have acted “in a fit of rage” over Caroline’s “mistreatment” of their baby daughter and that he’d acted to protect the baby. As the press reported at the time, Husband was desperate to avoid the life sentence and minimum twenty-year imprisonment imposed for premeditated murder. Not to mention an additional likely ten-year sentence for killing their dog.

Seven months ago, I reported that a mixed court of jurors and judges didn’t buy it, and unanimously found husband guilty of the premeditated murder of his wife and strangulation of their dog. [See, SECOND UPDATE, Murder, He Wrote]

 

On June 16, 2022, the court sentenced Husband to the toughest penalty possible under Greek law: a life sentence for the premeditated murder of his wife, a jail term of 11 years and six months for the brutal killing of the family’s pet dog, and a fine of €21,000.

 

Not surprisingly, Husband appealed the sentence and is attempting to paint himself as a model prisoner, dedicated to helping his fellow inmates, and having personally intervened to end dangerous interactions among inmates.

 

At the time I wrote, “Why do I sense this story is not over?”

 

It isn’t.

 

Headlines in Greek and UK papers report Husband is receiving “bags of love letters” from Greek women. Here are excerpts on that story as reported in Greek City Times.

Prison officers are having to sort "bags" of letters for Babis at the high-security jail in Malandrino.

“We read, as is protocol, all the mail and have been left astounded,” one guard speaking on condition of anonymity told The Sun Online.

“They are written by women, Greek women, who say they are in love with him.

"They believe he is innocent, that Crouch’s murder wasn’t premeditated and everything happened in the heat of the moment.”

It came as Anagnostopoulos was brought to the appeal court today [April 24, 2023] in handcuffs as he tried to get his sentence reduced - before the case was adjourned.

He is attempting to argue there were "mitigating circumstances" around the brutal murder.

His lawyer, Alexandros Papaioannidis, has previously argued his client is a “model prisoner” who “reads a lot and works in the prison canteen” and should not be punished for a crime “that was never premeditated."

….

The appeals hearing which is expected to last months, was unexpectedly cut short on Monday.

Anagnostopoulos told the court that Papaioannidis, his lawyer, couldn’t represent him because he had been “taken ill and is in hospital.”

The trial was adjourned until May 8.

That’s on Monday.  Stay tuned.

 

––Jeff

 

THIRD UPDATE: Murder He Wrote

Jeff––Saturday

 

Nineteen months ago, I first reported on a murder so horrendous that it shook the Greek people to the core. [See, Murder, He Wrote for an extensive description of events.] So much so, that Greek National TV interrupted coverage of the Euro football championships to broadcast details of the confession.

 

It involved a 20-year-old British-Greek wife and mother, Caroline Crouch, murdered on May 11, 2021 in the presence of her pilot/flight instructor husband, Babis Anagnostopoulos, and 11-month-old baby.  The original story, as told by the husband, placed the blame on a band of brutal home invasion thieves claimed to have entered their suburban Athens home at random.  He accused them of being Eastern European foreigners—so ruthless that they also strangled the couple’s dog.  The crime spread fear across the nation over the potential risk to each family’s safety in its own home.

 

On June 16, 2021, after eight hours of police questioning, Husband confessed to the murder, claiming his wife told him that she was planning to leave him and take their baby with her before he “blurred” and killed her. In other words, a crime of passion, not premeditated.

Nine months ago, in an update to my original post, [See, UPDATE: Murder, He Wrote] I described in detail a new twist asserted by Husband on the verge of trial.  He now claimed to have acted “in a fit of rage” over Caroline’s “mistreatment” of their baby daughter and that he’d acted to protect the baby. [Husband’s subsequent changed trial strategy, the outcome of the trial, and ironic twists brought on by his wild story were described three months ago in Second Update: Murder He Wrote.]

The press reported Husband as desperate to avoid the life sentence and minimum twenty-year imprisonment imposed for premeditated murder. Not to mention an additional likely ten-year sentence for killing their dog.

In my mind, I saw a far more compelling reason behind Husband’s desperation to keep secret his true motive for killing his wife. I alluded to what I saw as his motive in this somewhat opaque reference to a popular TV series:

“Frankly, I wouldn’t be surprised to see another shoe drop—or, for you Breaking Bad fans, make that a pair of sneakers laced together and hanging from a power line.  But that’s for another update.

The time for that update is now: Husband was a helicopter pilot flying in and out of Mykonos (which I’d heard from locals), and from that I surmised he’d killed his wife out of some fear she’d expose him as a drug smuggler and in so doing put his own life at risk to those who paid him to transport their drugs.

I did not write that back then, because it was based on pure conjecture on my part…but that no longer is so.  Here is the story as reported earlier this month by a colleague, Helena Smith, in The Guardian, in which she describes the circumstances surrounding a letter written in prison by Husband to his wife’s father admitting he murdered her because “he got involved in drug smuggling.”

What follows is the article from The Guardian:

The father of Caroline Crouch, the British woman who was murdered by her Greek helicopter pilot husband as she lay asleep in their Athens home, has claimed his daughter died because her self-confessed killer got involved in drug smuggling.

Speaking publicly for the first time, David Crouch, 79, said his incarcerated son-in law, Babis Anagnostopoulos, had gone so far as to give a detailed account of the events that led to Caroline’s death in a typewritten letter.

“I have a letter from Babis telling me what happened,” he told the local TV station ANT1.

The revelations are the latest twist in a crime that has long gripped Greece

For nearly six weeks after the killing in May 2021, Anagnostopoulos maintained that burglars had broken into the couple’s suburban maisonette, used duct tape to tie them up, fatally smothered the 19-year-old Briton and hanged her beloved puppy from the villa’s bannister. It was only when confronted by inconsistencies in his version of events that he finally confessed.

Before being found guilty of premeditated murder and sentenced to 26 years in prison, Anagnostopoulos told a Greek court that he had killed his wife in a “blurred state of mind” after a heated late-night row.

 

The killing, described by a state coroner as a prolonged and agonising death, was among dozens of femicides in Greece that year.

 

David Crouch, a retired gas and oil executive who lives on the island of Alonissos in the Greek Sporades, alleged it was the helicopter pilot’s involvement in drug running that was behind his daughter’s death.

“I’ll tell you why he murdered Caroline in front of his child … he was involved with a drugger’s gang,” he said. “There was a restaurant that Caroline and Babis used to go to, and the man there who owned the restaurant was involved in drugs. He spoke to Babis and he told him that the gang he was involved in needed a helicopter pilot and it was one job for which he’d be paid a lot of money … Babis was very stupid. Instead of keeping his mouth shut, he told Caroline.”

The Briton reacted by threatening to walk out on him immediately, her father claimed. He said the gang told Anagnostopoulos that he would have to get rid of his wife.

“And so in the end he killed her. That was the only reason he killed her, because he thought if he didn’t, both he and Caroline would be killed by the drug gang,” Crouch said.

The revelations come less than two weeks before a custody battle over their daughter Lydia’s guardianship resumes in a Greek court. Anagnostopoulos’s schoolteacher mother and civil engineer father have appealed against a decision giving the Crouch family exclusive care of the child.

Anagnostopoulos, 35, who is being held in a high-security prison in central Greece, is also seeking to overturn his sentence before an appellate court next month.

When asked for a response to the allegations, Anagnostopoulos’s lawyer, Alexandros Papaioannidis, said Crouch had been motivated by the upcoming hearings. “They were never included in the case file and do not reflect reality,” he said Thursday. “Where is the letter? The father has his own reasons to make such claims.”

--Helena Smith

I concluded my second update with this line: Stay tuned for further plot developments…

I repeat that here, for as reported in another publication discussing the letter, The Greek City Times, “He [Husband] is currently being held in Korydallos Prison, which is known as the toughest jail in Greece, and is said to be unpopular among other inmates.”

––Jeff

SECOND UPDATE: Murder, He Wrote

 

Jeff–Saturday

 

Fifteen months ago, I reported on a murder so horrendous that it shook the Greek people to the core. [See, Murder, He Wrote for an extensive description of events.] So much so, that Greek National TV interrupted coverage of the Euro football championships to broadcast details of the confession.

 

 

It involved a 20-year-old British-Greek wife and mother, Caroline Crouch, murdered on May 11, 2021 in the presence of her pilot/flight instructor husband, Babis Anagnostopoulos, and 11-month-old baby.  The original story, as told by the husband, placed the blame on a band of brutal home invasion thieves claimed to have entered their suburban Athens home at random.  He accused them of being Eastern European foreigners—so ruthless that they also strangled the couple’s dog.  The crime spread fear across the nation over the potential risk to each family’s safety in its own home.

 

On June 16, 2021, after eight hours of police questioning, Husband confessed to the murder, claiming his wife told him that she was planning to leave him and take their baby with her before he “blurred” and killed her. In other words, a crime of passion, not premeditated.

At the time I wrote, “I’m sure [the story] will make its way into any number of fiction and non-fiction novels, for it’s a tragedy steeped in outrageous deception, domestic violence, and endemic prejudice.  It’s also a tale of sharp police work, with an ironic final twist.”

Five months ago, in an update to my original post, [See, UPDATE: Murder, He Wrote] I described in detail a new twist asserted by Husband on the verge of trial.  He now claimed to have acted “in a fit of rage” over Caroline’s “mistreatment” of their baby daughter and that he’d acted to protect the baby. As the press reported at the time, Husband was desperate to avoid the life sentence and minimum twenty-year imprisonment imposed for premeditated murder. Not to mention an additional likely ten-year sentence for killing their dog.

I concluded that update with this line: Stay tuned for further plot developments…

Well, those developments have come to pass.  They’ve been reported in a media feeding frenzy that overlaps so much in coverage, including translations, that the best I can offer is a fair representation of the participants’ quotes, as culled from BBC, Daily Mail, Guardian, Greek City Times, Greek Reporter, and the Sun, but the substance is all here. 

As described in Greek City Times, “In court on Wednesday [May 11, 2022], the killer recounted how he had met his wife when he was in his late twenties, and she was just fifteen. The two began a sexual relationship when Crouch was just sixteen.

“‘She is the rarest person I have ever met in my life. A brilliant woman. At 16 you could speak with her about anything. Her personality was lovely. She filled anyone with love,’ he stated.

“If I could turn back time, I’d choose Caroline again.”

All of that was offered as part of Husband’s plea to the court for mercy, hoping for a finding of no premeditation. This time, though, he dropped his “protecting the baby” contention in favor of a return to his claimed “heat of the moment” reaction to Caroline telling him she wanted to leave him and take their child with her.

Bottom line: A mixed court of jurors and judges didn’t buy it, and unanimously found husband guilty of the premeditated murder of his wife and strangulation of their dog. 

 

On June 16, 2022, the court sentenced Husband to the toughest penalty possible under Greek law: a life sentence for the premeditated murder of his wife, a jail term of 11 years and six months for the brutal killing of the family’s pet dog, and a fine of €21,000.

 

Not surprisingly, Husband has appealed the sentence and is attempting to paint himself as a model prisoner, dedicated to helping his fellow inmates, and having personally intervened to end dangerous interactions among inmates.

 

However, not all his fellow inmates would agree.

 

Remember those unidentified “foreigners” husband originally had blamed for the murder of his wife? 

 

Let’s just say, as the adage goes, Karma is a bitch!

According to the Daily Mail, three days after Caroline’s murder a Georgian man was arrested up by the border of Greece and Bulgaria.

The Georgian matched a photofit of one the burglars Husband had given investigators.  Allegedly, he was tied to a chair and beaten for four days by Greek homicide police.

Following his arrest, the Georgian was paraded in front of the court in Athens by triumphant police who said he was the prime suspect.

The Georgian told Georgian media: “I was tied up for four days and beaten while they told me to confess to this girl's murder.

“I did not know what was happening, I had never even heard of this girl. They would take turns beating me very hard, my head was spinning, and I had a concussion.

“When one got tired, the other would then start to beat me. All they would say was 'Tell us how did you kill her, how did you get in the house, how did you get out of there?”

Ultimately, he was released, after being charged with an unconnected robbery.

Upon Husband’s conviction, three officers from the Athens homicide squad were demoted by reason of the treatment of the Georgian man while in custody.

Husband, though, faces far more serious consequences by reason of his part in the treatment of the Georgian.  As described in this Daily Mail headline:

 

“Greek pilot who murdered his British wife, 20, is moved to a tougher prison as it emerges he was previously attacked by inmate 'wanting to kill him' in revenge after his friend was wrongly arrested during investigation.”

Husband spent a year in Athens’ high-security, notoriously tough Korydallos prison awaiting trial. While there, he was attacked by a Georgian inmate, who the guards were able to stop before he did harm to Husband.  According to the inmate, he’d come from another prison, and been looking for Husband because he wanted to kill him in retaliation for how his fellow Georgian­–who’d been wrongfully arrested for Husband’s crime–had been treated by the police.

According to Husband’s lawyer, “The attack happened in the wing where my client was in custody and there have been other attempts to attack him. He is scared but, at the moment, he is fine.’`             

Husband has since been moved 250 miles away from Athens to another notorious prison, Malandrino, and he is not happy about his transfer.

He’s complained that the location makes it much harder for his family to visit him and it will be very difficult if not impossible for him to see his daughter.

Yep, that’s one of his arguments. Sort of like the old dark joke about the father who brutally killed his wife looking to avoiding the death penalty by claiming his execution would leave his children orphans.   

But, as you may have guessed, in truth there’s a more likely reason for Husband challenging the transfer. He’s now in a prison housing 900 hardened criminals, many convicted of heinous crimes. Husband fears for his personal safety. He claims there are contracts out on him offering a “huge amount of money” for his death. As bad as it was in Athens, where he is now is worse.

Husband is said to have spent his first few days at the new prison in solitary confinement before being placed in a cell with three other inmates.

As for Caroline’s family’s reaction to Husband’s current predicament, her father, David, had this to say:

“No amount of prison time can ever bring back my beautiful daughter but I am just gratified that the court didn't believe the scurrilous nonsense that he produced during his testimony.

“I am further gratified to know that he will serve his time in the toughest prison in Greece which has one of the worst prison systems in Europe.

His being “incarcerated with fellow murderers and perverts of every stripe in that prison has provided a sliver of consolation.”

“When he eventually completes his sentence, which many people think he might not survive, he will be a changed man, a broken man, far older than his true age.

'Now that his fate is settled, Susan and I can move on. I intend to change Lydia's name to that of her mother so that she will never be associated with this odious creature.”

Why do I sense this story is not over?

 

 

––Jeff

 

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UPDATE: Murder, He Wrote

 

Jeff–Saturday 

Ten months ago I reported on a murder so horrendous that it shook the Greek people to the core.

It involved a 20-year-old British-Greek wife and mother, Caroline Crouch, murdered in the presence of her pilot/flight instructor husband and 11-month-old baby.  The original story, as told by the husband, placed the blame on a band of brutal home invasion thieves claimed to have entered their house at random. The crime spread fear across the nation over the potential risk to each family’s safety in its own home. 

 

At the time I wrote, “I’m sure [the story] will make its way into any number of fiction and non-fiction novels, for it’s a tragedy steeped in outrageous deception, domestic violence, and endemic prejudice.  It’s also a tale of sharp police work, with an ironic final twist.”

This week, new plot twists filled the news as the case heads toward trial.  Frankly, I wouldn’t be surprised to see another shoe drop—or, for you Breaking Bad fans, make that a pair of sneakers laced together and hanging from a power line.  But that’s for another update. 

Here’s what happened this week. Let’s begin with a story reported this week by Lee Brown of The New York Post, which has been following the story since it exploded across the Greek media in May 2021.

A Greek pilot who admitted to killing his wife after initially blaming her death on a fictitious gang of burglars now claims he acted “in a fit of rage” over his wife’s “mistreatment” of their baby daughter, according to his attorney.

Babis Anagnostopoulos, 32, will use his new defense in court Friday to fight charges of premeditated murder in the May killing of his 20-year-old wife, Caroline Crouch, at their home in Athens, attorney Alexis Papaioannidis told the Times of London.

“The court will be presented with a lot of facts and evidence proving Babis’ allegations — that he acted in a fit of rage,” the pilot’s lawyer said.

Anagnostopoulos has been in custody since June, when he confessed to the killing hours after hugging his wife’s grieving mother at a memorial.

The case had initially sparked a massive manhunt after the pilot claimed he was tied up by a robbery gang who tortured and killed his wife in front of their 11-month-old baby girl, Lydia.

Now — six months after the confession — he is blaming his wife’s “mistreatment” of their child for the first time, the UK Times noted.

The lawyer claimed that encrypted entries in Crouch’s diary showed that she posed a “threat to the baby.”

His attorney told the UK paper that the deadly confrontation was not the first time the couple had a “heated exchange” over the young mom’s parenting.

“But it was that night when Caroline turned ever more abusive, violently pushing the crib to the side, that set off Babis,” Papaioannidis insisted of the accused murderer’s planned defense.

“He thought, ‘Lydia is in danger,'” he insisted.

The lawyer claimed that encrypted entries in Crouch’s diary showed that she posed a “threat to the baby,” without elaborating.

Excerpts from her diary, however, previously revealed that she was thinking of leaving her husband, accusing him of abuse.

Anagnostopoulos faces life in prison for the killing that was so shocking, it left cops in tears, officers said at the time.

At least 14 witnesses will take the stand, including the two officers who found Anagnostopoulos taped up and his baby daughter desperately trying to wake her dead mom, the report said.

BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE…

 

The Husband also faces criminal charges with up to ten years imprisonment under Greece’s animal protection laws for strangling the couple’s puppy, Roxy.  The dog even has its own lawyer in the case. Here are the details according to Kyle O’Sullivan and Milo Boyd of the Mirror.

 

A Greek pilot accused of murdering his British wife while she slept has also been charged with killing their dog.

Babis Anagnostopoulos is due to appear in an Athens court on Friday accused of murdering Caroline Crouch, 20, and of two counts of perverting the course of justice.

Now, following legal wrangling led by Marathon Animal Welfare Association, the 33-year-old will also face accusations that he killed five-month-old pup Roxy.

"It's important that Roxy also gets justice. It was an atrocious crime because the dog was not simply murdered, he was first tortured and then murdered and went through horrendous last moments," she told Mail Online.

"The dog was wearing his regular collar and was hung between the first and second floor which means that he choked to death and was severely tormented before breathing his last."

The Marathon Animal Welfare Association announced the charge and said that Roxy had been adopted by Anagnostopoulos and Caroline in December 2020 - five months before he was found dead alongside his owner.

Prosecutors have argued that the murders were pre-meditated and that Anagnostopoulos should also be given a life sentence for killing Caroline.

The pilot has admitted to the killing but maintains that it was a 'crime of passion' after she threatened to divorce him.

Caroline was found dead at her home in Greece on May 11 last year lying in her bed alongside her 11-month-old baby daughter.

Anagnostopoulos could face an extra ten years in prison if he is found guilty of the crime under a law brought in two years ago, which allows harsh sentences for animal cruelty including poisoning, hanging, burning and mutilation.

Evangelia Tsanopoulou, the lawyer representing Roxy the dog, has said she will argue for the maximum decade long sentence.

The first officer at the traumatising scene said he saw the 20-year-old tied to a bed with her daughter trying to wake her up, while her husband was found handcuffed in another room with duct tape over his eyes and mouth.

Anagnostopoulos initially told police and reporters that foreign gang members armed with guns broke in while the family was sleeping, then tied up and gagged him and his wife.

"I wish no-one ever goes through what we went through last night. It was a nightmare," Anagnostopoulos said the day after his wife was found dead.

Speaking to TV crews outside their family home, he added: "We begged the thieves not to harm us. We told them where the money was and asked them to leave us alone. The police will catch them."

Anagnostopoulos told detectives that one of the three alleged intruders strangled his wife and threatened their baby with a gun.

According to police, he said the burglars demanded cash and jewellery, and fled with about £10,000 worth of euros hidden in a Monopoly box, which they had on hand to pay builders.

Anagnostopoulos speculated that his life was spared because he had temporarily lost consciousness while bound, gagged and blindfolded in a different room, so likely appeared dead.

Two days after his wife was found dead, Anagnostopoulos told the Mirror he was in "no condition" to speak at length about her.

He added: "She was an amazing person, full of life and full of love. Our lives will never be the same without her.

"Take care of your family, sir. Cherish your loved ones as much as you can."

This led Greek police on a wild goose chase for a fictional gang of Albanian raiders for weeks, until they realised the evidence just didn't add up.

There were many unanswered questions, such as how three men could have got into the house through a tiny window without forced entry.

The police also couldn't work out how he supposedly managed to wriggle free and call for help using his nose to work his mobile phone.

Detectives said the robbery story fell apart thanks to Ms Crouch's fitness tracker, data from Anagnostopoulos' mobile phone, and CCTV from the home in the upscale neighbourhood, Greek media reported.

Anagnostopoulos attended a memorial to his wife on the island of Alonnisos, where he was seen hugging Caroline's grief-stricken mother before being approached by detectives.

They told him there had been a breakthrough in the case and they wanted his help to identify a suspect, but after being flown to Athens he was told that he was the suspect.

During an eight-hour interrogation, Anagnostopoulos is said to have confessed to killing Caroline after she told him to leave the house following an argument.

They said Anagnostopoulos admitted he killed his wife in front of their daughter then strangled the family's dog as he tried to make it look like a robbery gone wrong.

 

Stay tuned for further plot developments…

 

––Jeff

 

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