UNMAS KING OF A MONSTER
He plotted his British bride’s murder, tied himself up, drowned the family’s puppy – then lied and lied. Now Greek police have released his selfpitying confession... and grotesque timeline of killing that is utterly shocking in its calculated depravity
HEAD bowed, his hands handcuffed behind his back and wearing a black face mask and bullet-proof vest, Greek pilot Charalambos Anagnostopoulos was led into court yesterday surrounded by armed police.
What a contrast to other times we have seen the 33-year-old widower of young British wife, Caroline Crouch.
Who could fail to have been moved when, cradling their 11-month-old baby daughter Lydia in his arms, he was photographed gently placing a flower on her coffin at her funeral on the island of Alonissos last month? Or when he hugged her distraught mother at a memorial service on Wednesday — just hours before he finally confessed to murdering her at their home in Athens on May 11 and hatching an elaborate plot to evade justice.
The scenes at court, with so many armed officers, was an illustration of how high emotions are running in Greece following the sensational development.
The motive? It was as old as time itself. Caroline, who was 20, had threatened to leave him and take baby Lydia with her.
‘I did not want to go to prison because I wanted to raise my daughter,’ he is said to have told officers after being interrogated for eight hours at the central police station in the Greek capital on Thursday. He is understood to have suffocated Caroline.
So momentous was the development that Greek TV interrupted broadcasts of Euro 2020 to break the news. Passers-by stopped at cafes to watch updates.
In court, Anagnostopoulos was officially charged with murder and, if convicted, faces life in prison.
With good looks and a glamorous job, he led an outwardly idyllic life in an impressive balconied villa in the affluent suburb of Glyka Nera.
To their neighbours they seemed like the perfect family; an impression reinforced by snaps of them on holiday, in such locations as Dubai, on social media. Their happiness was perhaps epitomised by a loving message posted on Caroline’s birthday. ‘My awesome wife, closest friend, and best mum in the world,’ Mr Anagnostopoulos wrote touchingly.
For the past five weeks, ever since Caroline was killed, he’s continued to play the role of the heartbroken widower; in public, at least, his mask never slipped; but it was all an act; a performance, we now know.
Behind the image of a blessed family life, Anagnostopoulos, known as Babis, was a jealous and controlling husband, friends revealed today.
And extracts from Caroline’s diary published on a Greek website reveal the truth about their often violent and unhappy relationship. ‘I had a fight with Babis again,’ she wrote in 2019. ‘I hit him, cursed him and broke the door.’
In another extract, she said: ‘I’m thinking of leaving to go to my sister,’ she wrote. ‘I do not know if I can continue with Babis.’
Anagnostopoulos is the latest in a long line of killers to have cried crocodile tears for the cameras. Statistics might tell us most murders are committed by people known to the victim but even two weeks into the investigation police insisted Anagnostopoulos ‘is not and has never been a suspect’.
The authorities are now telling a different story; that they suspected him all along. The more cynical view is that this is just a face-saving exercise to avoid awkward questions about why it took so long to arrest him.
Either way, few culprits have concocted such an elaborate tissue of lies to cover their tracks.
The story he spun was this: three men — with foreign accents — broke into the house around 5am, tied him up and put insulating tape over his eyes. They had pointed a gun at his daughter’s head, he said. They then killed his wife and family dog, he said, before escaping with £10,000 in banknotes and £20,000 of jewellery.
It was a chain of events akin to a movie or TV plot. Anagnostopoulos, who trained as a helicopter pilot in the UK, told how he only managed to raise the alarm by using his nose to dial the number of the police and call a neighbour.
He couldn’t possibly have made all this up, could he? Even now, it beggars belief. ‘On the night of May 11 we quarrelled yet again,’ Anagnostopoulos is quoted as saying in his new testimony, parts of which were released by the police. ‘She threw me out of our bed and I saw her taking the baby out of the cot. I lost my mind ... when I
realised she was dead, I sought means of covering things up because there is an 11month-old baby to consider.’
Ahead of yesterday’s hearing, it emerged he had accused his wife of being jealous and obsessed, saying he was worried about his daughter’s safety after the infant was thrown roughly in her crib.
Describing their relationship as having ‘very good and very bad days’, on the night of the murder he admitted his wife had screamed to him to leave the house and accused him of being a bad father.
A detailed transcript of his confession has been published on a Greek news website. ‘I could not stand the fights any more,’ he said. She was obsessed and jealous.
‘We had another intense fight early that afternoon [of May 11]. When I went to the attic, she told me to leave the room and the house. She pushed me and then left the child abruptly and forcefully
I lost my mind ... I could not stand the fights any more
in the crib. The baby started to cry. I got annoyed, attacked her and pressed her face against the pillow or mattress.
‘I do not know how much time it took. I had no accomplice. When I realised she was dead, I started thinking about the baby and did not know what to do.
‘I decided to cover it up and made everything up.
‘I tied her hands to her back and