Husband of murdered British Lady Caroline Crouch Taken To Court In Handcuffs

 Head bowed, his arms handcuffed behind his back and wearing a black face mask and bullet-proof vest, Greek pilot Charalambos Anagnostopoulos was led into courtroom yesterday surrounded via armed police.

What a contrast to other instances we have viewed the 33-year-old widower of young British wife, Caroline Crouch.

Who could fail to have been moved when, cradling their 11-month-old toddler daughter Lydia in his arms, he was photographed gently putting a flower on her coffin at her funeral on the island of Alonissos last month? Or when he hugged her distraught mom at a memorial service on Wednesday — just hours before he eventually confessed to murdering her at their home in Athens on May 11 and hatching an tricky plot to dodge justice.

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 jail due to the fact 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 improvement 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 homicide and, if convicted, faces life in prison.

With good looks and a glamorous job, he led an outwardly idyllic life in an astounding balconied villa in the affluent suburb of Glyka Nera.

To their neighbours they appeared like the best family; an impression bolstered by snaps of them on holiday, in such places as Dubai, on social media. Their happiness was possibly epitomised by a loving message posted on Caroline’s birthday. ‘My amazing wife, closest friend, and best mum in the world,’ Mr Anagnostopoulos wrote touchingly.

For the previous 5 weeks, ever since Caroline was killed, he’s continued to play the role of the heartbroken widower; in public, at least, his mask in no way slipped; however 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 posted on a Greek website disclose the fact about their frequently violent and sad 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 would possibly 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 in no way 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 keep away from awkward questions about why it took so long to arrest him.

Either way, few culprits have concocted such an complicated tissue of lies to cowl their tracks.

It was a chain of events akin to a film or TV plot. Anagnostopoulos, who trained as a helicopter pilot in the UK, informed how he only managed to raise the alarm by using his nose to dial the number of the police and call a neighbour.