Babis Anagnostopoulos
(Picture: AP)A Greek helicopter pilot accused of suffocating his British wife as she slept next to their young daughter was believed to be having an affair, a court has been told.
Babis Anagnostopoulos is accused of smothering Caroline Crouch, 20, to death at the family home in an Athens suburb in May 2021, killing the family’s puppy and then staging a fake burglary in a bid to cover-up his crime.
Now his wife’s therapist Eleni Mylonopoulou told a court in Athens that Crouch had been receiving therapy for six months before her visits suddenly stopped after 12 sessions.
“It was when Caroline started to notice his frequent Sunday absences,” Mylonopoulou said in evidence, reported the Times.
“She grew mad and she grew suspicious because her husband, older by 13 years, had a very active private life before they got married.”
Crouch’s therapist told the court that Crouch’s suspicions of infidelity came at “a pivotal moment” and that she started becoming “fearful” of her husband”.
“And rather than press ahead with additional meetings, I got a terse message from her saying the sessions would be suspended, and that the couple was planning to move to a more reclusive location,” she said.
Crouch’s lawyer said Anagnostopoulos was “actively pursuing a former relationship”.
The 33-year-old admitted to police he had killed his wife but he denies premeditated murder which carries a life sentence.
He claimed to have acted in a fit of rage after his wife threatened to leave, taking their 11-month-old daughter.
In a Greek legal first, he has also been charged over the death of the puppy.
The court heard how the pilot embarked on a relationship with Crouch when she was just 15 years old after first meeting on the Greek island of Alonissos.
They married in Portugal in 2019.
Mylonopoulou told the hearing: “All of this ties in with the dominating, controlling and manipulative behaviour of the defendant and the toxic relationship he had nurtured with a girl 13 years younger than him.”
The trial is expected to continue next month.
