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.”
