Almost two years after the 19-year-old British student, Caroline Crouch, was murdered by her husband as she lay asleep in the couple’s Athens maisonette, her father says he will concentrate on raising his granddaughter, “who is now without” either parent.
Speaking publicly for what he said would be the last time, David Crouch, 79, told the Guardian he would leave Greece to look after Caroline’s daughter, Lydia, who is almost three, in the Philippines, “far away” from her mother’s self-confessed killer.
“My only duty now is to look after her daughter, Lydia, who is now without both a mother and a father, and ensure that she is brought up as her mother would have brought her up,” the retired oil and gas executive said.
“I can only do this in the Philippines, far away from the malignant presence of her father and her paternal grandparents.”
The relocation comes weeks after the Crouch family won exclusive custody of the little girl, defeating a court challenge brought by the parents of the imprisoned Greek helicopter pilot, Babis Anagnostopoulos, who admitted suffocating his wife in May 2021.
For nearly six weeks after the murder, the UK-trained aviator had sought to convince police that the pair had been the victims of ruthless Albanian burglars who, after using duct tape to incapacitate them, had proceeded to brutally kill the family’s puppy before ending his wife’s life.
Greece was gripped by the trial. When the 35-year-old confessed after being confronted with inconsistencies in his own version of events, the nation was thrown into unexpected soul-searching.
Anagnostopoulos had not only pandered to Greek fears of foreigners being behind a wave of often violent break-ins – going so far as to identify suspects from police line-ups – he had also fooled the world by pretending to be an innocent grieving widower as he cradled his daughter at his wife’s funeral.
Sympathy turned to shock as the seemingly doting father was uncovered as not only the murderer but the orchestrator of a crime scene in which the then 11-month-old child was found crying next to her mother’s body.
Police would describe the pilot, who is serving a life sentence in a high-security prison, as a consummate actor.
The killing was among dozens of femicides in Greece that year, with a state prosecutor describing the British woman’s death as both prolonged and agonising.
The Crouch family have won widespread public respect for their dignified stance. On the few occasions that Liverpool-born David has spoken out, TV anchors have struggled to hold back tears.
Caroline, who had just enrolled at university in Greece, was barely 20 at the time of her death. During a six-week trial before a mixed jury court in Athens, Anagnostopoulos, who gave testimony for a marathon 10 hours, was repeatedly described as narcissistic and controlling.
Anagnostopoulos has appealed against his 27-year jail sentence and an appeals hearing is due to take place on 24 April.
His lawyer, Alexandros Papaioannidis, said they hoped his sentence would be reduced. “We will argue there was no motive, that it happened when he was in a blurred state of mind, that it was not premeditated,” he said.
In January, David Crouch, who has mobility issues and has never been publicly seen, told Greece’s ANT 1 TV channel his daughter had been murdered because his son-in- law had got involved in drug smuggling.
“Sadly his mother still doesn’t believe that he killed Caroline,” he said, explaining it was crucial Lydia was kept away from her father because the day would come when she would have to be told the truth: that he killed her mother.
The retiree, who had previously worked in Athens, said it was “with great sadness” he would be selling his home on the Greek island of Alonnisos in the Sporades where Caroline was raised and is now buried. Memories of the time he had enjoyed with her there had, he said, kept him “sane in the weeks and months” after her death.
“It is the home to which I brought Caroline when she was a babe in arms,” he said. “[It is] where she learned to walk, ride a bicycle and ultimately grow up to be a beautiful and talented young woman.”
Crouch’s wife Susan, who is of Filipino descent, has already moved with Lydia to Manila, where the little girl is being raised with her cousins.
A court order stipulated last month that her Greek grandparents could have one hour of access to her “via Skype or other electronic means” per week.
It is understood that Caroline’s remains will be exhumed and also transferred to the Philippines in what would be the last act of a drama that has haunted Greece.
