A Greek pilot has been found guilty of murdering his Brit wife in front of their 11-month-old baby and hanging their pet dog.
Babis Anagnostopoulos admitted suffocating 20-year-old Caroline Crouch as she slept in the couple's Athens maisonette in the early hours of May 11, 2021.
The 34-year-old faced four charges: premeditated murder, animal abuse, perverting the course of justice and lying to police.
He was found guilty on all counts as his five-week trial, which has made headlines worldwide, concluded today (May 16).
In a 10-hour testimony last week, the helicopter pilot told the court he killed his wife “in the heat of the moment”, the Mirror reports.
Before the verdict was announced to the public, prosecutor Eugenia Stathopoulu, said the evidence pointed to Anagnostopoulos killing of the mother of his child in cold blood.
The prosecution argued that Anagnostopoulos had covered his wife's mouth with his hand and her face with a pillow while lying on top of her - leading to a drawn-out and "torturous" death.
Through his lawyers, the pilot asked the court for a shorter sentence due to his clean criminal record and because he's been a model prisoner while on remand, according to Huffington Post Greece.
They also called the relationship a "romance that ended in tragedy", despite witnesses testifying to his "controlling" behaviour.
But prosecutors said it's "inconceivable" to accept any claims he was "kind to his family" because he "eventually killed them".
Lawyers for Caroline's mum Susan said Anagnostopoulos was unrepentant and believed he'd got away with the perfect crime, TharrosNews reports.
During the trial, Anagnostopoulos said he argued ferociously with Caroline even threatening to hit their baby daughter Lydia – a line of defence rubbished by the prosecutor who argued the defendant was “conscious of his actions throughout”.
According to coroners, Caroline was "tortured" as Anagnostopoulos held his hand over the unsuspecting Brit's mouth to stifle her cries and covered her face with a pillow and suffocated her.
It took five minutes for her to die, they add.
He then placed their 11-month-old daughter next to her dead mother, killed Caroline's pet dog Roxy "to make the crime more credible" and tied himself up before calling police in a bid to fool authorities that the Brit had been murdered during a bungled break-in.
For the next 37 days he covered up the crime speaking of his grief and even attending police line-ups of possible culprits. “His aim was to confuse authorities and he won 37 days [of freedom].
"If there is one common trait to all his crimes it is that the accused underestimated the intelligence of others,” the prosecutor said on Monday.
Police eventually caught up with him when data from the pilot's mobile - revealed that he had been walking around the maisonette when he said he had been tied up.
Investigators also gleaned key evidence from the Brit's smart watch, which proved she was asleep when the suspect started choking her and also how long it took for her to die.
On the first day of the murder trial last month, Anagnostopoulos told the court he "still loves" his wife.
He initially told cops a gang of foreign thieves stormed their home and hung the family's pet dog, Roxy, from the bannister in a botched home invasion.
Ms Crouch, 20, was found dead with the couple's young daughter beside her, before cops discovered Anagnostopoulos tied up under the bed.
Greek police initially launched a manhunt for the robbers but soon turned their attention to Anagnostopoulos due to inconsistencies in his story and he was eventually arrested.
He then confessed to killing his wife in-front of their 11-month-old. The pilot admitted to the killing but maintains that it was a 'crime of passion' after she threatened to divorce him.
He told judges in April: “I loved her and I still love her. That is never going to change."
He added: “It was never my aim to hurt my wife. I loved her and I love her.
"That never changed and from the day I met her it will never change.”
He says he killed her after an argument in which she threatened to divorce him because she suspected he was having an affair.
The pilot, 33, used his bare hands to end his wife's life by cutting off her air passages, but also used a pillow to stifle any noise, Coroner Chara Spiliopoulou claimed last month.
“The picture I had was that someone had put their hand in her mouth and then the pillow was used so nothing could be heard,” she told the court, explaining that Crouch’s pulse had shot up during the course of the attack.
“I estimate that death took roughly five minutes … she was tortured.”
The coroner went on to detail the horrific sights and smells left in the Athens maisonette resulting from the pet dog being hung.
By the time police arrived the only person not tied up was the couple’s daughter who was lying silently by her mother’s side.
Neighbour Angeliki Gerolymatou wept as she told the court how the young Brit had become isolated in the suburban maisonette and that her husband had cut her off financially.
“She was closed in that house for days … he was very controlling,” said Gerolymatou, who lived in the maisonette next door and whose family had initially comforted the pilot when they believed him to be a genuinely grieving widow.
“She definitely felt a bit cut off from her friends. She had told me of her desire to go out and have a drink with a friend of hers. Caroline did not go out often … it was once every so often.”
Ms Crouch, the daughter of a retired oil executive who was raised on the Greek island of Alonissos, met the older pilot as a teen and is now buried on the island she grew up on.
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