Babis Anagnostopoulos, 34, was sentenced to life in jail on Monday for the premeditated murder of his British-Greek wife Caroline Crouch, 20, on 11 May 2021, following an earlier unanimous guilty verdict the same day.
The court recognised no mitigating circumstances in serving the helicopter pilot with the highest possible sentence, while he was also served 11 years and 6 months in addition to the life sentence, for killing his wife’s pet dog Roxy and committing perjury several times to convince police it was a burglary gone wrong. The sentences follow the leading prosecutor’s proposals. He was also fined 21,000 euros, ANA MPA reported.
Anagnostopoulos had initially told police that armed robbers had tied up and gagged both him and his wife in their bedroom while their baby slept. He then claimed they made his wife show them where they kept cash and killed her in front of their baby. Authorities had announced a €300,000 (AUD$448,000) reward for information about the crime.
Anagnostopoulos admitted to the murder a month later after a friend of his wife’s testified she was suspicious of him, but he claimed he killed his wife, a young mother of 20, in a fit of rage.
The prosecution maintained that he committed the crime with a clear mind and in a vindictive and premeditated manner, staging it to look like a robbery.
“He put the 11 month child to sleep on the couch, then went up to kill. This refutes the claim of an agitated state of mind and shows premeditation,” the prosecutor said, highlighting the fact that the defendant had then placed the baby on the body of the dead mother when staging the supposed robbery, in order to evoke sympathy.
The prosecutor also cited evidence from the smart watch that Caroline was wearing, which proved that she had been asleep when he started to choke her and also how long it took to kill her.