Caroline Crouch murder: Police quiz couple’s psychologist

Police probing the murder of a British mother in Greece have questioned a psychologist who was treating her and her husband before the killing.

Officers said the therapist provided ‘crucial’ evidence, as they continue to hunt for the killer of 20-year-old Caroline Crouch, who was strangled to death in front of her 11-month-old daughter at her home near Athens on May 11.

Police say the psychologist was treating Caroline for post-natal depression, and was separately providing treatment to husband Charalambos ‘Babis’ Anagnostopoulos, 33, for an unknown condition.

Investigators are also preparing to interview Mr Anagnostopoulos for a second time, to ‘go over what happened in even further detail’ on the night his wife was killed.  

According to previous statements that Mr Anagnostopoulos gave to police, he was tied up by three robbers who broke into his home in the early hours, threatened his child, strangled his wife, and then got away with £10,000 in cash.

Police are going back over details of the crime after their current lines of inquiry failed to yield a viable suspect.

Officers did arrested a man – a Georgian with a history of violent burglaries who tried to leave the country on a fake passport – but have failed to link him to the crime.  

DNA evidence collected from underneath Caroline’s fingernails as she fought her attacker has also proved to be inconclusive.

Meanwhile CCTV cameras at the home failed to provide clues because they were either not working or did not have memory cards on the night of the break-in.

Detectives had been hunting for at least three men – two of who were described as medium height and build, and one shorter and fatter – who Mr Anagnostopoulos said had spoken to him in Greek but spoke a foreign language among themselves.

As well as the Georgian suspect, it was reported that police were looking to speak with an Albanian man who had recently released from prison in the hopes that he might be able to shed light on the crime.

Investigators were trying to work out how burglars had known there was £10,000 in cash in the house, after Babis told them the thieves seemed to know about it. 

According to Babis’s account, he quickly told the robbers the money was kept in a Monopoly box but they demanded more from him.

It was then, he says, that the trio began torturing him and his wife, subjecting them to a 40-minute ordeal that included putting a gun to his baby daughter’s head.

When Caroline began screaming, the men strangled her to death in front of the couple’s daughter, Babis says.

The trio then fled, leaving Babis bound to the bed – before he managed to get to a phone and use his nose to dial a neighbour, who alerted police.  

The baby was unhurt but their dog, Bruno, had also been strangled to death.

The Georgian suspect was arrested in the Evros region of north-east Greece on Friday. His car was stopped close to the Bulgarian border for a routine check and he was found to have a fake passport, a police source said.

Athens Police said in a statement on Saturday: ‘A 43-year-old foreigner was arrested by police officers of the Property Prosecution Department of the Attica Security Directorate, against whom a case had been filed for robbery in collaboration and an Arrest Warrant had been issued.

‘He is accused that on 5-3-2021, together with four unknown accomplices, having their full face features covered, entered a house in Pikermi, Attica, immobilized an elderly couple and the domestic worker and deducted money and jewelry.

‘It is noted that the 43-year-old, at noon on 14-5-2021, in order to leave the country, went to the Border Crossing Point at Evros area, where he was arrested by police officers of the EvrosPassport Control Department, for possession and use of a forged travel document, forgery and of illegal exit from the country.’

Police spokesman George Kalliakmanis said the tactics used by the burglars in March were almost identical to the brutal techniques used by thugs who killed Miss Crouch.

‘In that burglary they tied up the old couple and forced them to say where they kept their money,’ he said. ‘Even after they had found the money they continued to demand where the rest of the couple’s valuables were.’

The suspect’s court appearance came after Ms Crouch’s heartbroken husband shared a picture of their wedding day, telling his wife they would be ‘together for ever’. 

Ms Crouch, a statistics student at the University of Piraeus, moved to the island of Alonissos with her Filipino mother Susan Dela Cuesta and British father David Crouch, 78, when she was eight. She met her husband on the island four years ago.