Greek police were today quizzing the husband of murdered Briton Caroline Crouch after finding smartwatch data which suggests she didn’t die when he says intruders killed her, local media reported.
Twenty-year-old Caroline was strangled to death in front of her 11-month-old daughter at their home near Athens on May 11.
Husband Charalambos ‘Babis’ Anagnostopoulos, 33, told police that he was tied up by three robbers who broke into their home in the early hours, put a gun to his child’s head, strangled his wife, and then got away with £10,000 in cash.
Detectives have extracted biometric data from Caroline’s watch which they believe pinpoints the exact moment her heart stopped beating – which officers think differs from Mr Anagnostopoulos’ version of events, according to local media.
It is not clear to what degree the timings of the biometric data deviate from Mr Anagnostopoulos’ narrative.
Officers also say the couple were bickering in the hours before her death, with text messages exchanged in English showing one had called the other ‘stupid.’
Police from Athens collected Mr Anagnostopoulos by helicopter for another interview on Thursday after he attended a memorial service with relatives on the island of Alonissos.
Caroline Crouch, 20, (right) was strangled to death in front of her 11-month-old daughter at her home near Athens on May 11. Her husband Charalambos ‘Babis’ Anagnostopoulos, 33, (left) told police that he was tied up by three robbers who broke into their home in the early hours, put a gun to his child’s head, strangled his wife, and then got away with £10,000 in cash.
Police are looking at a smartwatch which they believe provides vital biometric evidence about the night she was killed (pictured: Mr Anagnostopoulos and Ms Crouch with their daughter)
In their first official statement in five weeks, the police said: ‘The husband of the victim in Glyka Nera (the Athens suburb) is at the homicide department, in order to be examined as the only eye witness following new data that has emerged from the inquiry.’
New evidence retrieved by digital forensics specialists has also turned up another clue on the CCTV recording equipment that was running at the couple’s home.
On the night of the murder, the memory card was removed from the device, but experts were able to obtain a timing from the clock on the recorder which appears to deviate from the narrative provided by Mr Anagnostopoulos.
But it was also reported that the clock on the device may have been out of sync with the actual time.
Police flew into a Greek island where Mr Anagnostopoulos has been mourning with relatives to shuttle him back to Athens earlier today.
A spokesman from the homicide division told local broadcaster Ant1, ‘the data discovered in the analysis cannot wait.’
The spokesman said that Mr Anagnostopoulos was informed yesterday but police had respected his wishes to attend a memorial for his wife today.
He was whisked away from the island of Alonissos by boat to the neighbouring island of Skiathos where the police helicopter took him back to Athens.
The spokesman told Ant1: ‘We waited for the memorial service to end and then the 33-year-old was transferred to GADA (Police HQ), it could have happened yesterday as well. The husband of the victim was transported to Athens from Alonissos, in order to be examined as the only eyewitness.’
Detectives are poring back over details of the crime after their current lines of inquiry failed to yield a viable suspect.
They did arrest a man late last month – 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.
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.
Babis shared a tribute to his wife Caroline Crouch last month after her death. Under the photo taken on their wedding day he writes: ‘Together forever. Have a nice trip my love’
Mr Anagnostopoulos previously told police that three men broke into his family home early on May 11, stole £10,000 he was keeping in a Monopoly box, then strangled his wife
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 Mr Anagnostopoulos, a helicopter pilot, told them the thieves seemed to know about it.
According to Mr Anagnostopoulos’ account, he quickly told the robbers the money was kept in a Monopoly box but they demanded more from him.
The men killed the family dog, tied up Mr Anagnostopoulos, then tortured Caroline for an hour to get her to reveal the location of the family’s valuables, before strangling her in front of their daughter.
The killers made off with valuables and a stack of bank notes that Mr Anagnostopoulos had withdrawn to pay for building work.
They left Mr Anagnostopoulos bound to a bed – before he managed to get to a phone and use his nose to dial a neighbour, who alerted police.
Caroline Crouch, 20, was strangled to death in front of her 11-month-old daughter at her home in the Glyka Nera suburb
The Georgian suspect was arrested in the Evros region of north-east Greece on May 21. 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.
He was accused, along with four others, of a burglary in Attica in early March where an elderly couple were tied up and robbed of money and jewellery. But police failed to link him to the crime.
Caroline, 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.
The couple met four years ago on the island and were married in July 2019 in a ceremony in Portugal.
Caroline then gave birth to their first child in June last year.