RedHanded - Episode 389 - Babis Anagnostopoulos: High-Flying Homicide
Episode Date: March 6, 2025When the body of 19-year-old Caroline Crouch was found in her attic room after an apparent home invasion – with her 11-month-old daughter crying next to her, and her puppy hanging from the ...bannister – the nation of Greece mourned with her widower, Babis Anagnostopoulos.A handsome helicopter pilot, Anagnostopoulos had led the tributes since her death. But one month on, at a clifftop memorial service, Athenian police revealed that new analysis of the couple’s smart devices revealed a new culprit. One who’d fooled not just the police – but the whole nation.Exclusive bonus content:Wondery - Ad-free & ShortHandPatreon - Ad-free & Bonus EpisodesFollow us on social media:YouTubeTikTokInstagramVisit our website:WebsiteSources available on redhandedpodcast.comSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
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In the 1980s, a rose swept the country.
Hey Mike, I really like this white Zinfandel. Well good, good.
Now put it down, I'm going to try another one.
White Zin became America's top-selling wine.
But most don't know that this sweet drink has a sour history.
What began in 1986 with counterfeit bottles…
A big fraud.
A multi-million dollar fraud.
…sent investigators chasing one of the most powerful families in the business, the Lacharties.
But the closer the feds got to them, the more dangerous things became.
It's a story of deceit.
At the time I was paranoid.
Threats.
You touched my kids.
I will kill you.
And murder.
With a.22 caliber bullet to the head.
What started with a scheme to mislabel wine spilled into a blood-soaked battle for succession.
Welcome to Blood Vines.
You can binge listen to Blood Vines exclusively and ad-free on Wondery Plus.
Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. I'm Hannah. I'm Saruti. And welcome in Greek.
Uh huh. To Red Vantim.
I have not a clue. We were sat just before we came into the studio and Hannah just started
laughing. Well, I had to go on PronouncedNames.com. A website we frequent quite often. We might
as well have it bookmarked really. Not that anyone can ever tell. No, we're trying. How
dare any... Before we even start this episode, I'm just going to say there's a lot of very,
very difficult Greek names in this and we tried. We have tried very hard. Maybe we
could have tried harder but we tried as hard as is possible. So be patient.
On the 11th of May 2021 an emergency call was made from a house in the well-to-do
suburb of Gleconera in Athens. Calls like this had become sadly
all too common. Greek banks were not exactly paragons of trust and many
Athenians had taken to storing cash around their homes, which predictably led
to a spate of home invasion burglaries. But this time, it soon became clear this was no ordinary burglary.
The call had come in at around 6 a.m. from an audibly desperate man. Over the phone,
his voice was muffled and weak, and dispatchers could make out little more than the address
could make out little more than the address and the words help and ambulance. When police arrived at the house, they found the man who made the call,
Babis Iannostopoulos, tied up, blindfolded, gaffer tape hanging loose from his mouth.
He explained that he'd had to dial the emergency number with his nose.
The house had been turned upside down, with rooms ransacked,
drawers emptied and belongings strewn everywhere.
The broken man told authorities that he believed his wife and baby were upstairs,
and begged them to check.
And when they did, the investigation quickly turned from a standard burglary into a murder
investigation that would become a national obsession in Greece.
The body of Babis's 19-year-old wife, Caroline, was lying lifeless on the floor.
Their 11-month-old baby Lydia was next to her, crying for her mother and pulling at Caroline's clothes,
trying to make her wake up. And as if this Dexter plotline isn't horrifying enough,
out in the corridor, police made another harrowing discovery.
The body of the couple's nine-month-old puppy, Roxy, was hanging from the banister.
Dexter never would have done that.
No.
The case riveted the Greek public and press like no other story in recent memory.
The widower, a handsome helicopter pilot,
provoked an outpouring of sympathy for his bravery and very public grief.
And the simmering fears of foreign criminal gangs
invading Greek homes bubbled over into a national outrage.
But then, after 37 days of intense media
and investigative scrutiny, as Caroline's family and friends
gathered on a cliff top for a memorial service,
two police officers took Babis
aside. They told him they had found the culprit by analyzing various devices in
the house, including Caroline's smartwatch. They had cleared up a lot of
the myths surrounding this case at last. The grieving widower was taken to
Athens and in an interrogation room they revealed what they knew.
That he, Babis Agnianastopoulos, was their new prime suspect.
It's quite dramatic to arrest a man for his wife's murder at her memorial upon a cliff.
Oh, it's so much.
We will come back to this scene at the end.
And yeah, dramatic, Greek tragedy-esque, you could say, with a bit of Dexter thrown in.
This story absolutely took the nation by storm, and it is all fundamentally based around just one
fascinating month and how it unraveled in Athens in 2021 was the perfect end to a very
imperfect crime from a man who thought that he'd fooled the
world. Caroline Crouch was actually born in Liverpool in
2001 to an English father and a Filipina mother. And if 2001
feels like too recent a birthdate for a married mother,
then congratulations, you're a millennial.
Caroline's father David had been an oil and gas executive which meant he travelled a lot.
But when Caroline was eight he moved the family to Greece for good.
They lived on Elonissos, a beautiful Aegean island, home to just a few thousand people.
And honestly, this close-knit community on a picturesque Aegean island does sound
about as idyllic as a childhood can get. As a kid, Caroline was outgoing and
adventurous, the kind of girl that knew everyone and always had a smile on her
face. She tried basically everything,
scuba diving, swimming, kickboxing, and it was the kickboxing that stuck. She kept up
that passion throughout her short life. And in spring 2017, she was at a candlelight parade
for Good Friday when she met 28-year-old commercial helicopter pilot Babis and Yanostopoulos. Now usually we do run
with the convention of using people's surnames, but sorry it's too hard and
also fuck him so I, Anna, stop saying his name. And we're just gonna go with Babis
from now on. And Babis certainly made an impression on the young Caroline. How
young? Well I'm glad you asked. She was 15 and still at high school and he is 28
and a helicopter pilot. Disgusting. Yeah. But to Caroline this charming well-off
pilot was a dream come true. I think for any 15-year-old.
Hi, I'm a helicopter pilot.
He was her handsome prince who had literally fallen from the heavens.
Babis had also come to Alonissos for a holiday,
but he spent a lot of his life hopping around the Aegean,
taking commercial clients from island to island in his helicopter.
And 28-year-old Babis and 15-year-old Caroline hit it off fast.
And they even had a connection.
Babus' mother had been a teacher at Caroline's school.
Yep.
Yeah, it's bad stuff.
So after his holiday ended, the pair kept in touch and started dating, seeing each other
more and more regularly.
And let's keep in mind that the age of consent in Greece is 15.
And Caroline was 15.
But while technically legal, I think we can all agree, this has grooming stamped all over
her. agree this has grooming stamped all over it. Babus even started flying over
Caroline's school in his helicopter to impress her and her friends.
I'm looking out. Jail!
That would work on me. Yes!
That would work on me now and I'm 34.
100%! But jail! He is nearly twice her age.
And after this showboating continued for 17 months, Babis proposed.
And despite the 13-year age gap and Caroline being a literal child, Caroline's family and
the wider community didn't bat an eyelid. And they weren't just
accepting, they weren't even begrudging, they were absolutely ecstatic for Caroline.
Babis seemed like the perfect match, a literally high-flying professional who
could provide for their daughter and they did seem happy together. Both of
their Instagram grids were absolutely full of smiling close-up selfies and precious sunset moments. I
remember when I was at school there were these like couples in like sixth form so
when you're like 16, 17 right there was one couple who the guy was very very
wealthy and they went on this holiday to like Dubai
or something equivalent. And they had this like sunset meal in the middle of the desert,
just the two of them with a photographer. And I was like, you're 17. Like what do you
even talk about? I remember it so clearly.
Unacceptable. I wasn't even going to go that fancy. I was literally just going to say,
have you ever just been around in London and you like at a
bar or a restaurant and you see two children having a date and
the girl is always like typically very very dressed up and he's like bought her roses or something and you're just like
Why are you doing this? Why aren't you just like getting fingered behind bike shits like the rest of us?
Exactly like fucking up to your eyeballs and Bacardi Breezer.
Like what is happening?
Who's getting wined and dined as a fucking teenager?
Well, maybe they should be,
and then maybe my standards would be higher.
Maybe, maybe this is what's happened.
This is who we are now, but fuck me, it's so fucked up.
I hate it.
Anyway, three days after Caroline's 18th birthday, they got married in a surprise ceremony
whilst they were on holiday in the Algarve. Surprise to who? That's the big question.
They don't tell her family. Oh, so she knows. I think it's like they basically elope, right?
They're engaged. That's a nice way of saying elope. Surprise wedding. Surprise wedding. Yeah, they're basically elope.
Greek weddings, as Hollywood diverted our attention to decades ago.
I fucking love that film.
My Big Fat Greek Wedding is honestly, I haven't seen a lot of films.
As Hannah discovered the other day on Under the Duvet, I haven't watched The Pianist,
but I have watched my Big Fat Creek Wedding several times.
Thank God. Out of interest-
Windex?
Out of interest. What do you think The Pianist is about?
The Nazis and Adrian Bodie playing the piano. Am I close?
Kind of, but not...
No, not close enough to deserve that reaction at all.
Yes?
I won't even ask what it's about. Is it about why World War 1 started?
I wish it were.
Because then you could be excused for not knowing.
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Hey everybody.
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from Kill List.
Super excited to hang out with them too.
We've got some cool activities, interactive mysteries we can solve, testing our forensic
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Anyway, Greek weddings. Not small, not tiny, not secret and certainly not
reserved affairs. So when Caroline's family,
expats they may have been, when they learned that they had missed out on their opportunity to have
their only daughter's big fat Greek wedding, they were very disappointed. Maybe it's because
neither of them are Greek. Like, I mean, they are, they live on this Greek island, but mum's
Filipino, dad's English, Babis, Agnano,oulos is very Greek and they're just like, yes our daughter's gonna marry
a Greek man and we get to have a big fat Greek wedding. Finally get to eat a lamb
eye. Nope. They're fucking get married in the Algarve. But the couple seemed so
happy that Caroline's family decided to drop it. Heartache however was just around
the corner.
Shortly after the wedding, Caroline miscarried after 12 weeks of pregnancy and it hit the
couple really hard. And their family decided that the best thing was to just give them
some privacy.
And soon the couple were back on their feet. Babis and Caroline moved into a very chic
three-story maisonette that they rented in the wealthy suburb of Glicanera. They made
close friends with their neighbors and Caroline started studying for a degree
in statistics at the University of Piraeus and soon Caroline was pregnant
again and they had a baby girl Lydia. Soon after, Caroline adopted a rescue puppy, Roxy, a brown husky.
Their family was finally coming together, and the pair even had plans to build a forever
home to grow into.
Caroline's mother, Susan, had given them 50,000 euros, and Babis had found the perfect
location.
I'm sorry, brand new baby and rescue puppy?
Yeah. That sounds
fucking awful. It's because we're in our mid-30s. She's 19, she's got loads of
fucking energy. I don't know man, my friend recently, well not recently, a year ago
surprise pregnancy. Mm-hmm. And she's now had this baby and but previous to
surprise pregnancy her and her partner got a puppy, sent it off
to his parents after six months. They were like, can't handle it, can't do it. And they've
moved house now out into the suburbs and her husband's like, we can maybe have another
baby. We are not getting another dog.
I don't blame them. I do not blame them. And my friends who you know, acquired accidentally a dog for several months.
Dog came back from a very unpredictable owner.
They basically agreed to like dog sit this dog while this woman went on holiday.
And then I went over to their house again like months later and the dog was still there.
And they were like, oh yeah, she just like never came and got the dog.
Dog is now back because the woman is about to imminently have a baby. And they were like, oh yeah, she was like, after I
have the baby, I have the dog back. I was like, she never took me back, Batman. This
is now your dog. He lives here.
That's what they want though.
They've kind of changed their mind. They love the dog, but dog is entering its winter years,
most expensive years.
Most peeing on the carpet years.
Yeah.
And they're like, we, we loved this.
We loved this.
And we're like, we want to get a dog now, but they're like, if they also
agree to keep this dog, that's not going to happen for a long time.
And he isn't the easiest dog because she's obviously not been like the
strictest, the most on top of her toner, shall we say, but anyway, yeah, babies
and dogs don't do it.
Anyway, sticking with this, they're thinking about this house that they've got the location.
They've got the money.
They're ready to go.
And on the 6th of May, 2021, Babis bought a plot of land in Piccami, East of Athens. But five days later, just two months before her 20th birthday,
Caroline would be smothered by a pillow and take her last breath.
Because it was then, on the 11th of May 2021,
the police discovered her lifeless body and
her 11 month old screaming baby beside her,
as well as the 9-month-old husky puppy hanging dead from the banister.
As we said, the call came into emergency services at about 6 o'clock in the morning,
12 minutes past six to be precise, and detectives arrived in minutes.
Babis, the only witness, told them this story.
Three men had broken in through a cellar window at about four a.m.
Some of them were armed with handguns.
Caroline was sleeping in the attic, but Babis was asleep downstairs.
So when they got to him, the intruders, they tied him to a chair, blindfolded, and gagged
him.
He said that he never saw the assailants, but he
heard their accents as they shouted to each other and they definitely weren't
Greek. He guessed that they were either Georgian or Albanian. They kept asking
him where the money and valuables were kept. After they've gagged him. Well yes,
also very typical for a Greek person to blame it on an Albanian, but anyway, Babis
told them immediately where everything was, because his only priority was protecting his
family.
And the house showed clear signs of a break-in.
Draws had been emptied, the place was a mess and everything of value had been taken, because
Babis told the police that he'd told the men exactly where to find these things so that they would spare him, his wife and his baby.
20,000 euros worth of jewelry was missing alongside 10,000 euros in cash which had been
hidden in a monopoly box.
No one's ever going in there.
No, exactly.
Upstairs, investigators presumed Caroline must have
fought back. And yeah, this seems strange, right? Because Barbis doesn't fight back.
He's just like, yes, take all the money, take all the valuables. I don't care. I just want
to protect my family. But the police believe the idea that Caroline fought back despite
the burglars already having secured the money and the valuables.
And despite the fact that she would have known that three men in her house violently looking
for money would have been a clear threat to her and her baby, they figured that she had
decided to take all of them on.
And in the resulting tussle, they had suffocated her. The story was huge not
only in Greece but also in the UK so much so that I believe it featured in our now
resting in peace show in the news. It did indeed because yeah I just think this
case it was so so so enormous everyone was talking about it because yeah, I just think this case it was so, so, so enormous.
Everyone was talking about it because yeah, you only have to take a look at Babis and Caroline.
They're the perfect sort of attractive young couple. There's a puppy, there's a baby.
Somebody breaks into this. It's a really nice house in a really nice part of Greece.
Kills her. Like it was everything I was talking
about. And when I first heard about it, obviously like everybody else, I just believed, oh my
god, this horrible burglary situation, horrible home invasion murder. And then literally within
a month, the entire story changes. It's wild. And how'd they get them? Oh god, it's good.
It's good. It's good work.
Understandably, it was quite big here because Caroline still has family.
She was born here.
And the story of a poor young girl who had it all,
whose baby had been left by her dead body and with a puppy hanging close by,
it's inconceivable.
And also, it started a conversation about rising crime in Athens.
People talk about Athens and crime rates all the time, it's just another log to the fire isn't it?
So much so that Athens Civil Protection Minister offered 300,000 euros in reward
money for any information about finding the killers and existing beliefs about
dangerous Georgian and Albanian criminals were now right at the front and center of people's minds.
So the police focused all their efforts on infiltrating and investigating these foreign gangs,
working around the clock under pressure to find these three mystery assailants
and bring them to justice. Three days after her death, Caroline's body was transferred to Alonissus,
and she was buried in a cemetery just round the corner from her childhood home.
Almost the whole island attended the funeral.
The national media was splashed with photos and stories of the heartbroken Babis,
who cradled his infant daughter for the entire four hour
ceremony, carrying her over to her mother's grave and placing down a single
white flower. Then, the day after the funeral, so just four days after his
wife had been killed, Babis appeared on the news himself. He gives this like
very strange press conference and, and yeah in it you can see
that he looks disheveled and definitely rattled but the way he speaks he's
definitely clear and very calm. Bear in mind it's four days after his 19 year old
wife has been murdered and he gave statements outside of his home during
this televised account and when asked about his mental state he said
it's indescribable and when asked what he wanted he said only that no family will ever
have to go through this again and when the press asked when he realized his wife was
dead he simply said when they untied me. Now obviously we are looking back at this with the benefit of hindsight and with the
full knowledge of what actually happened.
But that's very rare for us.
For a man whose wife had just been killed days before, while he was in the house, to
then talk to the press, answering
every one of their questions, no matter how direct.
Quite odd.
Also, because I think the thing that stands out to me the most about the press conference
right is when he's asked what he wants, he says only that no family will ever go through
this again.
Four days after my wife has been murdered and my baby daughter has been left
without a mother and when they have yet to apprehend who did this, that wouldn't be the
thing that I said I want. I would be saying to catch the people who did this.
Or to bring her back.
Yes, but rather he's like only that no other family go through this. That is a weird thing
to say. That's something you could say, 10 year anniversary.
Yeah, that's like a McCann 10 year down the line phrase.
When you've started all the foundations to lot that this happened again.
It's tempting to compare him to someone like Chris Watts and the initial interviews he
gives to the press, but the difference is Shanann was missing when he gave those conferences.
Caroline's dead. It's totally different.
Absolutely. And again, totally get, we're looking at this with with like
hindsight the fact that people didn't pick up on this at the time this isn't
the bit that I would be like why didn't you pick up on this at the time there's
other bits which will come to you. Anyway a few days later Babis posted a picture
of their wedding day to his Instagram account, which has the handle, Flying.Babbis.
The caption read, Always together. Farewell my love.
Again, this is a few days, this is like a week after his wife has been murdered. How
are you ready to go on fucking Instagram and just post always together? Farewell, my love.
Are you not still in the state of grief where you can't believe this is happening?
How are you already at the stage where you're like, farewell, my love.
Do you know what I mean?
I get it.
I get it.
We're looking at this with hindsight, but it is just really alarming.
He just can't stop.
And the post got thousands of comments, a huge number of which Babis responded to personally,
thanking them for their interest and saying how deeply touched he was.
You know, not like a man who's got his hands forward looking after an 11-month-old baby
on his own now and also, you know, dealing with the police and a massive investigation
into who killed his wife.
But he's got time to personally reply to Instagram messages.
Okay.
And journalists even said at the time that if they wanted information about the story
they all knew that they could just DM Babes directly. He was always online and very happy
to reply. It's like he's doing PR but he's doing it, I mean I suppose
exactly what he's doing but like it's so like clinical. Oh yes. Now in the meantime
while Babus is soaking up his 15 minutes of fame the police had been focusing on
what they had, a description of three foreign burglars, probably from the Caucasus region.
The media also joined in, publishing stories tying the case
to other crimes in the area by Albanian or Georgian
perpetrators.
A less than a week after Caroline's death,
news broke that the police had made an arrest.
A 43-year-old Georgian citizen had been arrested at the northern border as he attempted to
cross into Bulgaria on a false passport.
He was brought into Athens for questioning.
The man had been wanted for a string of other burglaries in the area.
And just a few weeks before, he and a gang of accomplices had broken into an elderly
couple's flat, tied them up and robbed them. And this flat had been just 20 minutes away from Caroline and Babis' home.
The man was questioned for days and his DNA was sent off for analysis.
And while it initially looked like a slam dunk, eventually it went nowhere.
There was no physical evidence placing this man in Caroline
and Babis's home. And yes, he was a criminal. But burglary, even tying people up and
committing burglary, is a different thing to murder. It would have been a very big
step up. And so, with absolutely nothing tying this man to the murder of Caroline Crouch, the police
were forced to let him go and return to Square One.
But they weren't high and dry.
There was lots of physical evidence to uncover and analyse.
For one, the family home had been kitted out with internal CCTV cameras. Useful, but actually
not, because at 12.35am hours before the crime the camera in the living room
abruptly stopped recording, because the SD card had been removed and the camera
itself had been left on the living room floor. And the last thing the footage shows
before it stops is Babus sitting on the sofa, cradling his daughter and looking
at his phone. Then he gets up and then nothing. The screen goes blank.
That's quite impressive forward panning for mystery assailants that don't show up for another few hours.
And even if they had thought of that, why would they not just take the camera?
So yeah, weird camera business. Then they had the forensic results.
And the police had hoped that this might shed some much needed light on this case.
Because can you imagine the amount of pressure the police are under?
It's like a wealthy suburb, a young couple, murdered in the home,
everyone is freaking out.
But sadly, much of the forensics results were inconclusive.
Both the samples from Caroline's fingernails and those from the rest
of the house turned up nothing.
No fingerprints, no DNA, no sweat or traces of biological matter were found anywhere.
These foreign burglars, despite absolutely trashing the house,
must have been incredibly meticulous.
Maybe one of them's the clean-up man.
One of them's like, two of them are just like destroying everything, killing puppies, killing women, and the other one's just like running around cleaning everything up with a fucking
toothbrush and a fine tooth comb by the sounds of things.
Then the police went back over Babus' version of events and started to ask themselves some
questions. And again, we are very aware it is very easy for us to say this snarkily now,
but it does seem like these questions should have been asked right from the start.
And here they are. First of all, how could three burglars break into the house through a tiny window with absolutely no signs
of forced entry? How could they possibly trash the entire house and raid it, tie someone up,
kill someone else and a dog without leaving a single shred of DNA evidence?
Thirdly, why did the neighbors never hear the baby crying, or for that matter, any sound
at all of the three men who were apparently chatting loud enough for Babis to hear their
accents?
Or for that matter, any sound from Caroline while she and her baby were being attacked?
Especially when their neighbor said that he heard a lot of uncharacteristic barking from the puppy at 4.20am.
Yeah, so it's not like he doesn't hear anything. He hears the dog barking, but nothing else.
He also reported that after a little while the barking very abruptly stopped.
Weeks after Caroline's death,
police started digging deeper into the couple's home life.
And it wasn't quite the rosy, smiling,
sunsy and sand domestic bliss
that the Instagram accounts had presented,
because it never fucking is.
I'm convinced the more someone posts
about how wonderful it is,
the more dead inside they are.
Especially when they say say with this one
He's your boyfriend you know his fucking name you're just rubbing it in Diane
So yeah the police discovered that the couple had been going to therapy after the loss of their first child and
according to Caroline's family
hadn't been successful So then the and according to Caroline's family it hadn't been successful.
So then the police turned to Caroline's diary and it revealed the true extent of the couple's
marital difficulties. Some parts of Caroline's diary even seemed to be written in code. Presumably
it seems to make sure that Babis could never read them. Because with shorthand, Caroline had written things like,
Beating and Dangerous Man, and the diary described long running fights,
and the sense that Caroline was increasingly afraid to tell her husband her real feelings,
in case they set him off. On New Year's Eve 2019, Caroline wrote,
I argued with Babis again, this time a lot. I hit him, I cursed him and he broke the door.
I woke up feeling so weak and tired and thinking about leaving, going to my sister.
I don't know if I can continue with Babis, but I love him so much that I can't leave him, even if this relationship is harming me."
Then on the 3rd of July 2020, she described another explosive argument. In
this one she revealed to Babis that she wanted to leave him before she got
pregnant, and that she only stayed with him so that her daughter could grow up
with both parents.
Then on the 11th of May 2021, Caroline texted a friend saying that she was planning to leave Babis for good.
Caroline's phone also revealed that she'd been browsing Airbnbs and hotels that very night.
So clearly, this hadn't been an idle threat.
And if that date is ringing any bells, it's because you're a very good listener, well done.
The 11th of May 2021 is the day that Caroline died.
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The police were now thoroughly convinced that there had been no burglary at all.
After weeks of national fury and the outpouring of support and sympathy,
it had been Babis all along.
But they'd have to prove it.
And for that, they turned to the tech.
The more the police looked into the couple's devices, the more obvious it all became.
And this is something we've not really touched upon hugely before.
There was a bit of this in the Karen Reed episode, but it kind of doesn't really lead
anywhere.
Here it is super effective.
Because information and metadata from personal devices actually are used in this case to great effect.
It's an approach that definitely could get pretty concerning and can be pretty like gray
if used irresponsibly.
But here it gave a real insight into what actually happened inside that house that night.
So first the police checked Babus' phone.
According to his story, he had been tied up from around 4am when the burglars entered
the house.
But unfortunately for him, his phone showed him clearly moving around the house from both
his GPS location and active step count.
And look, you gotta close those rings.
Even if you're murdering your wife.
Gotta do it.
But like, okay, look, it doesn't necessarily show him doing it.
It shows his phone moving around.
So yes, like we can, we can say that to be gentle.
But then the police checked Caroline's smartwatch and bingo.
It showed that she'd been asleep around six minutes before the murder began.
Then at 4.05 AM, there was a sudden sharp increase in her heart rate
until 4.11 AM, when her heart stopped beating altogether.
Again, how are they learning all this just now?
I feel like maybe we need to accept that we live in an age where the first thing that happens when
someone dies is you take their Apple watch, you take their Aura ring, you take their Fitbit,
and you go through all of the data and then you decide what happened.
I agree. Let's do that, please.
So yeah, basically what this is telling the police loud and clear is if this woman had
been asleep until six minutes before she died, suddenly there's a sharp increase up until
that point she's asleep and then her heart stops beating.
At what point exactly did she fight back against her assailants before being suffocated in
an ensuing fight?
It seems implausible at least.
And we've got one last thing to revisit before we move on.
In the story that Babis told, he was tied to a chair blindfolded.
And he managed to not only get his phone, but also dial 100, which is the Greek emergency number, with his nose.
So let's try this out.
So I'm going to give myself a head start, right? I'm just gonna put it on the table. So I've already used my hands. I'm
already out. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. To be honest, yes, you've already unlocked the phone. No,
no, I haven't unlocked it. I've just moved it into the direction, the area to which my
nose can reach. Got it. Got it. That's a big step. And now I'm gonna try and open it with my nose. Let's do it.
I'm watching. Wait, wait, shall I film this? Yeah, probably. Okay.
What if I can't? You can do it, I believe. Oh, you've got it got it okay it's a good start oh I face ID face ID you have a tape on your face though I can do emergency with my nose he says he
does he says he does 100 I don't want to actually go to one it won't go anywhere
if you don't 100 here well maybe it will let's find out what yeah you can't use
your arms either for support no I didn't use my arms. No, I meant like for balance because I tied behind your arms.
Okay, sorry. You also probably didn't have a tiny little alarm chair, deck chair in front of you.
So I try again? Try it again. Yeah, I think that no arms is crucial. You can do it. You can do it.
As long as you can reach your phone with your face immediately, it can be done.
Well you saw it here first.
Getting it out of my pocket with my nose though, probably a bit more difficult.
Tricky business.
Anyway, it's not easy.
So I think we have illustrated that the whole thing had been intricately planned and carried out.
Not just the act itself, but the story that Babis told afterwards.
Relying on a combination of public fears and sympathy to get him off scot-free.
And he did fool most of the public and the press for weeks.
But this house of cards was coming down fast.
So it's time for a new theory. And this is what we got. On that night, the couple fights
for hours. And at some point, Caroline made it clear that she wanted to leave Babis. I suspect that Babis knew this was coming sooner or later.
This isn't their first rodeo in Marital Fight Olympics.
Which is a TV show you would watch.
It's a fucking fuck yes.
I'll watch the shit out of it.
Marital Fight Olympics.
And just send them on gladiators.
Contender.
Only if Mel Schilling is overseeing it with a fucking like big cotton bud that she uses
to knock the loser over.
So yeah, I think Babis knows that this point where Caroline is going to leave him has been
a long time coming.
And so I think when she finally tells him that night I am leaving you I think he pulls out a very meticulous and
very much premeditated plan for murder and deflection. Do you think he practiced
dialing 100 with his nose to check if he could do it? This is the other thing did
they dust the phone for nose prints? Because otherwise I don't want to fucking hear it. I don't know.
So yeah, he's ready to go.
He's got his plan.
So I think what happens next, and this is what the police believe,
he goes downstairs.
Caroline stays in the attic room, all the way in the top of the house.
And they continue their fight over text, which is just like the worst thing.
When you're still both in the same house, but you're like just texting each other how angry you are.
It's, you know, n'est pas la fucking marital fight Olympics, but that's what's going on.
You flip it on its head and it's the people who have the worst marriage that win.
Yes.
In which case all the points.
And we know that this is what happened because there are texts on the phone, but
also this is what's shown in the last frames of the CCTV that was inside the house.
And the police figure that what happens next is that Babis decided that he wanted their
daughter Lydia for himself.
He wasn't going to let Caroline walk out and take her with her.
So he gets up, removes the SD card from their CCTV cameras and heads upstairs to where Caroline
had finally gone to sleep.
He then held a pillow over her face for a full six minutes until he was sure she was
dead.
Then he starts to stage the scene.
He puts their baby daughter Lydia next to the dead body of her mother. Then he picks up Roxy, the eleven-month-old husky puppy,
and drowns her in the bathtub,
then strings her up to the banister.
He then makes the fake call to the Athenian police.
Gaffer tapes his mouth, blindfolds himself, and then ties himself to a chair.
And then he prepares himself for the role of a lifetime.
The handsome, grieving widower.
The victim of nasty foreign criminals.
The brave, bereaved father.
Who can also fly a helicopter?
Just in case you want that.
Yeah.
Here's the full package, ladies.
Thirty-seven days after the attack,
a memorial service was held for Caroline on her home
island of Alonissus.
Her family and friends gathered to remember her, and Babis, surrounded by Caroline's
family, held baby Lydia in his arms for the duration of the ceremony.
The emotional scenes were broadcast live across the country.
But during the service, two police officers arrived by helicopter.
And they made a beeline for Babis and told him they had a suspect and they were almost certain
that this person had killed Caroline. The officers told Babis that he needed to
go with them immediately to Athens so he could help to identify this suspect.
Babis went over to tell Caroline's family and he and Caroline's mom hugged
for about five minutes.
Five minutes? Have you ever hugged anyone in your life for five minutes?
I don't think all the hugs I've ever given add up to five minutes.
Five minutes? That's fucking mental.
It's a long time.
Footage of this long hug was instantly all over the news, and the commentary read that
the family were overjoyed with this new breakthrough, and at the prospect that soon it would all
be over.
Babis asked the police if he could use his phone, but they said no.
They also told him that he wouldn't be able to stick around for the rest of the memorial
service.
It was probably best if he just went with them straight away and avoided making a scene in front of the TV cameras.
And whether he knew it or not, Babus's number was well and truly up.
I don't think he had any idea. I think he was convinced that he'd gotten them all.
Yeah, absolutely.
Now the trip to Athens from this small Aegean island is not quick, even by helicopter.
So presumably Babis had quite a lot of time to mull it over.
And when he finally got to an interrogation room in Athens and was told that the suspect was in fact him,
he didn't go down without a fight. After eight hours of
questioning and various half-baked answers that he probably cooked up in
that helicopter ride to try and answer all of the various inconsistencies
that had come up during the course of the police investigation, Babis finally
confessed. And he said simply, I killed her. I will tell you everything in detail.
But as we will discover, the story he tells now also makes very little sense.
He said that during their argument, Caroline told him to leave their bedroom.
Then she took the
baby and according to Babis, threw Lydia into a swing in a way that made Babis
scared for the baby's safety. He said that Caroline also became physical,
punching and kicking him and flying into one of her dangerous outbursts as he
called them. Caroline threatened to take Lydia away
from him for good and he was worried about Caroline's capacity to be a good
mother. So in the heat of the moment in a bid to save his daughter, Babis said he
lost his temper and smothered his wife with a pillow. Which obviously makes
sense for very few reasons but if you're arguing red mist blind rage, pillow isn't what you're going for.
No. No. Especially because it took six minutes of holding her down.
So Babis told the police that when he realised what he'd done,
he'd considered hiding Caroline's body, but then decided instead on the fake robbery story.
Why?
Well, it's because he's just such a bloody good dad.
He said, I thought of making one last attempt so that our daughter might at least grow up
with her father.
So he's like, that's why I didn't hand myself in, because it was just red mist.
I promise you it was just a crime of passion in the heat of the moment didn't mean to do it
I swear to God the only reason I didn't hand myself in was for the sake of my
daughter so she might still have a dad and yeah presumably there's also some
bullshit here if you'd had more time to think about it being like well if I hide
the body then did he is gonna grow up thinking her mother abandoned her or
spent her life wondering where her mother is at least now she she knows her mother is dead, but it wasn't me.
It was this fake burglary.
Don't worry.
You still grew up with a great dad who loves you, who just happened to murder your mom.
And I can fly a helicopter.
That's too.
And then the thing about the dog comes up, right?
And when I say the thing about, I mean, the fact that he...
The killing of the dog.
The killing of the dog.
And for this inexplicably gruesome move, because yes, he killing of the dog. The killing of the dog. And for this inexplicably
gruesome move, because yes, he drowns the dog in the bathtub and then hangs it from a banister.
When he's asked why on earth he did that, he said, I didn't know what to do. I thought that
in order to look more plausible that rogue robbers had entered the house, I would have to hurt the
dog. No one knew I would be capable of killing the dog.
With a heavy heart I hung the dog's leash on the railings of the stairs." So
basically what he's saying here is I think it's it's like misinterpreted of
being like no one knew what I was capable of like he's this demonic
creature and he's admitting to it. I don't think that's what he's saying. I
think what he's saying is more along the realms of like, nobody would be
able to believe that I could have killed the dog saying like, people could have
believed or suspected that I had murdered my wife, but I had to take it
that stage further so that it looked really, really much more likely that
some third party had nothing to do with us had committed this crime.
Cause I, no one could imagine why I would kill the
dog. So I had to do it because it was the most crazy thing that could happen. Like that's
what I think he's saying there. But basically, ultimately, the subtext of Babus's entire
story is that it was all Caroline's fault. He had had no choice. He had been forced to
take his wife's life and her puppy's life, all for the sake of saving baby Lydia.
And you might be thinking,
what happened to the smartwatch?
Why did you bring that up and then not bring it up again?
We work for the Athens Police Department.
No, they do actually do a very good job.
They do wrap this case up in a month.
Like, I'm just joking.
No, they do actually do a very good job. They do wrap this case up in a month. Like, I'm just joking.
We already know that Caroline was sleeping when she died.
And that doesn't make sense.
We also know that Babis took the SD card out of the CCTV camera in the living
room at 12.35 AM and he killed Caroline at 4 AM because that's what the watch
says, which doesn't exactly scream,
she came at me and I saw red and I didn't know what I was doing, it was a total accident,
but I still managed to hold a pillow on her face for six minutes and then murder our puppy.
The hours spent devising and carrying out this plan absolutely speaks to someone
in a calm and collected mental state.
But as calculated and well thought out as his original alibi seemed to have been,
with, you know, flashy details like Albanians and Georgians,
this one isn't nearly as clean.
Actually, there were loads of gaping holes in this new heat-of-the-moment story,
and they
were all about to come spilling out.
Because when the story broke, it broke.
The media literally interrupted coverage of the 2020 euros to show rolling news coverage
of Babis' arrest and interrogation.
I don't know how far Greece
got in the 2020 Euros but that's quite surprising.
I mean I can't remember either but football's a big deal in Greece.
Yeah. So yeah it's wall-to-wall coverage. Apparently traffic even ground to a halt
outside Athens cafe so that drivers could catch the latest developments while
they were on the go.
People couldn't believe it.
And so it's often said about this case that Babis was the man who fooled a nation.
But that's not entirely true. There were definitely those who doubted his grieving father act right from the very start.
But most of the country was firmly hashtag team Babis.
And when this new story hit the media in the run up to the
trial, the public backlash was instant and fierce.
There's one thing the public hate more than losing the euros. It is being deceived.
Absolutely.
It was clear as day to anyone and everyone that Babis had concocted his story to save
himself and his reputation.
He'd played up to public fears and stereotypes.
And stereotypes the police had as well, because he thought he could outsmart an entire country.
And now the Greek public knew that they had been played.
Babis had murdered his young wife.
He'd actively supported the arrest
of an innocent man, he'd used his own daughter as a prop, and he'd literally killed a puppy.
All in the vain hope that it would make his alibi seem more plausible.
It was self-preservation at any cost. And I'd go further than that. I don't even think it's just self-preservation itself aggrandizement
Absolutely, he didn't need to be doing everything he was doing in order to preserve himself
In fact, I think a lot of what he was doing didn't ultimately lead to his downfall because the evidence from the crime scene is what?
Did that but it certainly made a lot of people take notice of him when he could have so easily
just stayed under the radar.
And with it all out in the open, the anger around this case also started a public conversation
about domestic violence.
Caroline was the 17th woman in Greece to be killed by her partner in 2021.
And those are just the ones we know about.
Articles were written and widely shared, bringing the word femicide into the national Greek
consciousness for the first time. The people were reckoning with the scale of a problem
in a way they had never acknowledged before. So, while this storm raged on outside,
Babis Anastopolous sat in prison, awaiting trial.
And it would be almost a full year before that came.
On the 8th of April, 2022, he arrived at court in a bright,
white bulletproof vest, as so him,
surrounded by a small army of armed guards.
Campaigners had gathered outside, and as he passed, they screamed at him to rot in hell.
He stood charged with premeditated murder, the unprovoked killing of an animal,
and perverting the course of justice by repeatedly lying to police.
And that last one includes charges of false reporting and false testimony. Inside it was a mixed
court of jurors plus a panel of three judges. And Babis and Yanastopolous was
facing life. The main aim of Babis's defense strategy was to prove that the
murder wasn't premeditated because that carries a lesser charge. And God love them they had a job on their
hands. Prosecutors told the court the following words from the coroner's
report. Caroline's death had been agonizing and prolonged.
Psychologists testified that Babis's character was narcissistic and controlling.
And the court was told that during their marriage Babis had been increasingly manipulative and volatile.
He had moved Caroline away from her family to the suburbs and had planned to buy a house even further away from her family and her friends.
Caroline had no access to her own money and Babis would track
her constantly via her phone. Yeah I think sometimes in cases like if you look at the
Chris Watts situation or you look at Scott Peterson there's like quite a clear motivation
for why that murder happened right. Chris Watts is like I want to be with this new woman, got to
get rid of you, don't want this like, you know, ex-wife hanging around here.
I really think given Babas's personality, I think a lot of it is wrapped up in
this kind of juvenile thing he has of being like this man who's got a 19 year
old wife and like he can keep us satisfied and he can provide for her and all of this.
And then when Caroline is like 19 and still able to be like nah you may be rich,
you may be handsome, you may be all these things but I don't give a fuck I'm leaving,
I'm out of here, I'm looking at Airbnbs hotels, I'm gone. I think his ego could not handle
the idea of a Caroline leaving and be people realizing that his 19 year old child bride was leaving him.
Like, cause then you're going to start asking questions of what's wrong with you.
So months before the trial, Babus's previous defense lawyer had resigned from the case
saying he couldn't have anything to do with it for personal reasons.
Probably because of the level of hatred this case stirred up increased.
And look, I'm not saying that that's like a good thing that that happened, like everybody deserves a defense.
But I wouldn't be surprised if that was the reason that person stepped away.
I mean, it'd be quite hard to look yourself in the eye, wouldn't it?
Yeah.
But that's also a price you pay when you decide to be a criminal defense lawyer.
Yeah.
Literally in the name.
Yes. Defending criminals is your job.
Or alleged criminals sometimes.
Always alleged criminals.
But you have to be prepared that sometimes they did do it.
Yes.
And he did do it.
Babus did do it by his own admission.
He's saying he just didn't premeditate it.
So Babus' new defense lawyer, a man whose name I'm going to try and say now, Andros
Papai...
Straight up, Alexandros.
Oh my god.
I was so scared of what I said, I said his first name wrong.
Alexandros Papai Owenidis.
It's not bad.
Alexandros Papai, whatever.
Sounded Greek to me.
Thank you, it's all Greek to me.
Did his very best.
And for the rest of this episode,
I'm just going to call him the defense attorney.
And he argued that Babis had been in a blurred state of mind.
The defense also just denied a bunch of very clear facts. For
example, they said Caroline was not asleep. What we are hearing we do not
accept, even though they had the smartwatch data to show that she was
asleep. It wasn't looking good, but Babis was not going to go down without one last performance. He took the stand and spoke for almost 10 hours.
I'm quite surprised that he didn't defend himself.
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Even when the first one quit,
I wouldn't have been surprised if he said,
ah, well, I'll do it anyway.
You would have, you would have fucked it up.
Honestly, I don't, how was this allowed?
How was he allowed to speak for 10 hours?
It is mind boggling, but he does.
And he started with the story of how he and Caroline had met,
their unwavering love and their fairy tale wedding.
He said that back then, quote, their unwavering love and their fairy tale wedding.
He said that back then, quote, my absolute priority in everything was her happiness.
She may have been young, but she was very mature, and she was maturing fast.
So gross, so gross.
Babis also said that after Caroline had had her first miscarriage,
her behavior had started to change, and she'd
become aggressive. He said he'd suggested that they should get some therapy, and at first Caroline
had gone along with it, but that soon she'd started making excuses and eventually stopped
attending altogether. Babis went back over the new version of the night in question in intense detail.
He said that Caroline had been violent, she'd used her kickboxing training
against him, and he'd lost control. He said that he got on top of Caroline to
stop her from attacking him. Okay. And then in a moment of madness he grabbed a
pillow and placed it, he says, over her head for
six minutes with enough force that it killed her.
And when the judge asked how he could go to such an extreme measure quite so
quickly, Babis replied, I had no purpose.
There was no logic in my blurred mind at that moment.
And when I saw her in profile and understood she was dead,
I lost it.
I began to weep and pull my hair
and go back and forth across the room.
From the day I lost Caroline,
I lost everything.
I lost my life.
Wah.
And what about the dog?
The little puppy, Roxy the brown husky.
Well once again he explained that that was all part of an effort to make the whole thing
look more credible.
He said he just couldn't bear to look at Roxy as she died.
And finally he concluded, there is no excuse.
What has been lost is irreplaceable.
Neither Caroline nor our dog deserved it.
What the fuck?
Also, what has been lost?
Like you misplaced your wife and your dog.
You mean what I did?
What I took from this earth?
What I took from Caroline's family?
With my bare fucking hands. Yeah
And yes, this 10-hour pity party was broken up by frequent interjections from the judges
Among many other things they stopped Babis multiple times to contest his use of the present tense when speaking about Caroline
And they also asked him not to overanalyze
Caroline. And they also asked him not to overanalyze, presumably just to try and encourage him to fucking get on with it. Because he analyzes situations like he's suddenly like an expert
witness or something and not just, you know, trying to not go to prison for the rest of
his life.
It doesn't surprise me at all that he's trying to well actually his own defense.
Yep, yep, yep, yep.
And it didn't end.
His little act didn't end with just his time in the stand because later during trial, when excerpts from Caroline's diary were read out, Babus would sit there
and cry.
Obviously his theatrics did not work on the court, but maybe that wasn't the
point because journalists at the time reported something else.
They said it kind of just seemed like he was enjoying the drama of it all.
Which does happen more than people may think.
Yeah.
I think he knows he's fucked.
He knows he's a different person.
Oh, absolutely.
I think he's just enjoying it.
This is his moment in the sun.
Or he is narcissistic enough to think that he can fool everybody one more time.
Maria Gavinelli, the president of the Greek National Commission for Human Rights, said
at the time,
All my instincts tell me that this was testimony that was rehearsed by a showman, who was milking
it for all it takes and enjoying it.
Court reporter Giottesi added,
It was well prepared, and yes, he is clever.
But beyond that, there was something else.
His grasp of legal terminology was exceptional.
If you had not seen him uttering the words,
you'd have thought it was a lawyer speaking.
So there you go.
He kind of did try to defend himself.
Well, yes.
And this extended even after the proceedings were concluded. As Tessie said,
he seems always to be looking out for the cameras and when he finds them, straight into them.
He's a narcissist. He likes the attention.
In his closing statement, Babis gave it one last shake at trial, saying,
I hope all those who have been hurt, all those who have lost, will someday forgive me.
I hope that God will forgive me.
I will never forgive myself.
How narcissistic to even ask for forgiveness.
But whatever.
Well, he's just trying to show remorse, isn't he?
So they'll let him off a bit lighter.
On the 16th of May, 2022, a year almost to the day since Caroline was killed,
Babis Anianastopoulos was found guilty.
The court unanimously agreed on the maximum sentence possible under Greek law.
A life sentence for the premeditated murder of his wife with no chance of parole for 20 years.
A jail term of 11 years and 6 months for the senseless killing of the family's pet dog.
And a fine of 21,000 euro for intentionally misleading the police and the public.
I can't believe you got 11 years and six months for killing a dog.
Too fucking right.
Wow.
In Cuba, you get more for killing a cow than a human.
There you go.
Predictably, Babis immediately got to work on his appeal.
He argued for months that his sentence should be reduced, citing mitigating circumstances.
He lined up six defense witnesses, including his parents.
I'm amazed he found six.
But then in June 2023, one week before his appeal trial was set to begin,
suddenly, quite unexpectedly, Babis decided to put a sudden stop to proceedings.
And he and his team and his parents dropped the appeal
completely.
That's quite a big U-turn for a narcissist especially, so one would hope that there were
some pretty hefty reasons behind the change of heart.
And don't worry, he put out a statement of explanation.
He said that he'd pulled the plug due to extremely serious reasons
which cannot be announced. Fuck off. So that clears that right up. Oh my god. I'd be
fucked off if I was a lawyer and I've been putting together an appeal for
years and then he's actually changed my mind a week before. For fuck's sake I was ready to go.
I am really surprised that he does that though because
I think it is very clear from everything we've said throughout this episode is that he is a man
who loves attention and he would have had another go at the limelight. Maybe you know as many people
wouldn't have been as interested in an appeal for sure but I am surprised he drops it. Yeah same.
And we're not the only ones who are surprised because Caroline's father, David, is not convinced that this is the last we'll hear from Babis.
Calling him a duplicitous bastard, not very smart, but a born actor.
But for now, the family is immensely relieved that the case has been put to bed.
David said, every time he appears in court,
we're forced to relive the nightmares of the last two years and listen to his lies
as he tries to justify his killing of my daughter.
Thankfully, before the trial even began, an Athens court awarded custody of baby Lydia
to Caroline's parents. All of Babus's parental rights were revoked, and even the visitation
rights of Babus's parents to baby Lydia
were severely limited.
Lydia's almost five now, and last anyone heard, she's living in
the Philippines with Caroline's sister.
David Crouch, Caroline's father, said this,
My only duty now is to look after 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. I can only do this in
the Philippines, far away from the malignant presence of her father.
And Lydia is so fucking cute.
She is so fucking cute man. Oh it's just so so despicable this whole story. And look I
know we say kind of from the start like oh my god he's nearly twice her age like
why isn't nobody saying anything like there weren't clear indications that
there was a problem there wasn't like other than the fact that there's like a
bit of a disturbing age gap but like everyone's just so happy for Caroline
and she's so happy.
And then it's just like how quickly that situation deteriorates and how nobody knew, nobody knew
what a narcissist he was and how dangerous he was.
And Caroline did everything right.
She was trying to leave.
She was trying to get out of that situation.
And as we've seen time and time again, it's when women try to leave situations like this that they are most at risk. It's literally the night she tells him.
And she's 19, she's a kid herself, like she wouldn't have seen it coming.
No.
She wouldn't have recognized the signs.
No. So yeah, just a really, really tragic story but at least Lydia is absolutely nowhere near
Babis or anyone to do with him.
And I don't know, people might feel like, oh, why take her away from his parents and
other sort of grandparents, or his good thing, but they stand by him.
And they raised him.
Yeah, so...
I feel fine about that.
Me too.
So that's it, guys.
That is the story of Babis, the last time I'm going to say his surname, Anianastopoulos,
the man who thought he had fooled a nation.
Charge your Apple Watch.
Always. Get one. I don't have one.
I'm getting an aura ring tomorrow.
Oh, there you go. Keep it on. And keep us on.
We'll be back next week with something else.
Goodbye.
Goodbye. Goodbye.