Weeks after being found guilty of strangling Caroline Krauts, Babis Anagnostopoulos said his own life was in danger because he had been the target of a “conventional murder”. In a written statement claiming that he had to remain in Korydallos prison, the capital’s highest security, the 34-year-old said that he learned from his inmates that they had offered him “a huge amount of money” for his life. “From the above it emerged that there is a ‘conventional murder’ against me,” the Greek television channel Star said on Saturday. The horrific way in which 20-year-old Crouch was killed while sleeping in the couple’s maisonette in the suburbs, meters away from their daughter, caused shock in Greece. In a rare step, the government announced a € 300,000 reward for digging up the perpetrators. For 37 days, Anagnostopoulos appeared as a heartbroken widow, fixing the murder on unscrupulous “Albanian or Georgian thieves” who had invaded the house. The cover-up, which included the strangulation of Caroline’s pet dog, was only revealed when the analysis of the smartwatch worn by the Briton and the data on the Greek pilot’s mobile phone revealed inconsistencies in his own version of events. But while he eventually admitted to killing his wife, the suspects were subjected to exhaustive interrogations after allegedly being identified by police by a trained pilot in the United Kingdom. One, a 43-year-old Georgian man accused of being a member of a criminal gang behind similar robberies in the area, described how he had endured four days of torture by Greek police officers trying to extract a confession from him. Subscribe to the First Edition, our free daily newsletter – every morning at 7 p.m. BST After being transferred to Malandrinos prison in central Greece in Fokida on Monday, the pilot’s lawyer, Alexandros Papaioannidis, told the Observer that there was no doubt that his client’s life was in danger. “It would have been much safer in Korydallos,” the lawyer said, adding that Anagnostopoulos had been threatened by a Georgian prisoner who wanted to kill him in January. “Conditions in Malandrino are very difficult. The vast majority of detainees are foreigners and are hardened criminals. We asked him to return to Korydallos for humanitarian and security reasons “. During a six-week trial before a mixed jury in Athens, Anagnostopoulos, who quickly appealed against his life sentence, was repeatedly described as narcissistic and controlling. Psychiatrist Alchistis Igoumenakis, who was among the defense witnesses, said it was clear that the accused was suffering from a serious antisocial personality disorder that not only left him with feelings of superiority and inability to feel, but enabled him to commit similar acts. Following the court ruling, the Crouch family’s lawyer, Thanassis Charamanis, said that while Caroline’s distressed parents had reason to feel justified, it was clear that Anagnostopoulos, who spoke in court for a ten-hour marathon, had little remorse for his actions. The medical examiners described the British woman’s death as painful, saying that it took more than five minutes of continuous suffocation by her husband to “prevent life”. Last week, the convicted murderer admitted that he had ambitions to become a lawyer, saying to the prison authorities that he wanted to take an exam to get into law.
