Greek pilot gets life sentence for British-Filipina wife's murder

ATHENS, Greece - A Greek pilot on Monday received a life sentence in prison for murdering his young British-Filipina wife and the family dog in a crime that shocked the country last year.

Babis Anagnostopoulos, a 33-year-old helicopter pilot, was judged guilty on all charges -- premeditated murder, abusing an animal, misleading authorities and perjury, the head lawyer for the victim's family told reporters.

A life sentence in Greece is 25 years, and Anagnostopoulos received an additional 10 years for killing his pet and 18 months for lying to police, prosecuting lawyer Thanassis Harmanis told reporters.

Caroline Crouch had been found dead last May, just weeks short of her 20th birthday in the couple's home in Glyka Nera, a semi-rural suburb northeast of Athens.

She was suffocated on a bed in the attic by her husband of less than two years, in what the trial prosecutor called an "agonizing" death.

"For six minutes and 42 seconds, the woman of his life as he claimed her to be, was dying in his hands but he did not relent," Harmanis told reporters.

"This was a heinous crime," he said.

Prosecutor Evgenia Stathoulopoulou said the 33-year-old helicopter pilot had used his body weight to immobilize his wife, a trained kickboxer.

"This is the action of a coward; my daughter had a black belt in kickboxing and he would know that he was no match for her when she was awake," Crouch's father had told the Daily Mail last July.

Stathoulopoulou on Monday said the suspect had displayed "unthinkable cruelty" in also killing the family dog -- hanging her from a staircase -- and placing their 11-month baby girl on her mother's lifeless body to make the crime scene more dramatic.

For over a month, Anagnostopoulos tried to present the crimes as a botched burglary, before eventually confessing.

He initially told police that three men had broken into the house, tying him up and killing his wife and their dog before making off with thousands of euros (dollars) in cash and other valuables.

Anagnostopoulos' lawyer had said that his client had committed the crime "in the heat of passion".

In court testimony, Anagnostopoulos admitted suffocating his wife as she slept, but claimed she was violent and denied the crime was premeditated.

The couple's infant daughter has been placed in the care of Crouch's British father and Philippines-born mother on the Greek island of Alonissos, where she grew up.

Crouch's killing was one of dozens of similar cases in Greece in recent years, including the gruesome rape and killing of American scientist Suzanne Eaton on the island of Crete in 2019.

On average, Greece records around a dozen femicides per year according to government statistics. -- Agence France-Presse