Court finds Caroline Crouch's husband guilty of premeditated murder
The husband of 20-year-old Briton Caroline Crouch was unanimously pronounced guilty of her premeditated murder by a mixed jury court on Monday afternoon that did not recognize any mitigating circumstances.
The court also found Haralambos ("Babis") Anagnostopoulos, 34, who had admitted his guilt but claimed he killed his wife in a fit of rage, guilty of killing a pet and of repeated perjuries.
The prosecutor on the bench recommended the maximum sentence for Anagnostopoulos, saying that he was "in a calm frame of mind" when he committed the crime and his actions were vindictive, premeditated, and meant to look like a robbery gone wrong.
"He put the child to sleep on the couch, then went up to kill. This refutes the claim of an agitated state of mind and shows premeditation," the prosecutor said, highlighting the fact that the defendant had then placed the baby on the body of the dead mother when staging the supposed robbery, in order to evoke sympathy. The prosecutor also cited evidence from the smart watch that Caroline was wearing, which proved that she had been asleep when he started to choke her and also how long it took to kill her.
The court took two hours to deliver its verdict.
