The father of British teenager Caroline Crouch has revealed that her six-year-old daughter still does not know that her own father killed her mother.
Helicopter pilot Babis Anagnostopoulos is serving a 27-year prison sentence for murdering 19-year-old Caroline as she and their then 11-month-old daughter Lydia slept in their home in Athens in May 2021. Anagnostopoulos protested his innocence for more than a month, claiming robbers broke into the home, killed the family dog, stole €15,000 (£12,825) in cash and €25,000 (£21,375) worth of jewellery, then suffocated Caroline. His lies were exposed after evidence from Caroline's Fitbit smartwatch contradicted his account.
Grandfather speaks from his home in Greece
Caroline's father David, 83, has a framed picture of his granddaughter on the wall of his home in Greece, where he gave a new interview from his bed. Speaking about his granddaughter five years on, he said: "She doesn't know about her mother, she doesn't know that she was murdered by some Greek psychopath. I don't know when she'll be old enough to know. He will never meet her."
He added: "He's going to be in prison for a long time and when he gets out she'll be a teenager or 20 or something like that. She's six now so she'll probably be about 20 something. So he'll never meet her."
Lydia lives in the Philippines with her grandmother
Lydia now lives in the Philippines with Caroline's mother Susan, who returned to her native country after Caroline's murder. David said: "She lives in the Philippines with her grandmother, goes to school like a normal child. She lives with Grandma Susan, just the two of them. She's quite a normal six-year-old little girl. She's a very beautiful little girl."
Asked if she asks about her mother, David, originally from Liverpool, said: "No, not really. She regards Susan, maybe not exactly a mother, but not a grandmother either. A sort of mother figure." He added: "Maybe one day she'll ask where her mother is, her real mother. When she finds out where her mother is, maybe she'll want to know what happened to her father and then she'll be able to handle that. But I don't think she'd want to meet him then."
Father's anger and the documentary
Five years on, David admits the pain caused by Caroline's murder has not eased. He said: "I still feel the same and I still feel the same about her killer. I hate him. I hate him with such a visceral feeling because he's a coward. He's a little man. He's not very big and he couldn't even fight Caroline face-to-face. He had to wait until she was asleep before putting a pillow over her head. That's not the behaviour of a man. He's little, weak and a narcissist. He hates to be proved wrong."
Anagnostopoulos, 38, who attended a memorial for Caroline and hugged her mother before being arrested, is now studying law in jail. David, who admits he once "quite liked" his son-in-law and thought he was a "pleasant guy", said: "I don't understand why because he can't practice it. You know he never finished high school. He's not terribly smart."
David is pleased that Amazon Prime have made a documentary called The Fit Bit Killer about Caroline and her murder. He said: "I think it's wonderful because for two reasons: No one forgets her, and the second one is makes it more difficult for her killer to get parole."
David's relationship with Caroline's mother Susan collapsed after the killing and she moved home to the Philippines with their granddaughter. He admits he did not consider moving with her in order to stay with Lydia. Asked if he misses his wife, he said: "I don't have a wife. Susan wasn't my wife and no, I don't miss her at all. Caroline was the center of my world. I came to Greece on my own and she was the first female companionship I found and we lived together for a while and she had Caroline. When Caroline was killed I lost all my feelings for Susan. When she went off to the Philippines, that was no problem for me."
David has previously claimed that Anagnostopoulos, whose principal job was flying people around the Greek islands, wrote a letter to Susan telling her he was lured by the offer of big money to courier a consignment of drugs and killed Caroline on the orders of the gang after she objected and threatened to leave him. Anagnostopoulos and his family have denied the claim.
Paying tribute to Caroline, David said: "For me, Caroline was the perfect daughter. She was the center of my world. Not her mother, her mother was never the center of my world. Some of the happiest times of my life were when we lived in Alonissos. She had to come to Volos for the orthodontist to have her teeth straightened. Not that they were very crooked, but anyway I wanted her to have a perfect smile and we used to get the ferry in Volos. We used to get up to all manner of things. I'd say 'right, what do you want to do now?' and it was always the same thing. First we would go to the pet shop and buy some games and things for her favorite animals. Then we would go and sit on the quay in Volos and make up stories about all the people who walked past. We'd have a fine time, just the two of us. They were the happiest times of my life."
