Caroline Crouch's parents David and Susan speak to Daily Mail about daughter's ...

Caroline Crouch's parents David and Susan speak to Daily Mail about daughter's ...
Caroline Crouch's parents David and Susan speak to Daily Mail about daughter's ...

A single spark of hope has sustained Susan and David Crouch since their daughter was murdered by her husband two months ago. 

As Babis Anagnostopoulos awaits trial for suffocating his wife, the only reprieve from her parents’ misery - the sole reason they have to get up each morning and face ‘a bleak and empty future’ - is tiny granddaughter Lydia.

The one-year-old was found crying next to her mother Caroline’s body by police. ‘Susan’s interaction with Lydia is amazing,’ says David who, with his wife, is now caring for the little girl.

‘She treats her exactly as she treated Caroline when she was a baby. She plays with her continually when she is awake and is alert to the slightest sound when she is asleep. The household is centred on Lydia. 

Everyone is now up at 6.30am so Susan can visit Caroline’s grave before coming back to prepare Lydia’s first feed of the day, but it is a wonderful tonic to hear her gurgling laughter when they are together.’

Caroline Crouch, then 19 - a bright and beautiful woman with a life full of hope and promise ahead of her - had in fact been murdered by her husband, 33-year-old helicopter pilot Babis

Caroline Crouch, then 19 - a bright and beautiful woman with a life full of hope and promise ahead of her - had in fact been murdered by her husband, 33-year-old helicopter pilot Babis

In an exclusive interview with the Mail, Liverpool-born David, 78, a retired engineer, explains how his granddaughter provides the fragile thread that keeps him and Susan from despair. 

‘The comfort afforded to us by Lydia’s presence in the house is the one mitigating factor in this whole tragic affair,’ he tells us from their home on the remote Greek island of Alonissos.

‘But, I am not a young man and all of us are mortal. I have a deep-seated worry that I may not be able to provide for Lydia in those years when she may need the most support. My one aim right now is to give the very best life to the child of my wonderful daughter.’

It is with Lydia’s future in mind that we appeal to generous Daily Mail readers today to help set up a fund to care for her when her grandparents are no longer alive.

Neither David nor Susan, 57, have requested money for this article. 

They have been at pains to say they do not want to profit one iota from their daughter’s tragic death - so we make this appeal independently, but with their blessing, in the hope that, with your kind help, we can help secure Lydia’s financial future.

Their loss has afflicted David and Susan differently. 

On Monday, David marked the most desolate of birthdays, the 20th his daughter never saw: ‘I had a couple of sips of the excellent single malt whisky that she gave me for my birthday in December,’ he tells us.

He shares his memories; always poignant, invariably proud; sometimes wryly amusing, of the late-life daughter who brought such joy to him in his retirement.

Susan, however, is too consumed by sorrow to contemplate talking.

She does not allow her mind to wander to the awful circumstances of Caroline’s death. Instead her life revolves round Lydia, the focus and purpose of her existence.

Susan draws comfort from Lydia’s proximity: they sleep together in Caroline’s girlhood bed, posters of her favourite band, One Direction, looking over them.

David observes from a distance as Susan quietly follows the gentle rituals of care and feeding and concludes that his granddaughter has settled ‘reasonably well’ although he detects insecurity.

After all, who knows what subliminal fears plague a baby who has lost her mother so brutally and abruptly? 

‘She clings to Susan like a limpet, will tolerate Susan’s sister but howls like a banshee if I come too close to her,’ says David.

Caroline and Babis married on a secret Algarve holiday in July 2019, in a quiet beach ceremony with just two witnesses. David recalls being 'impressed' by Babis when first meeting him

Caroline and Babis married on a secret Algarve holiday in July 2019, in a quiet beach ceremony with just two witnesses. David recalls being 'impressed' by Babis when first meeting him

For Susan, exhuming thoughts of Caroline’s death is too painful to bear. ‘Unlike me, she appears to have closed her mind to it all and is now totally focused on bringing up Lydia. She does not read the media or listen to the news. She has blocked it all out,’ says David.

He is conscious that Babis’s parents are innocent and - although he and Susan are seeking sole custody of Lydia through the Greek courts - he is sharply aware that the baby around whose small life theirs pivot needs ‘all the love she can get. We have a good relationship with Babis’s parents, particularly his mother,’ he says.

‘She telephones almost every day to ask about Lydia and, of course, she is quite free to visit whenever she chooses. 

'However, as she used to teach at the local school, she is quite well known on the island and feelings are still running very high, as they are throughout Greece.

‘She, of course, is quite blameless but is being made to suffer for the sins of her son.’

Grief has floored David; sapped him of energy, drained him of purpose and joy. When news reached him that their adored Caroline was dead — murdered, they believed then, by a gang of robbers at her home in Athens — he was ‘struck down with the pain of grief that I know will never go away’.

The memory of that May morning when neighbours arrived at their home telling them their daughter was dead, remains as sharp as a physical pain.

‘We had just finished breakfast when there was a loud hammering on the front door,’ he recalls. 

‘Several of our Greek friends were there in a state of great distress. It was at first difficult to understand what they were saying but eventually we made sense of them.

‘It was as if an icy hand had reached into my chest and grabbed my heart. From then on I was virtually paralysed.

‘Susan took charge and arranged to go immediately to Athens with one of the Greek ladies who had brought the news, while her brother stayed with me.

‘It wasn’t until later in the day that I became compos mentis. I can recall this huge man with hands like shovels, sitting opposite me with tears pouring down his face just saying over and over again; “bastards, bastards”.

‘This was when it was believed that Caroline had been killed in a robbery.’

It was not until 38 days later that the truth emerged: Caroline, then 19 — a bright and beautiful young woman with a life full of hope and promise ahead of her — had in fact been murdered by her husband, 33-year-old helicopter pilot Babis; suffocated as she slept with little Lydia in their house in an upmarket enclave of the Greek capital.

Babis had, it emerged, cynically staged a robbery to cover up his crime, tying himself up near Caroline’s inert body with duct tape over his eyes and mouth, after killing his wife and strangling the family’s pet dog, Roxy, with her own lead.

Maintaining the charade that a gang of robbers had broken into the house, murdered his wife and stolen €10,000 in cash and £20,000 worth of jewellery, he played the grieving widower until he was rumbled and arrested by police more than five weeks later, after Caroline’s memorial service.

The case has shocked the world: that such a heinous crime could have been perpetrated on a young woman as she slept by her baby seems unimaginable; that her husband could have devised such an elaborate ruse to cover his tracks, inconceivable.

What was Babis’s motive? Wild theories abound: Greece has been gripped by surmise and gossip. Was Babis couriering drugs? Did Caroline find out and did he murder her in an attempt to stop her shopping him?

David tkes solace, too, in the fact that Caroline was much loved, ¿as was evidenced by the huge turnout at her funeral

David tkes solace, too, in the fact that Caroline was much loved, ‘as was evidenced by the huge turnout at her funeral 

David has no wish to join in the fevered conjecture: ‘I don’t want to speculate on what motive he had; that is for the police to determine. I only want justice for my beautiful daughter who was killed in a most cowardly act.

‘He knew that he was no match for her physically. She was young, fit and an accomplished kickboxer, so he took the memory card out of the internal CCTV system and suffocated her while she slept.

‘I imagine that he will have a fine time explaining that to the killers he will be incarcerated with in Korydallos Prison, reputedly the worst jail in Europe.’

David’s anger towards his son-in-law still burns.

He says he would ‘have blown his lying head right off his shoulders and gladly have taken the consequences,’ had he known, when the two men met and shared condolences at Caroline’s memorial service, that he was guilty of killing his daughter.

The crime has destroyed forever the idyll the Crouches created when they set up home on Alonissos. 

They built their house, to which they moved in 2003 when Caroline — a British citizen, born in a private hospital in Athens —was a toddler. 

She spent a blissful childhood there, in their whitewashed villa with its wide, shaded veranda and views of the glittering Aegean Sea.

The house stands alone in peaceful solitude with no close neighbours, yet it is just an 80-yard walk to the cemetery where Caroline’s marble grave, bedecked with white blooms, overlooks the sea on the other side of the island. 

And it is to this spot that Susan makes her daily, early morning pilgrimage.

Then her days pass in the routines of childcare.

She and her sister have already taken Lydia swimming in the sea beyond their home.

‘They went to a secluded beach. Lydia seems to have inherited her mother’s love of the water and enjoyed herself immensely,’ says David. 

Afterwards, the little girl, now teething, is set down to sleep in Caroline’s old double bed for an afternoon nap following her lunch time feed. Such are the quiet rituals that sustain them.

David casts his mind back to Caroline: a former teacher who read statistics at the University of Piraeus in Athens, she seemed effortlessly to dazzle both academically and in sports.

Lydia was handed over to Susan by her paternal grandmother Georgia on Tuesday at a secret location on the Greek mainland. Pictured: Caroline and Anagnostopoulos with daughter Lydia

Lydia was handed over to Susan by her paternal grandmother Georgia on Tuesday at a secret location on the Greek mainland. Pictured: Caroline and Anagnostopoulos with daughter Lydia

She learned to swim, aged three, in the Aegean and qualified as a scuba diver. She ran like the wind, competing in 10k road races and out-pacing most of the boys.

She was fearless, bold; unstoppable. Fluent in Greek, French and Tagalog, her mum’s language, she also spoke ‘perfect, unaccented English,’ says David. 

With her river of dark hair and brown eyes she shared Susan’s striking Filipina looks: little wonder David was proud as they strolled through the island’s Old Village to ‘admiring looks from old ladies’.

Caroline’s birth made David, then retired from his engineering job with a gas and oil company, feel young again: ‘Although I was 58 when she was born I didn’t feel that age. I always thought that I was in my early forties.’

As she grew up, Caroline’s diverse talents blossomed.

She excelled in many extracurricular activities: a keen scout, she also took part in displays of traditional Greek dancing. 

She became proficient at kayaking ‘taking to the sea like a seasoned veteran’, remembers David. And she loved to perform, joining friends to stage plays at the municipal theatre.

All this was balanced by a serious side: in her mid-teens

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